I love almost everything Emily Rath writes--the Jacksonville Rays series is so good (and majority poly--the books are MMFM, MF, MMF, MM, and FFM, respectively, with the fourth and fifth yet to be released).
The only hockey romances I’ve really enjoyed are queer ones. Recommend Ari Baran’s books - he has a M/M hockey series with a female NHL player as a recurrent side character
Super interesting dissection of hockey romances and why they're so popular. One of the things that troubles me about BookTok is that it is a very white space, so I'm glad you pointed that out. I recently went to a book signing with Kennedy Ryan and Abby Jiminez who both pointed out that the gains BIPOC authors had been making haven't kept their momentum, particularly in traditional publishing. I wonder if both Target and Barnes & Noble selling books popular on BookTok is part of the reason BIPOC authors are losing ground.
BookTok is definitely driving decreases in diversity - if you look at the Ripped Bodice diversity report, the percent of BIPOC creators at publishers peaked in 2021 or 2022 and dropped in 2023, sometimes dramatically. I’m trying to figure out how to defeat the whiteness of the algorithm - finding diverse content creators and writers and searching them out to follow so I can see them in the follow tab, etc. but it is remarkable how little that changes the content on my FYP.
I love almost everything Emily Rath writes--the Jacksonville Rays series is so good (and majority poly--the books are MMFM, MF, MMF, MM, and FFM, respectively, with the fourth and fifth yet to be released).
The only hockey romances I’ve really enjoyed are queer ones. Recommend Ari Baran’s books - he has a M/M hockey series with a female NHL player as a recurrent side character
ooo thank you, I haven't tried Ari Baran! I love Rachel Reid. I just read her March 2025 release and it was wonderful.
Super interesting dissection of hockey romances and why they're so popular. One of the things that troubles me about BookTok is that it is a very white space, so I'm glad you pointed that out. I recently went to a book signing with Kennedy Ryan and Abby Jiminez who both pointed out that the gains BIPOC authors had been making haven't kept their momentum, particularly in traditional publishing. I wonder if both Target and Barnes & Noble selling books popular on BookTok is part of the reason BIPOC authors are losing ground.
BookTok is definitely driving decreases in diversity - if you look at the Ripped Bodice diversity report, the percent of BIPOC creators at publishers peaked in 2021 or 2022 and dropped in 2023, sometimes dramatically. I’m trying to figure out how to defeat the whiteness of the algorithm - finding diverse content creators and writers and searching them out to follow so I can see them in the follow tab, etc. but it is remarkable how little that changes the content on my FYP.