Sweet Savage Love
Rosemary Rogers · 1974
The second great founding text of modern romance (alongside Woodiwiss). Ginny Brandon and Steve Morgan's tumultuous relationship across the American West and Mexico. Rogers invented the long-form epic romance and the hero who is both dangerous and eventually redeemable; the template for a thousand subsequent novels.
The case against
Steve Morgan rapes Ginny repeatedly across seven hundred pages, and the novel calls it passion; the template Rogers founded required heroines to be broken into love. Plot runs on kidnap, coincidence, and mistaken identity recycled every hundred pages. Historically important the way asbestos is historically important: everywhere in its era, handled now with gloves.
Romance · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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