Dark Romance and Comfort Reads
Trigger warning for this whole week, frankly
Welcome to all of my new readers and thanks again to Anne Helen Petersen for her work and generosity. I’m so glad to have you here! Please feel free to let me know in the comments if you have any questions or curiosities about BookTok that I can try to answer in the coming months.
This week, I was in need of some comfort and escape (as I imagine most of us are) and wondered how this current moment was playing out on BookTok. Searching for comfort reads turned up very little, same for escapist books.
Offline, I’ve recommended friends start ACOTAR (almost impossible not to get sucked in) or try those little paint by numbers kits where you use tiny jewels. But online, I was in search of solace (admittedly, online is a very silly place to look for that these days). All I was being served on my FYP was dark romance. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
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BookTok has been having a dark romance moment, steadily growing over the past three or so years and following on the heels of Colleen Hoover conquering the NYT bestseller list in 2022. Hoover’s books can be dark - they deal with themes of abuse and trauma and take a more circuitous route to a happy ending. I might call them dark romances with crossover appeal. It Ends With Us has been written about plenty in the wake of the movie (bad outfits, troubling treatment of domestic violence, surprisingly good performances and production value), but let’s talk about Verity.
~spoiler warning~
Verity was released in 2018 and has over 3 million Goodreads ratings. It is about a young woman who is hired to ghostwrite the end of a successful series since its author (Verity) is in a coma. She has been hired by Verity’s husband, who invites her to move into their house while she writes (sure). But while doing the research, she finds Verity’s unpublished autobiography, which reveals dark secrets about her life. Over the course of her research and writing, she falls in love with Verity’s husband and discovers that Verity murdered one of her children. PLUS mysterious things keep happening around the house that make it clear Verity is only pretending to be comatose.
Hoover describes this book as a thriller, but it has a lot in common with the dark romances BookTokers are currently loving. Taboo relationships, murder, secrets.
Hoover’s books often read like old-fashioned melodrama and center big emotions, allowing for catharsis on the part of the reader, and I have to think something similar is at play with this wave of dark romance. Because traditionally romances demand a happily ever after, they can be a safe place for readers to explore darker themes. In dark romance, we see characters surviving the worst things that could happen to a person and still finding love after it all, as messy and morally complicated as it may be.
When we’re all just trying to get through next week, maybe these books are the perfect escape. Dark romance rarely hits the sweet spot for me, but maybe I’ll give it a try this weekend? After all, I finally did read a mafia romance last weekend that was pretty fun (Silent Vows by Jill Ramsower). Maybe what I need in this moment is less comfort and more gore? I think a lot of horror fans would say they’re one and the same.
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BookToker @read_between.the_wines explains it much more succinctly than I did above: “So pretty much I like unhinged men who do sweet things for her,” she says, describing MMCs who stalk the heroine but also keep her favorite flavor of ice cream on hand for her.
When you put it that way, it’s a pretty damning indictment of the state of real life romance. He stalks me, but at least he remembers my preferences.
Some other hallmarks of dark romance across sub genres? An overly protective love interest (touch her and die), morally grey characters who are unafraid to lie, cheat, kill, and steal to get what they want (including their love interest), and…
Mobsters, serial killers, and bullies, oh my!
Dark romance is a pretty broad term that encompasses several sub genres, so let’s break down BookTok’s current favorites.
Serial Killers (excuse me, serial unalivers): two hugely popular BookTok books fall into this category - Butcher and Blackbird by Brynne Weaver and The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby. Butcher and Blackbird is described as a dark romantic comedy where two rival serial killers, Rowan and Sloane, compete over their kills and, of course, fall in love. The Mindf*ck Series follows a serial killer, Lana, and her FBI profiler, Logan. This series began in 2019 but have grown in popularity since. A recent re-release with new covers seems to have triggered another wave of readers.
Stalkers: Haunting Adeline is the obvious example here - Adeline is stalked by a man named Zade, who sends her a man’s hands in a box after she lets someone else touch her. this book is extremely dark and also so popular it’s carried in Target. But there are MANY others: There Are No Saints by Sophie Lark and Nero by S.J. Tilly are just a couple.
Abduction: Still Beating by Jennifer Hartman asks the question - what if you and your nemesis were both abducted and kept in chains next to each other in the same basement for 15 years?
Mafia: Mafia romance is probably worthy of an entire newsletter in and of itself. Some popular dark mafia books include the Made Series by Danielle Lori and RuNyx’s Dark Verse.
Dark Gothic and Romantasy: Phantasma by Kaylie Smith is currently all over my FYP and on the featured tables at Barnes and Noble (#spookyseason). Ophelia is a necromancer with OCD who is trapped inside a haunted mansion with a mysterious man who might be a ghost.
That said, if you look hard enough, you can find a dark offshoot for every popular romance sub genre, including hockey.
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The unhinged nature of these books is part of the appeal - as seen in the TikTok above, this is a no judgey-judgey zone.
Controversy, Drama, and Controversial Drama
Or is it? There is, unsurprisingly, a lot of controversy in the dark romance world - how far is too far? How dark is too dark? Should you write a book with actual incest, and should you judge someone for liking it?
Take this video from popular BookToker @jolie_reads from late August:
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Are these arguments also serving as a low stakes distraction from current events? Is the in-fighting part of the appeal?
There are zero consequences to exploring your desires in a book. If you don’t like something, it’s easy to put down your Kindle or close the book. As long as there is trust between the author and the reader, books should feel like a safe place to explore taboo desires (as long as there are content warnings). Let’s just read and let read.
Finally, apropos of a comment on my episode of the Culture Study podcast this week, BookTokers tend to recommend books by using tropes, vibes, or comparisons to other books rather than plots. But I’ve also been coming across reviewers recounting scenes from books they love recently. This isn’t a description of the plot of the book at all, but it does provide some insight. I found the below extremely convincing (guess I am reading Monty Jay this weekend to avoid the horrors).
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P.S. just got my first what to read for Christmas video, which included a book called The Christmas Tree Farm by our girl Laurie Gilmore AND I think I found enough BookToks with men to do a roundup next week. Stay tuned!
I can’t remember if I said this on one of your posts or someone else’s—but I think the way the MMC treats the FMC is a hugely underemphasized factor in dark romance. I really wish it was easier to tell from BookTok recommendations whether the MMC is morally gray from how he acts out in the world or from being an asshole or worse to the FMC. There are plenty of “dark” romances out there where the MMC is a much better model of a partner than the guys in plenty of contemporary regular romances (especially in enemies to lovers plot lines).
I may just have to try a mafia romance soon - thanks for the push!