The title of this slim volume suggests an intriguing thesis: romance fiction, often derided as escapist, engages directly with political realities, and its “happily-ever-after” endings fulfil not only reader expectations but American democratic principles. The book itself, however, does not realize its title's promise.

Instead, it advances an uncertain argument, unevenly supported by references to exemplary romance novels, historical sources, and literary criticism. In the Introduction, Laura Vivanco asserts, “This book explores what one form of US popular culture, its romance fiction, reveals about Americans’ political ‘likes and dislikes’” (14). This definition is exceedingly broad, allowing Vivanco to consider not only texts making “explicitly American political statements” (15), but presumably also all romance fiction, for “the love lives of the two or more protagonists in a romance will invariably involve ‘relations of conflict and power’” (14). While each of the chapters announces an American political concern as its focus – for example, the West, community, happiness – the analysis often drifts. Chapter 2, for instance, purports to engage with the concept of the American work ethic but instead considers the place of the disabled. Chapter 5 tantalizes readers with the immigration issue but detours into a discussion of “roots tourism” in Africa and Scotland.

The book could have been enhanced by more sustained attention to romance fiction's cultural politics. Vivanco's argument is most compelling in analyses of romances that challenge conservative politics regarding gender, disability, sexuality, and minorities, pointing out that biased positions rely on myths. She effectively demonstrates that Ruth Jean Dale's Legend! (1993) dismantles the myth of the West, that Beverly Jenkins's Belle (2002) invokes abolitionist history at a time of charged racial politics, and that Karin Kallmaker's In Every Port (1989), “set in 1978 against a backdrop of anti-gay activism” (106), affirms contemporary homosexual relationships. These readings showcase the liberal politics of the genre. The author's claims that romance novels reflect US “diversity” and “reveal deep political divisions in American society” (109) might have been a more compelling thesis for the book as a whole.

While Vivanco does acknowledge that romance fiction, as a commercial product, is itself subject to the politics of the market, this dimension receives scant attention. She notes, for instance, that Harlequin's guidelines once stated that the novels published under their imprint should demonstrate “a sense of adventure, optimism and a lively spirit – they're all the best of what it means to be American!” (21) and that the Romance Writers of America advised avoiding polarizing issues (125). While admitting that “mainstream popular romance fiction” tailors itself to appeal to a largely white, heterosexual audience, Vivanco identifies African American, “inspirational” and lesbian romance as “sub-genres,” without realizing that such a distinction perpetuates division. Her claim that romance fiction “welcomes her much maligned masses of readers and responds to the hopes and fears of the uprooted” (109) expresses an aspirational desire at odds with the realities of the market.

Such a claim requires evidence – not simply sales statistics, but reader testimony. Given that romance readers’ comments are plentiful and easily available on fan sites, online bookseller review forums, Internet bookclubs, and social networks, such an omission is surprising, more so in light of academic studies of reader response to popular fiction, and especially given that Vivanco incorporates correspondence with authors, including their blog posts, alongside “traditional” academic sources.

The book would have benefited as well from far more nuanced attention to the complexities of authorial intent and reader reception. For instance, can the political views of a character be ascribed to its author? Vivanco argues against authorial intention in chapter 1 but elsewhere blames author Suzanne Brockmann for insufficiently attending to evidence of US interference in Central American politics, citing views expressed by her Navy SEAL character. Vivanco defends her freedom of interpretation as a critic, without acknowledging the crucial work of post-structuralist critics from Roland Barthes to Jacques Derrida who complicated naive assertions of authorial intent. A book making the claim that fiction is inevitably political should surely invoke Fredric Jameson's The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981). Discussions of the romance genre in relation to the western would have benefited as well from attention to the long history of the medieval romance, as Stephanie Harzewski has done in her work on chick lit novels, which are similarly popular texts written by and for women.Footnote ¹

The book incorporates a wide array of romance texts – “classic” and contemporary – and offers some valuable insights into their engagement with cultural politics, but not a sustained, compelling argument about the genre as political fiction.