A tale of love in a decent novel (8)
I believe the answer is:
anecdote
'a tale' is the definition.
(an anecdote is a funny story or tale)
'love in a decent novel' is the wordplay.
'love' becomes 'o' (love means zero in tennis).
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'novel' indicates an anagram (letters in a new or novel order).
'a'+'decent'='adecent'
'adecent' with letters rearranged gives 'anecdte'.
'o' placed into 'anecdte' is 'ANECDOTE'.
'of' is the link.
(Other definitions for anecdote that I've seen before include "Brief story" , "Short account of an incident" , "One acted over interesting story" , "Brief tale" , "Short accoung of an incident" .)