Are We Having a Romance Renaissance?
Romance novels cause debate, and they always have. There are regular arguments about if they are the correct books to read, if women are developing unrealistic expectations through reading them, and how the books themselves come into existence. Despite, or maybe because of, ongoing debates, romance novels are unavoidable. Considering this, in addition to recent trends in book buying, we’re living through a major romance renaissance.
Romance Novels in the United States
When you look at data about bestselling genres in the United States, romance consistently commands a strong market share. The journalist Rosie Cima created a data visualization project to assess gender parity across several decades of The New York Times Best Seller List, and romance is a consistent force in the book industry. It is also one of the few genres where female writers outnumber male writers.
In 2023, romance novels experienced a boom in sales that experts attributed to both the popularity of the television show Bridgerton and the reading taste curated by book influencers on TikTok through the tag #booktok. In 2024, the romance genre still sold extremely well, garnering around 30 million print sales. And in 2025, the blockbuster novel Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros became the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years. And, no matter how you feel about her writing, Colleen Hoover’s romance novels are a huge force in romance as well. Currently, readers may be seeking escapism, which romance is only too happy to provide.
These sales numbers are just part of the story. The romance renaissance happening right now is a combination of fandom and market forces. Not only are fans loud and proud about what they love, publishers have been listening to them, writers get more attention, and romance bookstores provide a space for fans and readers to gather.
What Writers and Fans Are Feeling About Romance
I don’t have a TikTok account, but I know which books are popular on #BookTok because the concept has integrated itself throughout the bookish Internet and into brick-and-mortar bookstores. My local Barnes & Noble has a #BookTok table. Though the table usually includes the literary fiction that’s popular on the app (like My Year of Rest and Relaxation), most of the books are romance. Many of those romance novels mix genres as well, as is the case with romantasy and paranormal romance, or sports romance.
The cultural force of romance has always been there, but now it’s very out in the open. In an interview reflecting on her career, romance novelist Beverly Jenkins has seen romance become more diverse: “I think romance is, more than any other genre, reflecting how America looks…You’re going to see queer love, you’re going to see Black love, you’re going to get love about people who look like everyone else.” The diversity we get to see in romance speaks to what romance fans want to read.
The runaway success of the L.A.-based bookstore The Ripped Bodice has led to the opening of plenty more romance bookstores — you can find 43 in the United States in this directory. Claire Mazur, one of the founders of 831 Stories, sees fans and the bookstores working together: “Both the fandom and the romance-focused bookstores have encouraged readers to be loud and proud about their love of the genre and have helped spread an understanding — and an embrace — of what it means to be a romance fan.”
Romance Skepticism
The history of romance as a successful genre is inescapable from the history of people making fun of romance or declaring that it’s a lower form of culture. Even George Eliot dismissed a large number of her fellow women writers as writing “Silly novels by Lady Novelists.” The popularity of romance, especially smutty romance, has always caused a bit of a stir.
