Love Never Dies: Romance in Horror Movies
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
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.
Additional information
| Genre | Pop Culture |
|---|---|
| Age | Adult |
| Publisher | Independent |
| Imprint | Beacon Press |
| Language(s) | English |
| Format(s) | Hardcover |
| Author | Emma Cole |
| Release Date | 13 October 2026 |
| Release Month | October Releases |
About the Author
Emma Cole is an editor at Harlequin and a horror film enthusiast, having studied film and communications at the University of Windsor before completing the Book & Magazine Publishing program at Centennial College, and working at several publishers in the editorial department. She’s very interested in the intersection between romance and horror in film and literature. She has written about film and genre for Gamut Magazine, Night Tide, Film East, and Reactor, and volunteers as the Notes and Queries editor for the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. You can find her at various places on the internet as EditrixEmma.
