Bad Girl Books has opened in Oxford — the first British bookshop devoted entirely to romantasy. On opening day, around a hundred people queued outside its pink doors. Almost all were women; the only two men spotted by the Guardian's journalist were accompanying their respective girlfriends.
The shelves carry stories set in magical kingdoms, schools for dragon riders and courts populated by faeries. The relationships follow by-now recognisable formulas: enemies who fall in love, fated mates, and male leads who are dark and dangerous yet capable of talking about their feelings. The shop's sections are called, among other things, «Monster Smut», «Unhinged» and «LGBTQ+».
In just a few years the genre has gone from online passion to publishing phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas, author of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, has sold more than 75 million books. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros, set in an academy for dragon riders, recorded the best UK debut for a hardback novel since Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman. The value of British fantasy and science-fiction sales grew by 41.3 per cent between 2023 and 2024, driven above all by romantasy.
The success has been fuelled by BookTok, where readers discuss the heat levels of novels, rank their fictional boyfriends and compare variations on the enemies-to-lovers trope. Yet the customers interviewed by the Guardian push back against the «fae porn» label: they say they are also looking for friendship, adventure, female characters at the centre of the story, and worlds where women can have power, desire and a fulfilling relationship all at once.
The genre's popularity coincides with a growing disillusionment with real-life dating. Apps have made it easier to meet someone, but also to treat them as replaceable; and among young Britons the political gap between women and men is widening. In the novels, by contrast, male characters are generally written by women and according to female expectations.
It doesn't mean readers actually want to replace men with dragons. But, between a guy met on an app who stops replying and a cursed knight willing to risk his kingdom for them, the fiction has worked out which one is easier to sell.