An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction.

Cordelia glared at me. 'I expect if someone strapped you to table an swung an axe over your naked quivering flesh like The Pit and the Pendulum, you'd be correcting his grammar'.

My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin.