Romantic relationships are notoriously complicated for Gen Z; dating apps and social media have resulted in strict sets of rules and new standards pushed into the faces of those trying to find love. This is why, for some, it can be refreshing to crack open a good romance book every once in a while to consume a beautifully written story reflecting a relationship between two people, setting aside those modern ideals and witnessing a portrayal of real, human emotions.
But art mirrors the times, and some stories mirror the whirlwind dating scene of today that many find so complex.
“Rather than saying, do you see this in romance, I would say that this is a larger problem of romance, socially speaking,” explains Dr. Jayashree Kamblé, former president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, and current professor of English at LaGuardia Community College. “Romance is not doing anything particularly weird, it’s probably just showing what’s among us.”
The so-called readers’ corner of the internet,“#BookTok,” became a phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating an online community on TikTok where those who liked books could spark conversation, as well as providing and receiving recommendations for their next read. As the platform grew, so too did the profiles of authors and books well-known within the community, across all kinds of genres.
Colleen Hoover is one of the many authors that transformed the publishing industry through becoming an internet sensation, even being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023. Her novel “It Ends with Us” became an international bestseller in 2021, five years after its publication—an event very rarely seen within the industry. Many of her other books, the most famous of them being written between 2012 and 2019, gained significant traction and readership from the online community.
But controversy surrounding Hoover’s novels–specifically “It Ends with Us”— sparked discourse within #BookTok. When the book first went viral, it was promoted as a romance book, confusing readers when heavy topics, such as domestic abuse, that were heavily featured in the plot while lacking an aforementioned content warning.
“[BookTok] can also turn into these echo chambers of opinions, where something is nice and loved one day, and then hated the next,” said Lucy Rouse, a PhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer at University of Wollongong, Australia.
While Hoover’s books are often shelved in the romance section of bookstores, there is ongoing debate about whether she should be considered strictly a romance author. Kamblé, the English professor, explained that a defining characteristic of a romance novel is that readers believe the main characters will live happily together after the story ends, bringing out the best in one another. But romance is not confined to a single genre. Elements of romance are woven throughout fiction, fantasy, mystery, and many other types of stories because relationships are an integral part of life.
“She has written many romances that are, verbatim, romances, but she also is quite clearly an author who is willing to innovate with the way that she uses genre,” Rouse said.
Rouse noted that Hoover has resisted being defined by a single genre. Even Hoover’s Goodreads author bio reflects that mindset: “I don’t like to be confined to one genre. If you put me in a box, I’ll claw my way out,” it reads. Her stories are not intended to be taken as a love story, but a story that can reflect real problems in life.
With this in mind, both Kamblé and Rouse pushed back against criticism of Hoover’s largely young female audience and romance readers as a whole.
“I think that young women, and particularly young readers, get a bit of a bad rep, and have throughout history, in terms of their ability to discern fiction from reality,” Rouse said.
Both said that criticism of Hoover’s readership often says more about assumptions surrounding young women and their critical thinking than it does about the content actually written. They said that this group of readers are frequently portrayed as incapable of distinguishing between fictional relationships and healthy real-life ones, despite the lack of evidence that consuming romance fiction even influences their behavior.
“It’s not so much that we’re romanticizing toxic relationships, as actually putting relationships and all of their various doctrines into the life to try and figure out what to do,” said Kamblé.
Instead, Kamblé says that engaging with these difficult or unhealthy fictional relationships–within any genre– can be a way for readers to think through the complex emotional dynamics that are more likely to happen within our society than a perfectly smooth love story. She pointed out that readers are also not taking in information in a vacuum, saying that rather than taking in a book’s message uncritically, readers often partake in larger discussions in their communities where interpretations are debated and challenged. Especially on a platform like TikTok, there is not just one perspective brought forth; every idea will be challenged by a unique perspective or critique.
So, while they are not perfect, and controversy has been surrounding Hoover’s works for years, both scholars said that readers are active participants in interpreting the fiction in which they indulge, not passive consumers. And, as in life, the question between what is right and what is wrong for their lives can be uniquely determined by each individual.
“We need to be giving young women a bit of credit,” Rouse said.
