Romance novel
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![Harlequin novels](/Images/godic/202501/01/Collection_Nocturne_de_Harlequin5216.jpg")
![Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower](/Images/godic/202501/01/TheFlameAndTheFlower5216.jpg")
![A Knight in Shining Armor, the first book to be published by a romance author transitioning from mass-market originals to hardback. The cover uses the new landscape cover style.](/Images/godic/202501/01/AKnightinShiningArmor5216.jpg")
The romance novel or romantic novel discussed in this article is the mass-market literary genre. Novels of this type of genre fiction place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." There are many subgenres of the romance novel including fantasy, historical, science fiction and paranormal fiction. There is a literary fiction form of romance, which Walter Scott defined as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents".