Shipboard settings are a delightful mashup of forced-proximity and neighbor tropes, and the ships themselves can be anywhere – a river, an ocean, space, or the sky! So when it comes to ships, do you prefer yours to set sail or countdown for launch? Here’s a handy quiz to help you decide!

Would You Rather… A shipboard romance challenge!

Would you rather salute:

Space’s finest female captains:

• Hunt the Stars by Jesse Mihalik
• Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair
• Lord of the Storm by Justine Davis
• Kinsman’s Oath by Susan Krinard

OR

Historical lady officers?

• The Iron Rose by Marsha Canham
• Almost a Scandal by Elizabeth […]

Welcome back to Setting Smackdown, where two different romance settings brawl it out for first place in our hearts! (If you missed our first two Smackdowns you can find them here: Georgian vs. Victorian; France vs. Italy).  In our Stage vs. Screen smackdown, we’re not looking for romances featuring actors on vacation or meeting and falling in love with ‘ordinary people’. We’re looking at books which take us right into the heart of Broadway or the West End, Hollywood or Bollywood, or even turn-of-the-century Paris, when film-making as an industry was just being born.

First, it’s interesting to note that “Stage” is much less represented in romance than “screen.” Even when we expand to include everything that happens on a stage, from striptease to Shakespeare, “Stage” is clearly the underdog of this fight. But I thought the Georgian era couldn’t brawl with the Victorians, so what do I know?