This is about bonkbusters which, as the article demonstrates, are not romance novels. However, it is precisely because it demonstrates the differences between romance and the bonkbuster that I've included it here.
Here's the abstract:
The bonkbuster—an explosively popular genre of women’s writing in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s—had an interesting resurgence in 2023. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claims to be a fan of bonkbuster author Jilly Cooper, whose novel Rivals (1988) is being adapted for television. But what is a bonkbuster? And how is it different from the genre with which it is most associated: the romance novel? In this article, the first to analyze the bonkbuster in detail, we focus on two concerns common to both forms—sex and relationships—and explore how bonkbusters revel in their own “badness.” We argue that the pleasures of a bonkbuster are rooted in their sensationalism and their ironic potential.
And this is from the conclusion:
The romance novel promises certainty. In a romance novel, no matter what trials the protagonists go through, everything will turn out all right in the end. Obstacles will be overcome. The disappointments of previous relationships will be recuperated. The sex will be good (and will be so forever). “I love you” will never turn into “I don’t love you anymore.” The relationship will be characterized by an unshakeable commitment and a deep and a continued intimacy—an intimacy of the body and, importantly, of the self (Jamieson 1). The romance novel has also endured, with its popularity continuing and amplifying into the twenty-first century—romance sales in the UK are at their highest since 2012 (“Sales of Romance Novels”) and in the US, romance novels sales increased 52% between June 2022 and May 2023 (Bauer). This is not the case, however, for the bonkbuster, a much more uncertain genre, both in terms of structure and narrative promise, that has passed its commercial peak. As the previous two sections have shown, the sex in bonkbusters is often bad. There is the vague hope it might get better, if you meet the right person—but even if you do, there is no guarantee they will stay the right person. Falling out of love is easy (if your husband was ever really telling the truth when he said “I love you” anyway). Commitment is unlikely and intimacy almost unheard of. The bonkbuster is in many ways, as Gelder notes of Collins’ books, actively antiromantic (129). The bonkbuster has not endured—we fell out of love with it, like its characters do with each other in the text.
This is about bonkbusters which, as the article demonstrates, are not romance novels. However, it is precisely because it demonstrates the differences between romance and the bonkbuster that I've included it here.
Here's the abstract:
And this is from the conclusion: