12 APRIL 23-29, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Under the Covers AS ROMANCE AND FANTASY MERGE INTO ROMANTASY, READERS ARE GETTING HOT. BY TONI TRESCA On a Monday night in Park Hill, readers gather in the taproom at Fiction Beer Company to talk about Kiss of the Basilisk: A Split Or Swallow Novel, a wildly popular yet con- troversial romantasy novel. The Smutty Book Club meets here on the fi rst Monday of every month, attracting fans who settle in with pints and a shared enthusiasm for romance novels. “On average, it’s about 25 people at each meeting,” says Anna Bromberg, one of the brewery’s co-owners and an organizer of the club. “We try to be very widely read. This last year, we’ve done contemporary romance, romantasy and monster smut.” The crowd skews mostly women, rang- ing from people in their twenties to readers in their fi fties and sixties, but the appeal cuts across ages and backgrounds. Some members have advanced degrees; others come simply because they enjoy reading and want to talk about it. What unites them is an understanding that the genre they’re discussing – once regarded as a guilty plea- sure – is now recognized as one of the most powerful forces in publishing. The numbers back that up. According to research fi rm Circana, romance is currently the fastest-growing category in the U.S. print book market. Year-to-date sales are up 24 percent, and the category has more than doubled in size over the past four years. From May 2024 to May 2025, romance titles sold more than 51 million print copies. The genre that once lived quietly on the back shelves of bookstores is now driving the industry. That surge has helped transform romance from something quietly consumed into a cultural phenomenon, spawning best- selling book series, television adaptations like Heated Rivalry, and thriving online communities on TikTok’s “BookTok.” In Colorado, that boom is increasingly visible offl ine as well. Dedicated romance bookstores have opened across the Front Range, readers are organizing meetups, and the genre has evolved into a social hub in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. “Romance is having a moment for a few reasons,” says Ali Hoskins, co-owner of Fic- tion Beer Company and another organizer of its Smutty Book Club. “One: everything else sucks, but romance novels are cute, sweet and dirty, and they’re not awful like the news. Two: people are now allowing themselves to pleasure read. People admit to reading dirty books; it’s not a bad or embarrassing thing.” Colorado has also produced one of the genre’s biggest stars. Colorado Springs au- thor Rebecca Yarros became a publishing breakout sensation with Fourth Wing, the dragon-riding romantasy novel that topped the New York Times bestseller list in 2023 and helped push the genre even further into the mainstream. Its sequel, Onyx Storm, became the fastest-selling adult title in the twenty-year history of Circana’s BookScan tracking. When Yarros announced Fourth Wing nights with the Colorado Avalanche and then the Denver Nuggets last year, tickets sold out immediately. At the center of Denver’s scene is the Spicy Librarian, a romance-focused book- store that opened in January 2025 in a brick- walled building at 3040 Blake Street. Owner Sydney Ivey says the store grew out of her own long-standing love of the genre. “I’ve always read romance,” she says. “But several years ago, I got really into romantasy through reading Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series. I had never been a fantasy reader before, and then I read her books and fell in love.” As she returned to reading more regularly, Ivey says she noticed something else: a gap in Denver’s bookstore landscape. “We have some small indie bookstores, but several of them are very child-focused,” Ivey says. “I saw this gap in what people were reading. Romance is the highest-selling genre and has been for a long time, but it’s been ignored. I just saw this need for a very female-focused space that celebrates what women read and love.” The store now carries nearly 10,000 titles spanning the full range of the genre, from sweet contemporary love stories to darker fantasy epics. The clientele refl ects the au- dience that romance has always attracted. “It’s defi nitely a majority of women who come by the store,” Ivey says. “Romance is written almost exclusively by women, so it leans toward women. But we also see a mix of people coming in, especially because we have a large queer section. We are also see- ing more men starting to read it, since it’s becoming so talked-about and well-known in general society.” Denver isn’t alone in embracing the ro- mance genre. In February, Superior resident Hannah Morgan opened Sugar and Spice Books in Boulder; the romance bookstore caters to the same growing audience. And Fort Collins now has its own romance-only shop, Cherry On Top Bookshop. The infl ux of new shops has raised an- other question: how many romance book- stores can the Front Range support? Ivey says she expected other stores to follow once the Spicy Librarian proved the concept could work, but she admits she sometimes wonders how crowded the market might become. “I do worry about oversaturation,” Ivey says. “Not everyone can succeed, like not every froyo place can succeed, but I love it while it lasts, and I don’t think it’s a trend. I get that question a lot. It’s always been there; it just hasn’t been talked about, so I think it will always be popular.” Still, booksellers opening new romance shops say the demand from readers across the Front Range remains strong. “The Spicy Librarian has Denver covered, but it’s quite a drive to get down there for Boulder county residents,” Morgan says. “Not that I’m trying to take business away from her, but people were dying for some- thing closer up north. The reality is, there is enough demand to support multiple ro- mance bookstores in Colorado.” Romance, she notes, offers something many readers are craving right now. “It’s kind of an escape for people,” Mor- gan explains. “Romantasy and romance in general really picked up during COVID, when everybody was wanting a little bit of an escape from reality, and what’s better than magic and smutty fairies?” Her store carries about 1,000 titles, most of them chosen from books she personally loved or that customers recommended. Since Sugar and Spice opened, the biggest chal- CULTURE KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Hannah Morgan, owner of Sugar and Spice Books. MONIKA SWIDERSKI
