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Links between contemporary popular romance and novels of amatory fiction in the eighteenth century have received limited critical attention, but today’s authors of popular romance share significant topics and strategies with those early pioneers of the novel. Focusing on three novels by Jennifer Crusie and the amatory fiction of Delariver Manley, this paper explores the texts’ depictions of voyeuristic images and gossip. Both erotic display and gossip function by negotiating and eliding boundaries delineating public and private spaces; this territory represents a liminal space, one which exists in what Victor Turner describes as the “betwixt and between.” This liminality offers rich creative, transformative possibilities which Manley and Crusie capitalize upon to critique and re-define perceptions of sexuality and gossip. Extending this liminal territory to encompass the author and readers of the texts, Manley and Crusie ultimately encourage relationships with readers that blur boundaries and invite shared creation and possession of their novels.