Romance books of the 2020s
BookTok takes over. Hoover, Henry, and romantasy makes romance the biggest genre in fiction.
The current decade made romance the center of the literary universe. BookTok turned word-of-mouth into a sales engine of staggering power, propelling Colleen Hoover to record-breaking dominance and reviving backlist titles overnight. Emily Henry redefined the smart, witty contemporary; Ali Hazelwood brought STEM heroines and warmth; Tessa Bailey and a wave of spicy contemporaries thrived. Above all, romantasy exploded — Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses and Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing (2023) became phenomena, fusing romance and fantasy into the most talked-about books in publishing.
For readers in the moment, the 2020s shelf is enormous and gloriously specific. Content spans everything from gentle closed-door love stories to high-heat romantasy, and readers navigate by trope, spice level, and content note as never before. This is the shelf for readers who want what's current and what's everywhere — the BookTok sensations, the witty contemporaries, the dragon-riding romantasy, and the decade romance stopped apologizing and took the crown.
- BookTok-driven sensations
- Romantasy as a dominant force
- Full spice range, reader-navigated
- Witty, trope-forward contemporaries
No books from the 2020s in our database yet. We are adding more classics every week!