Books like romance

A romance novel or romantic novel is a type of novel and genre fiction which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."

There are many subgenres of the romance novel, including fantasy, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Romance novels are read primarily by women.

The term romance is also applied to a type of novel defined by Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents."

A thriving genre of works conventionally referred to as "romance novels" existed in ancient Greece. Other precursors can be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and the novels of Jane Austen. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, the British author of historical romance set around the time Austen lived, as well as detective fiction. Heyer's first romance novel, The Black Moth (1921), was set in 1751.