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The romance genre has gone through its share of changes over the years — and RaeAnne Thayne has witnessed plenty of those changes firsthand.
The New York Times bestselling author recalls an incident early in her career when she was attending a signing for one of her books at a library, and a library employee looked at her book cover and told her, “Oh, I don’t read those kinds of books” — meaning, of course, romance novels.
But in the 20-plus years since then, Thayne says she’s seen a shift in the way people talk about romance. Although there was once a time when romance novels were dismissed or had a certain stigma, in the course of her nearly 40-year career, Thayne says she’s seen those attitudes largely vanish.
“Those feelings have definitely changed,” the Utah-based author told the Deseret News. “I don’t know anybody in (the publishing industry) who can’t give romance the respect that it deserves.”
The main reason for that respect? Romance is regularly one of the most bestselling book genres — by a mile. Romance novels have “dominated” the publishing industry in recent years, according to The Atlantic, with romance print-book sales doubling between 2020 and 2023. After that high point, romance sales still rose by nearly 5% in 2025.
The genre’s popularity has also expanded in another, more unexpected way: Romance-specific bookstores have been popping up across the country in just the last few years, including two romance-themed stores in Utah.
There’s no one reason for the genre’s growth, though social media trends like BookTok and the increasing popularity of the “romantasy” genre — Rebecca Yarros’ romantasy juggernaut “Fourth Wing” series played a significant part in 2025’s romance sales, according to The New York Times — have certainly played large roles.
But, as Thayne can attest, even before these more recent trends, readers have always been drawn to romance. So what is it that makes readers fall in love with romance novels?
Romance on the bestseller list
Romance novels have been big business from the beginning. The book widely credited with being the first English romance novel — Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded,” published in 1740 — is also considered to be the first-ever bestseller.
He was followed by authors like Ann Radcliffe, whose Gothic romances “The Mysteries of Udolpho” and “The Italian,” were bestsellers in the 1790s, and Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth, whose realistic novels that included romantic subplots were wildly popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
All of these writers inspired in some ways one of the most influential authors on romance today: Jane Austen, who “helped invent the romantic comedy as we know it,” as Time magazine wrote. Though Austen’s books weren’t exactly bestsellers during her lifetime, they became hits during the Victorian Era and they’ve held their spot in romantic literature ever since.
Romance readers continue to turn modern books into bestsellers, too. Author Colleen Hoover — known for romances like “It Ends with Us” and “Verity” — held six of the 10 spots on The New York Times’ bestseller list in 2022, and more print copies of her books were sold that year (8.6 million) than copies of the Bible, per The New York Times. And Yarros’ latest novel, “Onyx Storm,” became the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years when it was published last year, selling over 2.7 million copies in its first week alone, the Times also reported.
So what continues to draw romance readers at such a rapid rate? In recent years, changes to the book world in general have certainly played a part — not least social media.
Thayne — who has published over 70 romance novels and has a new novel, “The Rainy Day Bookshop,” coming this summer — has experienced some of these changes up close.
“TikTok obviously has totally changed the game when it comes to romance,” Thayne said, noting that books that get popular on the social media platform tend to sell at “insane numbers that … authors couldn’t possibly contemplate back in the day when we started.”
Apart from the numbers, though, she also believes social media has helped to build a stronger community of romance readers.
“Before (social media) when a reader wanted to contact me, they had to write me a letter and send it to me through my publisher, you know, and it would take weeks to get it,” she said. “But now if they read one of my books, they can immediately go to my website, find my email address and drop me a line, or post on social media about something. I think they feel much more connected to the authors than they did, than I certainly did when I started out as a reader.”
A community of readers
That sense of community has also helped to build another romance trend — the rise of romance-only bookstores.
The Romantics Archive opened its doors in Ogden in November of last year, and although it sells a variety of genres, it specializes in romance. The store’s owner, Nicole Trahan, told the Deseret News that she wanted to help fill what she saw as a “huge gap” in northern Utah for “niche bookstores.”
Trahan started last year by attending pop-up events and festivals throughout the summer months, “just to see if I could help share the love of reading and romance books,” she said, and slowly began to gather a following.
“(That) was the best part, because I slowly started building community, even before I made the decision to create like an actual brick-and-mortar space for that,” Trahan said.
Though The Romantics Archive may be one of the newest, it’s far from the only bookstore that’s specializing in romance. As of last year, there were 157 romance-dedicated bookstores in the U.S. — and over half of them had opened in the previous two years, The Associated Press reported.
Salt Lake City has its own romance-only bookstore, Lovebound Library, which opened in 2024.
Now that The Romantics Archive has moved into its new home, Trahan said that continuing to help build that sense of community is her No. 1 priority. The store has already been hosting events for readers, including author signings, and has plenty of plans for more.
“You can get books from anywhere, you can go to the store and grab a book, but those bigger retailers, they’re selling books,” Trahan said. “And we’re not selling books. We’re selling basically a community of people. Like we are one on one with people, recommending books, creating a safe space for people.”
‘Hot cocoa’ for readers
Although romance novels are sometimes described as “an escape” from the world, Thayne said she prefers to think of them as more of a “resting place” from the world’s stress.
“The world is so stressful right now,” she said. “Everybody’s so angry all the time, and so there’s just conflict everywhere we go, and I think people are yearning for a place where community is important, where neighbors are helping each other.”
That’s the sort of world that Thayne prefers to write about — she describes her books as “small-town contemporary romances, where it’s all about the community,” though she says some people have described them as “hot cocoa for readers.”
“Romance is a great way to lift your mood, to lower your stress. It gives comfort in a world that can feel really dark sometimes, and it kind of helps center us and reminds us, you know, that these emotions are important, and romance is important.”
— RaeAnne Thayne
“I’m totally great with that,” she said. “They call them ‘comfort reads,’ and I love that idea that I’m providing comfort to people.”
A staple of the romance genre is that the story must end with a “happily ever after,” and that can provide a certain level of comfort in an uncertain world.
Trahan observed that she believes more people have been gravitating toward romance since the COVID-19 pandemic, because “there’s a promise of joy that you get from it and satisfaction.”
Romance novels did indeed get a boost during the pandemic — as they often do in challenging times.
“During the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, sales for most every consumer item you can think of declined — except for romance novels,” Forbes reported. “Those sales went up.”
A Harlequin executive told Forbes that the romance book publisher saw its sales rise in 2008, even as book sales overall went down. The publishing company also saw its sales rise during the uncertain time following 9/11.
Thayne says that in her books, her characters are often dealing with difficult things, “going through real trials that we all are dealing with,” like cancer or infertility, and she believes that books provide readers with a way to experience these real-life challenges in a “safe way.”
“(Readers) can see characters going through hardship, that they might be going through something similar, and see those characters overcoming them, and it gives them hope that maybe they can get through the things that they’re dealing with as well.”
Reading as an act of self-care
Thayne’s upcoming book, “The Rainy Day Bookshop,” will also feature her characters going through some of those real-life challenges. The book, which comes out June 6, is the story of a mother and a daughter “coming to find peace in their relationship” after a tragic accident that killed their husband and father.
The daughter blames herself for the accident and lives far away from her mother for many years, until she returns home to help her mother run a bookstore. “And through the process, they’re sort of able to bring up the wounds of the past and find healing with each other,” Thayne said.
And, of course, both the mother and the daughter find romances along the way. But Thayne says that the novel is first and foremost “a story about books and my love of books.”
She gained her love of reading, and of romance novels in particular, from her own mother. She said her mother was a “huge reader” and often had romances lying around, so she and her sisters would read the novels and then share them with each other. And from then on, she said, romance novels became her “go-to.”
For Trahan, she said that one of the reasons she’s drawn to romance novels in particular is because of the way that it shares women’s experiences.
“(Romance) centers around women’s stories and emotional intelligence,” Trahan said. “It gives us a safe exploration of identity and relationships.”
Although Trahan says the majority of customers she’s seen in her store so far have been women, she has been surprised “in the best way possible” by the number of men that have come in, too. And a number of those men have even asked her if the store could start up a romance book club that’s specifically for male readers.
“There are a lot of men that come through that do enjoy this, and I feel like that speaks to the emotional pull that these books have on people,” Trahan said.
Thayne calls reading romance “an act of self-care,” and she believes it’s important for women in particular to find ways to take care of themselves.
“We don’t take care of ourselves enough, and I feel like romance is a great way to lift your mood, to lower your stress,” Thayne said. “It gives comfort in a world that can feel really dark sometimes, and it kind of helps center us and reminds us, you know, that these emotions are important, and romance is important. …
“Everything in your world is a little bit better when you have a great book to escape into.”
