What is paranormal romance? Paranormal romance is any love story in which one of the lovers, or the world around them, is not quite human: vampires, shapeshifters, witches, ghosts, fae, demons, reapers, sirens, and beings that refuse a label. It is the broadest of the supernatural romance shelves and, by a long way, the most…
6 min read
What is sci-fi romance? Sci-fi romance is a love story in which science fiction supplies the obstacle: distance measured in light years, a body that is not human, a mind you can suddenly feel from across a laboratory, four centuries of travel between departure and arrival. It is the only romance subgenre that can invent…
6 min read
What is Celtic romance? Celtic romance is a love story drawn from the myths of Ireland, Scotland and Wales: selkies who shed their skins for the land, the Tuatha Dé Danann and their fairy mounds, the Morrígan choosing a champion, a holy well that opens both ways. Most of it, on this site, is set…
7 min read
What is gothic romance? Gothic romance is the genre where the setting is a character. A house, a lighthouse, an abbey or a bell tower with a past; weather that will not lift; a heroine who arrives as an outsider; a man who is not straightforwardly good; and a secret the building itself seems complicit…
7 min read
What is historical romance? Historical romance is a love story set in the past, usually before living memory, in which the period supplies the obstacles: rank, reputation, religion, war, and the sheer difficulty of getting a letter to someone. The constraints are real, which means the longing has somewhere to build, and a stolen glance…
6 min read
What is vampire romance? Vampire romance is a love story between a mortal and an immortal who needs blood to live. The three things that make the vampire dangerous, the hunger, the centuries, and the fact that one of them will outlive the other, are also the three things that make the romance work. That…
7 min read
What is dark fantasy romance? Dark fantasy romance is a love story set in a fantasy world where magic has a price, power is dangerous, and the romance has to survive both. The “dark” is a measure of consequence, not of how explicit the story is. That consequence looks like bargains that bind, courts that…
8 min read
What is dark romance? Dark romance is a love story that reaches its happy ending through territory most romance avoids: obsession, revenge, power that is not shared equally, and characters whose choices you can understand without endorsing. Two people still end up together, and the ending is still earned. The road there is darker, the…
10 min read