Steamy romance novels are wildly popular on social media, as raunchy romantic comedies and fantasy books became favorites with Gen Z.
Gen Z (between 11 and 26) and millennials (between 28 and 43) are particularly passionate about reading and sharing their favorite spicy romance novels, especially on TikTok.
Book lovers share videos on ‘BookTok,’ which is sometimes called ‘SmutTok,’ to recommend their wildest reads.
However, not everyone is looking for descriptive bedroom scenes.
In fact, Madison Rawlings gives ‘closed door romance recommendations,’ providing book options for readers who don’t want to know what happens between characters in the bedroom.
‘If you’re a reader that likes little to no spice, you’re in the right place!’ Madison’s Instagram bio for Cleaned Up Romance reads.
Madi shared her most-viewed video on TikTok and explained the purpose of her account.
In the description, Madi said her website gives ‘a spice rating with an explanation of why it’s rated that.’
Madi said she provides ‘where EXACTLY to start skipping and where to continue to completely skip the spice and anything important to the plot that you might’ve missed.’
‘We have just under 50 spice guides on the site, you can request a book to be added if we don’t have it,’ Madi said, telling followers to ‘let me know what you think.’
However, many women were appalled by the concept, joking that their TikTok algorithm no longer understood what they were looking for – and that they specifically seek out dirty talk.
‘This reached my For You Page by mistake,’ one woman joked.
‘Wait, people aren’t reading the book for the spice???!!! Pick a different book then???’ another woman asked.
‘Even cookbooks have spice in them,’ a commenter quipped.
Some said they’d use her website to specifically search for the bedroom scenes, with one writing, ‘Not me skimming the dialogue to get to the spice.’
However, not everyone disagreed with the idea.
Some women said they’d use the guides to screen books for their children, while others said they’d use it for religious purposes or because they found sex scenes triggering.
‘I love this! People are taking it a weird way but sometimes the spice is bad, and I just don’t like to read the descriptions anyway. I’m not young adult, I shouldn’t have to read young adult,’ a commenter replied.
‘I usually skip over the spice because it’s too much and gets annoying,’ another agreed.
‘Sometimes I want to read a book and don’t want to read six plus spicy scenes but still want to read the rest of the plot,’ a commenter weighed in.
‘This is actually good because if you can’t read spice because of religion or just don’t like reading it but want to read popular books then you can enjoy it,’ a reader said, calling it a ‘great inclusive idea.’
‘I hate spice scenes. Sometimes they’re so unexpected and are triggering for me as I’ve gone through trauma. Thank you for this,’ one grateful woman praised.
This post was originally published on here
