This research paper analyzes whether consent is found more frequently in dark romance or contemporary romance books by examining the language used, who speaks the phrases, and the contexts in which they are spoken. This paper explores the dominant sexual script in contemporary romance books and its influence on representations of consent, contrasting this with the absence of such a script in dark romance, which permits more varied incorporations of consent. This analysis was done through content analysis-- word frequency, consent analysis, and thematic coding. Word frequency provided evidence of consent use in the books, while consent analysis and thematic coding provided additional context to the situations these phrases appeared in. The research found that dark romance, a subgenre that does not follow the dominant sexual script, had more instances of verbal consent appearing, especially if the phrases were more vulgar. Publishers and authors follow the dominant—cultural—sexual script, which has allowed for consent to appear less frequently and in more vanilla ways, which does not reflect people wanting to read about consent in romance books.
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