‘wI left Warrington at 5.15 this morning to get here,” Emma tells me, standing in a queue that stretches down Walton Street. It’s after 9am on a Saturday in Oxford, the students are still in bed and the tourists have yet to come into town, but this corner of Jericho Already buzzing.
There is no shortage of literary pilgrims to Oxford. Every year, visitors flock to the colleges and libraries that shaped writers including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Iris Murdoch. But this crowd is here for something different. Instead of queuing for the Bodleian, they’re swapping referrals for dragon riders and fairy kingdoms. Women’s Clutch Tote Bag Embellished With Quotes Like “Hot girls read dirty things”, and compare your favorite “morally grey” heroes.
The bright pink doors they’re waiting for are theirs bad girl booksThe UK’s first romantic bookshop. The subgenre, which blends fantasy and romance, has grown from a niche online obsession to one of publishing’s biggest commercial success stories. Sarah J. Maas, author of the famous A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series Over 75 million books sold worldwide, While Rebecca Yaros’s Onyx Storm recorded The biggest opening week for a hardback fiction title in the UK since Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman a decade ago.
“My husband thinks it’s just pornography,” says Emma. “But it’s about so much more than that.”
Readers are immersed in the vast fantasy world of “enemies-to-lovers” stories, where “fated partners” discover they were always destined for each other, and “shadow fathers” – dark, morally ambiguous male heroes with supernatural powers – inspire devoted online fans. The “spice level” of a novel (how much sex is in it) is also a major point of discussion.
“Last year I read about 100 romantic books, and this year I’ve already read 60,” says Izzy, 22, who has been waiting in line with her friend since 7.30am. “I hated reading when I was in school, but then I discovered romance, and realized there’s a whole world of books that I really enjoy. It’s an escape from reality.”
Traditionally, fantasy fiction fans have been dominated by male readers, but the rise of romance has largely been driven by young female audiences – the protagonists are often women and they center on women’s romantic relationships. In the line of 100 people outside Bad Girl Books, almost everyone is female: I saw a total of two men, waiting patiently with their girlfriends.
“Most women read romance, but I think there’s something for everyone,” says Jono, 31, who is attending the opening ceremony with his girlfriend, Roe. “I’ve started reading a few, and I’m enjoying them!”
The shop’s founder is 30-year-old Starlin Marot. “I didn’t really used to be a reader,” she tells me. “A friend recommended a romantic book she found on TikTok, and it completely changed everything. It became my whole personality.”
As her passion grew, she found there was no place offline to indulge in it. “I used to go to bookstores and the only things they would carry were mainstream titles I was already reading,” she says. “I also felt like there wasn’t a place I could go to meet other people who loved these books. I found that community online — on BookTalk, Instagram, and Reddit — but I wanted people to be able to come together in person to talk about books.”
Last year, she posted a TikTok introducing the idea of a dedicated romantic pop-up. Nearly 40,000 people watched the video, and more than 1,000 signed up within two days. He picked up the enthusiasm and hosted a series of pop-ups across the country, maxing out his credit cards to buy stocks. “It was incredibly hard work. I was working 12-hour days. But people would fly in from Ireland, Norway and Italy to come to pop-ups with empty suitcases to fill with books.”
The pop-up took off and within six months he had raised £30,000 to open a permanent shop. Inside, the shelves are divided into categories including “Monster Smut”, “Unhinged” and “LGBTQ+”. T-shirts and hats promoting “I Heart Fictional Men” and “Dibs on the Villain”; The tote bag reads: “I like my books like I like my margaritas – spicy”, and “My favorite color is ethically gray.” Women fill pink shopping baskets with lavishly illustrated editions of ACOTAR novels. Including bestselling titles as well as independently published novels and expanded special editions sourced directly from authors around the world.
“I wanted people to be able to discover books they’d never heard of before, not just the biggest marketing campaigns,” says Marot.
But despite all its commercial success, romance still has a stigma.
After newsletter promotion
Petra, 26, who is first in the queue, says people often wrongly dismiss the genre as “just fairy nonsense”. “People think it’s trashy, but it’s not,” she says. “There are good stories in there, there are life lessons in them. It’s relevant.”
Another customer in the queue, Peach, thinks there is an element of sexism involved. “Because it’s mainly women who enjoy it, it’s not taken very seriously, or seen as a real style,” she says. “But it’s popular for a reason.”
Marot believes that the focus on the genre’s obvious visuals obscures what attracts readers to it in the first place. “People reduce it to spice, but most books have a few explicit chapters in a 500-page novel,” she says. “It’s a safe space to explore relationships and female happiness from a woman’s perspective – I think that’s really empowering.”
Rebecca Finch, Darley Anderson’s literary agent, argues that the genre has long been underappreciated because it lies at the intersection of two forms of fiction that have historically struggled for critical respect: romance and commercial fantasy. She says, “Readers who previously hid their enthusiasm now have a platform to talk about the characters, swap recommendations, and celebrate these books without the demeaning messages often associated with reading romance and commercial fiction.”
TikTok has been key to the success of this genre. Videos tagged #BookTok have garnered hundreds of billions of views, turning little-known authors into international bestsellers almost overnight. The platform’s influence has become so significant that in April this year, the UK’s first official #BookTok bestseller list was launched, linking UK sales with social media engagement data. Not surprisingly, romanticism has dominated the charts so far.
“The ‘discoverability’ of these books has never been easier,” says Kailah Singleton, Commissioning Editor of HarperVoyager and HarperMagpie. “Social media has allowed traditional word-of-mouth recommendations to reach more people than ever before.”
But while BookTok has fueled the rise of romance, readers insist that its appeal goes deeper than viral trends. “There’s desire, there’s lust, there’s love, there’s pure madness and magic,” says Kat, another woman in the queue. “And yes, there’s some dirt involved, too!”
