Too hot to handle

Charis Banks went to her local bookstore just for fun, hoping to find something new to read. Maybe a nice retelling of a well-known fairy tale.

“I grabbed a Sarah J. Maas book, and I bought it just spur of the moment,” she said. The book, A Court of Thorns and Roses, had a bright red cover featuring an illustration of a fairy shape-shifted into wolf form.

Nineteen at the time, Banks was still trying to figure out what kinds of books she liked. This book was supposed to be reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast. She got something else: “You know—steamy romance.”

In the three years since then, Maas’ books have become one of the most popular examples of a subgenre called “romantasy.” It now boasts bestselling authors, huge publishing deals, and what ultimately led Banks not to finish the book: what even the industry refers to as “spice” or “smut.”

Romantasy is a blend between romance and fantasy; a compelling relationship and a couple of dragons or something magical and you’re good to go. Many of these books, typically found in the New Adult or Young Adult sections of libraries and bookstores, aim for accessible prose and familiar tropes. The genre has dedicated communities on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. In its 2024 annual report, Bloomsbury, a major U.K.-based publisher, described TikTok as “one of the driving forces of an unprecedented surge in consumer book sales.”

Fans line up to have author Rebecca Yarros autograph books during a stop on her tour for the book Onyx Storm in St. Paul, Minn. Jenn Ackerman / The New York Times / Redux

These days, romantasy is one of the hottest trends in publishing. The first installment of Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean romantasy series, Fourth Wing, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 90 weeks. It features lines like, “You are not attracted to toxic men, I remind myself, and yet, here I am, getting all attracted.” The third book, Onyx Storm, has been in the Top 5 since it was released in January, and The New York Times called it the “fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years.”

Romantasy isn’t new. Twilight, a human-­vampire-werewolf romance series, was popular in the mid- to late 2000s and inspired the much darker Fifty Shades of Grey. Maas originally released the first installment of her romantasy series in 2015, and last year Bloomsbury attributed part of its record sales year to Maas, described in marketing material as “the #1 bestselling author and global phenomenon.”

Fans and reviewers often rate the “spice” in books on a scale from 1 to 5, but what that means is up to the individual reviewer. “Anyone who’s reading a lot of young adult fiction from the general [secular] market is definitely reading softcore porn,” said Marian Jacobs, author of the upcoming book On Magic and Miracles. She advocates for clean romantasy, especially from Christian authors and publishers that understand the beauty of imagination and healthy romance.

Darcy Barrett is a resident counselor in Virginia with clients who struggle with these sorts of books. “I think a lot of people will pursue [sexualized content] like a lot of men would pursue pornography, for that sense of connection,” she said. While Barrett doesn’t draw the lines about what is OK for her clients, she said that “it’s very easy to see whenever it gets unhealthy, whenever it’s replacing actual relationships.”

Publishing houses are looking to capitalize on the hype. Red Tower, the romantasy-focused division of Entangled Publishing that published Yarros’ Empyrean series, will open a new U.K. branch in association with Penguin Books this summer. Bloomsbury USA will launch a new speculative fiction imprint focused on “including romantasy, horror, mythological retellings, and more” in 2026, according to Publishers Weekly.

In part due to romantasy, the wider romance genre has seen a significant uptick in recent years. Penguin Random House ranked romance as the No. 1 genre trend for fall 2024, and in early March, 13 of Amazon’s Top 100 bestsellers were romance. Internet searches for the terms romance, romantasy, and spicy romance have been exponentially growing in popularity since late 2021, according to Google Trends data.

Many libraries will shelve romantasy titles in the Young Adult section, readily available to 12- to 17-year-olds, instead of in the General or New Adult sections. Elisabeth Wheatley, a romance author who posts videos on YouTube, noted that when Maas first published A Court of Thorns and Roses, booksellers shelved it with Young Adult titles. While the series is now officially classified as New Adult, the marketing decision caused confusion in the publishing industry as to how much sexualized content belongs in Young Adult books. In 2023, HarperCollins released a New Adult “Midnight Collection,” which it said was “in response to reader demand for ‘spicy’ reads,” as part of its Young Adult fiction imprint Magpie.

Parents who don’t check what their kids are reading can be shocked to discover adult content in books marketed or classified as Young Adult. When libraries are small, they often combine the New Adult books into other sections, including Young Adult.

“With our library, it’s pretty small, so we don’t have New Adult pulled out in any particular way,” said Banks, who now works at her local library.

As for A Court of Thorns and Roses, she never finished it.

“I still have it on my shelf, and I want to get rid of it somehow,” Banks said. “I’m probably never going to read it. It’s for other people.”

—Marlowe Carroll is a 2025 graduate of the journalism program at Patrick Henry College