And Trudy, you articulate that point much better than I could have. I knew that books with Fabio or not by Jane Austin could be considered romance, but my discomfort was preventing me from seeing clearly I think.
I guess my issue is that for a lot of these books, simply calling them a "romance" or "love story" seems to really oversimplify. But here's one of my favorite books, The Sun Also Rises, and as Wikipedia says, "On the surface the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him impotent—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley.
