True Love and Real Terror: Romance and Horror in Megan Hart’s The Darkest Embrace and Reawakened Passions

One of the most well-known conventions of romance novels is the happy ending. The couple always ends up together and in love, having survived physical or psychological barriers. In horror fiction, a happy ending is not only not guaranteed, but much of the genre is based around characters often meeting particularly unhappy ends. I will be looking at two romance novellas by Megan Hart, published under Harlequin’s Nocturne Cravings title, an e-book series of short, erotic paranormal romances. The Darkest Embrace and Reawakened Passions are romances that take place alongside a horror plot. Using Pamela Regis’s outline of essential elements of the romance, I will chart how both novellas fit the formula of a romance novel in a relatively short amount of pages. I will also make comparisons between Hart’s work and other short works of contemporary horror fiction produced online. This paper will show that the romance genre can be combined with the horror genre in a way that satisfies the expectations and conventions of both romance and horror, all in a short fiction format for a online audience.