The Nanny

The Nanny falls into the genre of contemporary romance. Although The Nanny deals with serious subjects, such as complicated family dynamics, self-doubt, and child neglect, it is underpinned by lighthearted and comedic moments. Contemporary romances are categorized by their happy endings and familiar plotlines but often focus on the main characters’ personal growth and the obstacles they must overcome to achieve their happy ending. As in The Nanny, most contemporary romance heroines and heroes are flawed; these narratives often show protagonists helping each other overcome barriers to not only becoming romantically involved but also being better, happier people.

Just as contemporary romance novels rely on familiar narrative structures, they also often feature tropes, archetypes, and common situations, such as friends-to-lovers relationships, marriage-of-convenience plotlines, and small-town settings. The Nanny uses many conventions typical of contemporary romance novels, including the forced proximity trope, in which two people who are trying to avoid their attraction to one another are continually forced to be around each other. Forbidden love is another common romance convention used in The Nanny; the clandestine nature of their relationship forces Cassie and Aiden to confront the fears and priorities that prevent them from becoming romantically involved and hinder them personally. Single-parent archetypes are also not uncommon in contemporary romance novels and can be found in works such as Rachel Lynn Solomon’s Weather Girl and Elsie Silver’s Heartless. Lana Ferguson uses Aiden’s role as a single parent to create conflict through family dynamics as well as to show how Cassie fits in with his life once she bonds with his daughter, Sophie. Additionally, The Nanny can be considered a “second chance” romance as Cassie and Aiden have technically had a relationship before the action of the novel. This category of romance, which includes novels from Jane Austen’s Persuasion to Emily Henry’s Happy Place, focuses on the changing dynamics of a relationship as characters must consider their past together along with their future.

The Nanny and some of Ferguson’s other novels also fall into the popular subgenre of the “workplace romance.” Workplace romances are so-called due to the characters having some form of professional relationship in addition to their romantic one. Though workplace romances vary widely in their plots, settings, and time periods, books in this subgenre are defined by the tension between characters’ romantic interests and their professional duties. In novels like Elena Armas’s The Spanish Love Deception, Ali Hazelwood’s Love, Theoretically, and Rachel Lynn Solomon’s The Ex Talk, characters’ attraction to one another often causes issues in their workplace or leads coworkers to look down on one member of the couple (in heterosexual relationships, often the woman). Novels in this genre also typically use the forced proximity trope popular in the broader romance genre. In novels like Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard and Ana Huang’s Twisted Games, characters with professional relationships serendipitously end up living together, as in The Nanny. As a whole, the subgenre of workplace romance heightens the stakes of romantic conflict, as characters in these novels have more at stake than their hearts alone.