"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

2016 Foreword Indies Finalist, Popular Culture category

Silver Medal, Popular Culture, 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards

About the Author

Catherine M. Roach is Professor of Gender and Culture Studies in New College at the University of Alabama and author of Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture. She publishes romance fiction as Catherine LaRoche.

Reviews

"Roach's Happily Ever After is without a doubt a methodological groundbreaker, and its effects will hopefully resonate throughout popular culture studies, fandom studies, and future approaches to other genres of popular fiction."

* The Journal of Popular Culture *

Roach's attempt to do emotional justice to the genre should satisfy academics and fans alike.

-- Publishers Weekly



Book Information
ISBN 9780253032485
Author Catherine M. Roach
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press