Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction

Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction (2020) explores romance novels from a theological perspective and suggests a new definition of the romance novel to complement other definitions which focus on structural elements: "modern popular romances are novels whose authors have assumed pastoral roles, offering hope to their readers through works which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love." The first section of the book is a general overview of how romance authors offer hope and pastoral care to their readers through works which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love. The second section explores some aspects of faith, hope, love and pastoral care in more detail: words and power; the different "faith" traditions in the precursors to the modern romance; what it means to hope for a "prince" as saviour; damnation as the absence of love, and metaphorical devils and hells; false or damaging forms of love and how to discern them. This section is primarily composed of chapters which focus on specific texts: Piper Huguley's A Precious Ruby (2015); Rose Lerner's In for a Penny (2010); Alyssa Cole's A Princess in Theory (2018); Nora Roberts' Three Sisters trilogy (2001-2002)