Love Never Dies

Romance in Horror Movies

By: Emma Cole

A romance editor looks for love where you’d least expect it—and discovers what our favorite horror films can tell us about sex, society, and ourselves

“A bloody love letter to those horrors that have drenched the silver screen. The Happily Ever After here . . . is a comprehensive list of grisly films that pluck on our heartstrings . . . only to rip the whole organ out and hold it up to the movie projector’s light.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside

If Sinners and the 1999 cult classic The Mummy taught Emma Cole anything in the year she spent bingeing scary movies, it’s that we love to swoon, sweat, and scream. We seem to crave the uncanny and the transgressive. Emma would know: Her day job as a Harlequin book editor revolves around steamy stories that ruffle feathers and rip bodices. In Love Never Dies, she shows how our favorite horror films flirt with familiar tropes and themes to give us romantic subplots that are just as spine-tingling.

Emma takes readers behind the scenes of films like Tod Browning’s Dracula and Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes, exploring how and why movies blur the lines of horror and romance. The books dives into

• The “Dark Moment” and how it signals an HEA (Happily Ever After)
• Why not having a lover (spoiler alert) saved Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode in Halloween
• Rosemary’s Baby, Interview with the Vampire, and Gothic horror’s comeback
• How romance, especially monster romance, is often a stand-in for uncomfortable truths

From vampires and monsters to slashers and psychological thrillers, Love Never Dies explores the enthralling nature of horror romance films that are full of heart. It’s just that sometimes, those hearts are on the outside.

Critic reviews

“Emma Cole has assembled a macabre catalogue of films for your next date night. Love Never Dies is a bloody love letter to those horrors that have drenched the silver screen over the decades. The Happily Ever After here for dear readers is a comprehensive list of grisly films that pluck on our heartstrings . . . only to rip the whole organ out and hold it up to the movie projector’s light.”
—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside