Despite my assertions that Jane Austen did not set out to write Romance, she nonetheless has had a profound impact on the genre. If focused on the romantic elements instead of themes of identity, her books can be summarized as follows:
Sense and Sensibility: Heartbroken, can she love again? Can their attraction overcome his dark secret?
Pride and Prejudice: Boy meets girl, girl hates boy, boy loves girl. Alpha male, sassy heroine. Imbalance of power. Sexual tension. And if you want to add Jane and Bingley: Can she trust him and can he take what he wants? (See my post about how Jane is an unsung hero because I believe this is a very popular theme in contemporary romances even if it gets little limelight in Pride and Prejudice.)
Mansfield Park: Boy can’t see the good woman right before him and nearly falls for a wanton temptress. Unforeseen events finally unite them. The heroine has overcome a traumatic background. Girl next door.
Emma: They’ve been friends forever, can it be more? Boy next door.
Persuasion: The one that got away/never got over a bad break up and meet again/family responsibility gets in the way of true love/family demands someone rich/has fallen on hard times.
Northanger Abbey- She’s young, innocent and naive. He wasn’t looking for love but ends up as her knight in shining armor. When she rescues herself, can they have a future? Can be insta-love and sugary.
Now, let’s look at current bestsellers in the Romance genre on Amazon. (Note: I have not read these books and am not recommending them, I am only analyzing their blurbs.)
A luminous debut with unexpected twists, Everything We Keep explores the devastation of loss, the euphoria of finding love again, and the pulse-racing repercussions of discovering the truth about the ones we hold dear and the lengths they will go to protect us.
Sous chef Aimee Tierney has the perfect recipe for the perfect life: marry her childhood sweetheart, raise a family, and buy out her parents’ restaurant. But when her fiancé, James Donato, vanishes in a boating accident, her well-baked future is swept out to sea. Instead of walking down the aisle on their wedding day, Aimee is at James’s funeral—a funeral that leaves her more unsettled than at peace.
As Aimee struggles to reconstruct her life, she delves deeper into James’s disappearance. What she uncovers is an ocean of secrets that make her question everything about the life they built together. And just below the surface is a truth that may set Aimee free…or shatter her forever.
Translation: Sense and Sensibility.
Alena is a princess, and with that comes responsibility. Like marrying the giant caveman King Roman, who looks more like a warrior than a ruler. Everything about him is intense. Especially the way he looks at her. But she’s been promised to him, and there’s no way out.
Roman took one look and made up his mind. Princess Alena will be his and no one will stop him from taking her. Everything about her belongs to him now, and waiting one week for a wedding isn’t going to happen.
This beast of a man might just claim his princess before she has a chance to say “I do.”
Translation: Jane and Bingley from Pride and Prejudice.
Love. Guilt. Heartbreak. The Secret Wife, is about the romance between cavalry officer Dmitri Malama and Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Russia’s last tsar, who first met in 1914. It’s also about a young woman in 2016 deciding whether to forgive her husband after an infidelity.
Translation: Jane and Bingley from Pride and Prejudice.
Eli Strong got out of the military and all he wanted to do was get better. He never expected that the officer he was living with would have a daughter who tested his honor.
Maggie Drummond has been moved around more times than she can count, and starting at a new high school sucks. But when a wounded Marine comes to live with her and her dad, suddenly Maggie figures out what home is.
She’s forbidden fruit, and he’s trying to not to taste… But desire can only be denied for so long. Circumstances keep pulling them back together, and something truly unforeseen happens. Overnight, Eli becomes a guardian and Maggie his ward.
Will Eli keep his hands off Maggie? Will Maggie like it if he doesn’t? Will the two of them break the law because it feels so good? Only one way to find out!
Translation: Northanger Abbey.
Flirting With The Law is a quick and filthy book involving two utterly obsessed alpha heroes, one sassy heroine, and enough insta-love, steam, and sugary-sweetness to make your Kindles melt.
Translation: Pride and Prejudice.
Mallory Sims is late for her first day of work.
After spilling her tea, she discovers she has no gas in her car. Add that her arm keeps sticking to her dress from syrup left on the console of her car, flustered feels like an understatement.
Then she sees her new boss.
Graham Landry is the epitome of NSFW in his custom-fit suit, black-rimmed glasses, and a look so stern her libido doesn’t stand a chance. Being flustered is just the start of her problems.
Her punctuality is only the start of his. With a pink slip in hand, he’s been waiting on his new secretary to show up only to let her go. Then she rushes in with her doe eyes and rambling excuses, smelling like bacon and lavender. The termination paper falls to the side as she falls in his arms.
This is a disaster in the making. Not because of his pinpoint exactness or her free spirit, but because when they’re together, the sparks that fly threaten to burn the whole place down.
Translation: Pride and Prejudice.
My grandfather left me his business with one insane condition:
I need a wife and two kids. Too bad I’m a divorced single dad.
Cue my ex-wife’s best friend moving in next door.
And then mix in a few bad decisions.
What do you get? A complicated, sexy mess.SANDRA
The list of reasons I should stay away from my neighbor is about as long as his… wrench. He’s a dirty mechanic, he’s a single dad, and he can’t seem to keep his shirt on for more than five minutes.
Did I mention his ex wife is my best friend? Yeah. Reid Riggins is absolutely, one hundred percent, the last person in the world I should get involved with. Even if he is heart-stoppingly gorgeous with strong, powerful hands that could rip my clothes off with ease.
Not that I’ve imagined that, of course.
The point is I don’t want anything to do with him. He can stay in his stupid garage with his stupidly cute son and hit things with wrenches all day. He can keep on wearing those blue jeans that fit him just right for all I care.
Except I may have told a white lie to my eccentric, rich parents. I may have told them I’m engaged to a wealthy businessman, and now they want to meet my fake fiance. Unfortunately, Reid might be the only guy who’s willing to play along.
Translation: Emma mixed with Pride and Prejudice with a dash of Persuasion or Northanger Abbey for the familial obligations.
Sometimes your life is split by a single decision.
I’ve spent every day of the last seven years regretting mine: he left, and I didn’t follow. A thousand letters went unanswered, my words like petals in the wind, spinning away into nothing, taking me with them.
But now he’s back.
I barely recognize the man he’s become, but I can still see a glimmer of the boy who asked me to be his forever, the boy I walked away from when I was young and afraid.
Maybe if he’d come home under better circumstances, he could speak to me without anger in his voice. Maybe if I’d said yes all those years ago, he’d look at me without the weight of rejection in his eyes. Maybe if things were different, we would have had a chance.
One regretted decision sent him away. One painful journey brought him back to me. I only wish I could keep him.
*A contemporary romance inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion*
Translation: Ok, so she says it’s Persuasion right there, but I was thinking it by the second line.
Jess O’Brien has overcome a lot—the challenges of attention deficit disorder, the near bankruptcy of her beloved Inn at Eagle Point and her self-perception as a screwup in a family of overachievers. Now she’s ready to share the future with a man. Her friends persuade her to join a dating service—but she gets no takers! Which is fine with her childhood friend, psychologist Will Lincoln, who’s already chosen the perfect man for Jess: himself.
Will has loved Jess practically forever. He knows her faults and her strengths. But for all Will’s sincerity and charm, Jess fears he views her as some psychological case study. With her family and the town of Chesapeake Shores behind him, Will finally makes his case. But is it enough to convince Jess to take the risk of a lifetime.
Translation: Emma with a bit of Mansfield Park.
I’d never fallen for a student—but she was different.
Headstrong and unrelenting, she begged to be claimed. She just didn’t know it yet.
I was going to break her, and make her mine.
-REGAN
Translation: Pride and Prejudice, maybe some Northanger Abbey
Out of these top 10 books with prominent Austen influence, Pride and Prejudice is the definite strong suit. Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship of sexual tension, power/money imbalance, love/hate is a classic. However, a variation on Jane and Bingley’s relationship is also popular. A common complaint about Bingley is that he’s not dominant enough, not an “alpha male” and allows himself to be talked out of what he wants by family and friends. In twenty-first century Romances, we want a man who will take what he wants! Although it takes Austen’s Bingley longer, I believe that is appropriate for the era.
I was surprised to see Mansfield Park make the list at all, but in many ways it is very similar to Emma and the boy next door trope is probably the second most common Romance trope. Matching it with a Pride and Prejudice hate to love theme is common as well. Adding a dash of Persuasion or Northanger Abbey with family obligations is innovative. I think I’ll try this one to see how the plot holds together with that many elements or if the wheels come of the bus.
It’s no surprise to see books with Persuasion themes on here. Second Chances is a category of its own in Romance, I think. For first time relationships Romance seems to fall into hate/love, boy/girl next door, insta-love, love triangles, or trust issues. Second Chances can either be with the same partner after a separation that seems insurmountable or with learning to love again, although that one heavily leans on the trust issues sub-category.
On Amazon you may search by Romantic hero, themes, or sub-genre. As classic as Austen is, I think we could find her fingerprints on something as obscure as Second Chances Paranormal Firefighter. Let’s see…
A curvy pilot wary of flighty men + a firefighter pegasus shifter determined to win her heart + a high speed air race with even higher stakes = one explosive romance!
Curvy pilot Connie West hates taking risks. But when her reckless father stakes her beloved airplane in a bet with a ruthless loan shark, Connie is forced to enter the Rydon Cup, a dangerous high-speed air race. To win the bet, she needs a co-pilot she can trust completely. Someone cautious and sensible. Someone completely unlike the gorgeous, wild Chase…
Pegasus shifter and firefighter Chase Tiernach lives life at top speed, but not even his close friends in his elite, all-shifter fire crew can guess that his ready grin conceals a broken heart. Three years ago, he met his fated mate Connie… and lost her again, thanks to his reputation for recklessness.
When Chase unexpectedly rescues Connie from a fire, he’s determined that this time, he’ll win her trust. All he has to do is fight off a gang of criminal shark shifters, defend Connie from a mysterious assassin, convince her to marry him so his clan will let him tell her he shifts into a flying horse, and win a perilous air race in a vintage warplane! What could possibly go wrong?
With enemies who’ll stop at nothing to prevent her from winning the bet, Connie is in danger of losing her plane, her life — and, most frighteningly of all, her heart. Can Chase persuade her to take a chance on him, or will their love crash and burn… again?
Firefighter Pegasus is a sizzling hot, standalone BBW pegasus shifter romance. No cliffhangers!
Translation: Persuasion
All more proof that Jane is here to stay! I hope you’ve enjoyed this segment. Next month, I’ll be talking about Spring in Austen’s works. Join me at Austen Authors for the first post, Thursday, March 2nd!
Rose Fairbanks 