Love in the Afternoon, and Evening: Essays and Conversations on Soap Operas

by Charlotte Druckman, Mayukh Sen

One of Town & Country's Best Books to Read This April

A drama-packed, format-busting tribute to the soap opera in all its messy, meaningful glory.

Part cultural analysis, part backstage tour, Love in the Afternoon, and Evening is a love letter to a misunderstood, often-dismissed American genre. Critics, friends, and soap obsessives Charlotte Druckman and Mayukh Sen invite readers into a conversation that ranges from topics both serious (race, reproductive rights, queerness) and fun (fashion! long-lost daughters! evil twins!). Like any great soap, they structure their essays for surprise and emotional payoff, including interviews with divas Susan Lucci (All My Children) and Erika Slezak (One Life to Live), an exploration of the greatest soap satire ever made, deeper cuts like a Who’s Who of the best-of-the-best actors on Falcon Crest, and much more. Together, these thoughtful essays get to the bottom of what makes a soap, tracing a throughline to reality TV and the shows that continue to hook us day and night with drama and emotion. Love in the Afternoon, and Evening will make you want to bust out your shoulder pads and binge your favorite show all over again.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Audiobook, Cultural

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 12, 2026

Reviews

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

My cousin's grandma introduced me to Days of Our Lives when I was in 4th or 5th grade and life was never the same again. Technically I wasn't allowed to watch soaps but after that, I snuck in episodes whenever I was home from school and my parents were out. I will never forget Marlena being possessed by the devil. Iconic! In college I started watching All My Children and General Hospital with friends. It's been over a decade since I last watched a soap but I'm sure I could catch right up were I to turn on an episode now. That is the beauty of soaps! And that's why I had to pick up this wonderful essay collection.

I learned so much about soap opera history. There's a great exploration of prime time vs. daytime soaps, from what topics they tackled and when to the way sponsors control what they can deal with in the first place. If ratings drive sponsorship and drama drives ratings, it's going to naturally impact the kind of storytelling the writers can do, which explains not only the trauma porn but things like rapist redemption arcs. While initially well-intentioned, the constant trauma characters experience winds up desensitizing us instead of making a difference and raising awareness

I haven't stopped turning these essays over in my mind. The authors manage to cover a lot of ground. That said, they don't really address disability, only mental illness. The essays touching on racism and homophobia were great but I wanted much more along those lines, particularly since there wasn't any acknowledgment of the trans community. Perhaps they could have skipped ranking the top ten characters from Falcon Crest for that? Or else done a top ten soap characters overall. Maybe if I'd watched FC, I would have appreciated it more but it felt out of place.

Unsurprisingly, this gave me a lot to think about in terms of the romance genre, including these two passages:
"The uncontested assumption among scholars and cultural critics is that soap operas are and have always been feminist simply because the original radio models from which the televised productions were conceived by women, to tell women's stories. Seated sidecar to this universally accepted opinion is the notion that soaps are progressive... The truth is that soap operas are intrinsically incapable of being feminist of progressive."
-Episode 2: Politics per Usual, p. 33

"It's worse to ignore that actuality and instead deem something 'breakthrough' or 'feminist' for being centered on women's lives when it in facts reasserts our disempowerment and inequality." -p. 43


Content notes: rape, rapist redemption arcs, gang rape, rape culture, child sexual abuse, incest, violence against women (partner violence, abduction, explosions, etc.), substance abuse, suicide, suicide attempts, dissociative identity disorder, bipolar disorder, nervous breakdown, psychiatric hospitalization, sex work, infidelity, serial killer, physical assault, poison, racism, yellowface, interracial relationships, passing, sexism, misogyny, gender norms, homophobia, illness-related weight loss, pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, past stillbirth, adoption, abortion, cancer, AIDS, HIV, AIDS/HIV stigma, organ transplants, stroke, aneurysm, coma, atherosclerosis, Hodgkin's disease, disability, ableism, COVID-19, parental abandonment, death of loved ones (including heart attack, accidents, murder), bullying, alcohol, cigarettes, gendered pejoratives, ableist language

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your girl was raised on a steady summertime/sick day diet of Days of Our Lives (All My Children when I was at my great-grandma's house), Another World, and Santa Barbara. Saint Lucci watches over and keeps me. Hope Williams Brady is my high priestess, Gina Capwell my fallen angel. The authors GET me.

All that aside, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, and I knew I would enjoy it heaps. 5/5, would clone my sister's baby before attempting to sell it on the black market (I'm looking at you, Sami Brady ❤️).

[Kelly Hager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely fun but as someone who grew up with the CBS soaps, I wish they’d been represented better. (This is addressed in the book but only towards the end.)

Still, this is definitely worth reading for fans of the genre and to prove it? I tore through this book even though, as someone who grew up with Guiding Light and, to a lesser extent, As the World Turns, I either had no idea or a very, very limited discussion of the people discussed.

I may be about to do some Youtube deep dives. (Recs welcomed)

[Travis Gain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! I’ve never been a soap person but give me a book about television history and production and I’m good. It’s also good to be able to look at the impact of soaps through a lens of them not being maligned

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a soap obsessed teen this book was a good walk down memory lane while also providing more background to the birth and development of soaps.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlotte Druckman and Mayukh Sen make it clear at the beginning of "Love in the Afternoon, and Evening" that their book is more an essay of opinions than a comprehensive overview of soaps and their history. So, the near total absence of CBS daytime soaps, for example, is because they watched the soaps on ABC and NBC. We all have our favorites so "One Life to Live", "All My Children" and "General Hospital" receive plenty of thoughtful criticism while "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful" receive none.

Their sole essay on "Days of Our Lives" is by Druckman, and it concerns the character of Jack Devereaux. Soaps have notoriously used rape in plenty of love stories, so sadly Jack is more of another example than an outlier. Jack eventually becomes a hero, the bumbling, yet loving husband of Jennifer, the granddaughter of tentpole couple Alice and Tom Horton. But as Druckman pointedly writes at the end of her essay, she "will always know" the truth about Jack.

Druckman mysteriously doesn't focus an essay on the show's eternal heroine Marlena played by Deidre Hall. She does make clear in an aside that she didn't like the possession because she believed it crossed genres in disqualifying ways. Yet, like it or not, the possession generated a lot of new viewers for Days which soaps are always looking for. It may be clear that other shows took the wrong lessons from the possession story and incorporated horror elements without getting that the possession was at its heart a love story. As the head writer James Reilly said at the time, "John Black would go to hell and back for Marlena Evans," and his pure, undying love for her would save her. While I believe the religious iconography is a tad ridiculous, soaps are built on bigger than life loves, and John and Marlena are arguably the greatest couple in the history of soapdom. And Hall is the only competition to Susan Lucci as the biggest star in the history of soaps.

"Love in the Afternoon, and Evening" is a fun read for all its gaps. Of course, the authors would probably respond to fill in those gaps, write your own damn book.

[Kate K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 out of 5 ⭐️

I really enjoyed the history, deep dives, rabbit holes, back stories, and format of this nonfiction about soap operas. What qualifies as a soap opera? There is no official definition but the history surrounding how soap operas came to be is really interesting. Definitely recommend if you enjoy soap operas or know facts about media history and pop culture.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always willing to scoot my chair closer when I find an author (or two) passionate about a subject I know nothing about. (And I really didn't know anything about American soap operas starting this book; I'm a Korean drama girl myself.)
This was fun. I think a heavy dose of nostalgia would have made it a lot more fun. Or any nostalgia, period. Or maybe just some name recognition?
While the authors do explain plot threads and actor portrayals, they do so with the breezy confidence that you are following along at home.
Like many nostalgia-bated collections I've read recently, these essays spend a good amount of time critiquing as much as praising the genre. Druckman and Sen dive into the way soap operas poorly handled issues related to race, abortion, and violence against women. But in fairness, they weigh it against their love of the strong personalities, fabulous fashions, and emotional storylines that also emerged.
Overall, this was a fun overview of the history of soaps, with a chapter at the end examining how the genre has continued to grow and evolve over time. If you watched Dallas, One Life to Live, or General Hospital, you will probably enjoy this collection. If like me those names mean basically nothing...you can probably skip.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-3.75 ⭐️ Shout out to Fabled bookshop for putting this on my radar! Ended up borrowing from the library. My grandma and my mom both watched soaps while I was growing up. Even my dad watched the primetime soaps. Fun little bit of nostalgia reading. This unpacks the good and the bad associated with soap operas. It also asks the question what is a soap opera? and examines the influence of soap operas on other types of TV shows. They have influenced a lot of it including reality tv. If you think you have never watched on, think again. Many TV shows that we don't typically classify as the classics: Days of Our LIves, Young and the Restless, General Hospital, etc have some of the elements.
Gossip Girl, Buffy, Melrose Place (both versions) could be looked at as part of the genre. This really did bring back some fond memories of childhood and college.

[Charlee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this! I’m not read into the soap opera world but found the book’s format intriguing enough to give it a read. The collection is a playful way to share background on what goes into making and keeping soap operas relevant while adding their own colorful commentary. I laughed out loud at times. I can’t stop thinking about the arguments for how many TV shows are influenced by or created with the soaps formula, especially Gossip Girl. I immediately started rewatching the show and can’t unsee its soapiness, like the viewer is never satisfied.

[Bonnie Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took my time on this one. It is a study across the board of the tropes of soaps. It gives some history and many familiar characteristics of the talkies, the daytime, and the nighttime serials with specific examples. I would have gotten more out of it had it used more of the NBC soap details. But I found it interesting and at times concerning, especially the chapter highlighting the overlapping theme of domestic violence against women.

[Carly Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short collection of essays on soap operas from their start on radio to today's streaming/tv formats. This is not a comprehensive look but the authors write about various themes and shows that meant the most to them. The focus is primarily on ABC and NBC shows, and 1980s prime time soaps. It was fun remembering some of the shows that I used to watch.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. We were an ABC family. My grandmother was a devout AMC fan. My mom was OLTL and GH. I was born at 3:36 pm and GH was 30 minutes then, so we joked that I gave her just enough time to finish General Hospital. This was an interesting look and had a lot of nostalgia for me. I was so glad the Robin and Stone storyline was covered because that one still sticks out for me.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

So fun! (Marlena was possessed again during Covid?!)

[Georgette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. Best part was the recipe for the Sonny Corinthos Tomato Sauce. True story.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little disappointed

[Rich Gresham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Different from what I usually read, but it was a really good book

[Katta · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Fun and interesting dive into the world of soaps. Critical yet loving, nostalgic yet clear eyed