Angst Fest 2026
Why is tragedy the new escapism?
The world is on fire in more ways than one (please support our friends in Minnesota - I recommend donating to the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee or other organizations doing on the ground work to support neighbors taking care of neighbors), so of course people are seeking escape through fiction. We’re all going to the cottage, for instance. But a lot of the escapism I’m seeing on BookTok these days isn’t lighthearted escapism, like you might expect. What I’m seeing is readers on an escapist quest for catharsis and for books that make them feel like they can survive any situation, no matter how harrowing.
So today, we’re talking dystopias, romantic tragedies, horror romance, and above all, angst. Are you ready to cry, friends? Let’s dive in.
First, please go listen to this absolutely over the top audio, which has been used 12,000 times: Sadbooks entra al audio by Cairo Mar. It’s a woman sobbing, saying “Why would you write this? Why would you write this book?”
We’ve talked about crying on BookTok (aka performing the big emotions a book made you feel, see: anything by Kristin Hannah) and we’ve talked about the shift toward yearning in romance. Is angst really just the other side of the yearning coin? Angst, to me, is characters yearning for each other who are kept apart by increasingly dramatic, outlandish, or tragic circumstances, put through the horrors in order to find their way to each other (or not - more on that later).
Angst is something I associate with fanfiction, and I do think this turn toward angst is an inevitable impact of the fanfiction to traditional publishing pipeline. Most successful Dramione fanfiction is angst-ridden, after all.
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Let’s take Alchemised as an example, the most successful of all of the Dramione fanfiction conversions. It is over 1,000 pages long, and the read is described by many fans as punishing, with an ending that is bittersweet at best. It has spent 16 weeks on the NYT bestseller list.
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It’s also a perfect fit for a long running BookTok trend, where readers share a video of themselves before reading a book and after reading a book to convey their level of emotional devastation.
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And it isn’t just BookTokers getting in on the action on this one. Here is a video from TV presenter and former UK Love Island contestant Chloe Burrows to her 1.4 million subscribers:
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“This actually might be, on its own, the single best book I’ve ever read in my whole life,” she says. “But it’s also one of the most awful, traumatizing, dark, dark stories I have ever read.”
But on BookTok, there’s a group of readers who are always looking to up the ante. In order to continually make interesting content, they have to raise the stakes on what angst and trauma look like in fiction. Which is where our newest micro trend comes in: romantic tragedies where one of the characters dies by suicide at the end of the book because they can’t bear to live without their partner, who has died tragically (see: Under Your Scars by Ariel Anderson for just one recent example of many). Think of it like Nicholas Sparks on steroids.
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Is all of this the inevitable result of authors being asked to raise the stakes more and more?
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This one is for all of the avoidant attachment style divas
What else is for all of the avoidant attachment style divas? Stories that are so angst-ridden they stretch out over multiple books, with duologies and triologies all covering the same couple. How much pain can two people endure? How many cliffhangers will readers endure? This feels like a crossover from romantasy, where readers have gotten used to series that follow one couple and plot lines that don’t resolve neatly in one book.
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Another thing a lot of popular angsty books have in common? Scope. These books are sagas, they cover decades, not months or years. A lot of them start with our couple in high school before something tragic tears them apart, only for them to be forced back into each others’ lives years later. PAIN.
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Coincidentally, I’m also writing this in the midst of internet uproar about Hamnet, the film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s emotionally devastating novel (and one that ends up on many of these BookTok lists for books that will rip your heart out).
I guess the question is - do people want to be emotionally manipulated? Do they only resent it when they can see the way they are being manipulated too clearly? Is emotional manipulation discourse coming for BookTok next? Let’s hope not.
Looking for a book to ruin your life? Here are some popular BookTok recs:
Anything by Kate Stewart
Anything by Chloe Walsh
The Unrequited by Saffron A. Kent
Psychotic Obsession by Leigh Rivers
The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros
Breathe with Me by Becka Mack
A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner
and more!
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So - what kind of escapism are you looking for in your romance reading these days? What’s the last book that made you cry? Let me know in the comments. xoxo
I'm going to take your word for it and not read any of these. Maybe it's the elder millennial in me, but I still like the cozier paranormal reads, or the ones with really great writers navigating more grounded emotional complexity (like Kate Clayborn, for example).
The books that made me cry last year were all also in my top reads of the year: Promise Me Sunshine - Cara Bastone, After Hours at Dooryard Books - Cat Sebastian, and The Everlasting - Alix E. Harrow. They were all heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measure and I think it's that combo that makes me cry the hardest. I do think that I have been more in the mood for things that will make me feel something really deeply, even if that's sad. Maybe that's a collective thing we're all going through.