When traveling through a store looking for a good read, you would think that books featuring vampires, aliens, werewolves, and shapeshifters would be in the horror section.
But for Generation Z, it’s just another dark novel where they can escape their mundane lives and live in a world where they can fantasize about forbidden love.
Some of the biggest books listed on the book review platform Goodreads and TikTok featured escapist and ultra-smutty stories that have gone viral throughout 2024.
Some of these include CM Nascosta’s Morning Glory Milking Farm, about a woman who is “one-sidedly in love with a minotaur out of her league”, and Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians series, which centers on a six-foot-tall blue animal. height. alien with horns and tail.
And although the genre was dubbed ‘Romantasy’ in 2008, it has recently become popular among the younger generation in their teens and early twenties.
British Toria Hutchinson, from Bracknell, has a TikTok account where she recommends books to other readers and one of her favorite categories is ‘spicy fantasy romance books’.
In a clip posted in November, the content creator recommended a bunch of books she described as “pure escapism.”
This included Bonded by Thorns by Elizabeth Helen, which follows a woman called Rosalina O’Connell whose father has been imprisoned.
Toria Hutchinson, from Bracknell, has a TikTok account where she recommends books to other readers and one of her favorite categories is ‘spicy fantasy romance books’.
She has “no choice” but to make a deal with four princes to take her place, but discovers that they have been cursed and become “demon wolves every night.”
But if they can find their true love, they will break the curse and be freed. However, Rosalina is convinced that she is the one everyone should be with.
Another book Toria loves is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.
It follows the story of a woman who falls in love with her immortal captor and must fight to break an ancient curse, or risk “losing him forever.”
toria saying: ‘In my opinion, the best thing about romance is that it takes you out of real-life problems and into magical worlds with much bigger problems! “It really puts things into perspective.”
Luna, 25, is another monster love fan who regularly posts about what dark romance books she’s gotten herself into.
Luna, 25, is another monster love fan who regularly posts about what dark romance books she’s gotten herself into.
Luna’s clip racked up nearly 90,000 views and plenty of comments from other monster love story fans.
To convince other Booktokers about the genre, he published a video on tiktok echoing a common judgment on the matter.
She wrote: “But it’s a monster romance, it can’t be cute!”
She then held up different books and added: “His tail wags when he sees her, they visit an aquarium together and watch otters, he cooks her food and helps her with her sensory issues.”
Luna said: ‘I love a cute low angst monster romance! Are there any I missed? They have a mix of monsters, aliens, angels and demons.’
Their clip accumulated almost 90 thousand views and many comments from other fans of monster love stories.
One wrote: “Muscles and monsters made me laugh at 2 in the morning.”
Another wrote: “This is my exact niche of what I want when I read monster romance LMAO. I love this.”
A third said: “Monster romance until I die.”
Read with Mills told her 16,000 followers about AT Lockhart’s The Vampires of Venice and even gave it five stars.
A fourth commented: “I love monster romances.”
Another lover of dark romance, which is called Read with Mills in tiktok I recently reviewed a vampire love story.
He told his 16,000 followers about AT Lockhart’s Vampires of Venice and even gave it five stars.
Mills said: “This is a vampire book like nothing I’ve ever read (before). You know I’m a huge vampire fan, I honestly think this is an amalgamation of crime and vampires in the most perfect way.
‘It makes you fall in love with characters you shouldn’t fall in love with.
‘The vampires in this book are so good. The way they talk and act and everything. I absolutely love them.
‘Plot twists, trust issues, vampires and crimes. “There’s honestly nothing more you could want from this series.”
American author Hailey Blackwood is also a big fan of the ‘Romantasy’ genre and jokes about the ‘unbreakable bond between a girl and her spicy, monstrous romance books’.
She added about her tiktok: ‘I (and) books about non-human men’.
Likewise, Tory, located in the United States, spoke about her recommendations and saying: ‘Here are some cozy monster romances that I really like for the fall season.
“I just think they have all the ingredients to create the perfect flirty, monster romance. There’s low stakes, a lot of dazzling romance and, of course, a monster.
Industry expert Julianne Buonocore, who lives in Pennsylvania, believes fantasy books were particularly popular among Generation Z and millennial women because of their “escapist nature.”
Julianne, who founded book industry publication The Literary Lifestyle, previously told FEMAIL that fantasy romance as a genre took off after the popularity of Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing.
“This led to other fantasy series, including monster books, becoming popular on TikTok,” Julianne explained.
“These fantasy books tend to appeal to ‘new adult’ readers just over 18.”
Saint James, 75, rabbi by day and romance novel author by night, also FEMAIL: “According to the Romance Writers of America, to be considered a romance novel, a story must have a happy ending.”
“In some ways, the details of the story (monsters, aliens, shapeshifters) don’t matter as much as the successful defeat of the villain, obstacle or problem,” Nola explained.
The romance novel author added that creating these alternative universes can help “reduce anxiety around difficult topics.”
“Embodying what is threatening in a ‘monster’ is a way to gain some control over it,” Nola said, adding that reading these books is a way to deal with this “complex and chaotic world.”
“Naming it and giving it shape is a way of taking what is amorphous and uncontrollable and trapping it in a more manageable form,” Nola continued.