http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/10/jojo_moyes_after_you_sequel_to_me_before_you_reviewed.html

Romance novels have happy endings. The hero and heroine kiss and/or marry and/or ride into the sunset. They live happily ever after, or in the genre shorthand, HEA. “The romance novel declares, via the happy ending, that love is the most important thing,” Maya Rodale writes in her study of the genre, Dangerous Books for Girls. And as Rodale explains, it also declares, for many mainstream critics, that the genre is not serious. Happiness is a frivolous dream; reality is harsh and serious, like The Road. As a skeptical Harper’s article put it, “Bad Romance: One genre and a billion happy endings.”