The romance novel has gone feral

If you’ve picked up a romance novel lately and thought, “Wow, they’re really not wasting any time,” you’re not alone. The genre has undergone a glow-up and, in the process, it seems to have gotten significantly steamier. In Emily Henry’s latest novel, Great Big Beautiful Life, the main characters are kissing by the 20 per cent mark and making out well before the halfway point. Nearly a fifth of the book is dedicated to smut scenes that would make early-2000s Bridget Jones drop her wine glass. Once upon a time, mainstream romance novels were about flirty glances, awkward encounters, and maybe...or maybe not...a single, well-earned kiss by the end.

Today’s love stories? They’re all one-bed tropes, unresolved sexual tension, and high-voltage make-out sessions before the third-act twist. Back in the day, chick-lit royalty Meg Cabot and Sophie Kinsella gave us charming chaos, endearing inner monologues, and leading men who were more Mr Darcy than Magic Mike. The sex was implied, hinted at, or skipped. Now, writers like Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood are leading the charge in rewriting the genre with a very active libido along the way. It’s steamier, smuttier, and way less interested in playing hard to get.

In the early noughties, things were more clearly defined—EL James was your go-to for erotic escapades, while Emily Griffin held down the emotional drama and heartbreak. Now, the lines are deliciously blurry. Today’s mainstream romances often blur chick lit with straight-up erotica, and readers are relying on community reviews to figure out what level of spice they’re signing up for. In fact, Reddit now has bots (yes, bots) dedicated to this exact mission. The Romance Bot, for instance, pulls data from romance.io and gives you a neat little summary: average reader rating, steam level, content tags, and links to the book’s cover, plot, and author info. It’s like a TripAdvisor for your next fictional fling.

So, why has mainstream romance taken this steamy, sex-positive turn? For one, readers, especially women, are more sexually emancipated than ever before. Nona Uppal, author of Fool Me Twice, believes this shift is long overdue. “The desire for sex in storytelling has always existed,” she says. “What’s changed is that a certain class of women has now been emancipated just enough to write about these things without feeling compromised. The need has always been there, and now it’s finally being met.”

The second factor is a growing disillusionment with traditional, male-centric portrayals of sex, particularly in pornography. With the rise of female-directed porn and a growing appetite for sex scenes written by women for women, romance novels have become an accessible, emotionally intelligent alternative to visualise smut. “I actually think a lot of these books talk about sex in ways that are far better than what we see in porn,” Uppal adds. “It’s one of the most awkward things to write about, and the fact that people can do it beautifully is amazing.”

It would be criminal not to blame credit the online book community for the current wave of steamy bestsellers flooding the book shelves. Whether it’s BookTok or its siblings BookTube and Bookstagram, reading has never looked this hot or this cool. Authors like Tessa Bailey, Lauren Asher, and Emily Henry have built cult followings thanks to viral recommendations, fan art, annotated pages, and dedicated fan clubs. Entire subcultures like #Smuttok and #SpicyReads thrive on coded language to skirt censorship while openly celebrating books that are emotionally rich and sexually satisfying. These online spaces have done more than just sell romance fiction. They’ve normalised desire, created safe spaces for readers to explore their interests, and helped women rewrite or reframe their own experiences with sex and romance.

There’s also the thrill of being able to read something naughty out there in public. A big part of that is the illustrated cover trend, where the hottest plots come wrapped in pastel colours and cartoon-style art. What looks like a cute, wholesome rom-com on the outside often contains enough spice to make your Kindle overheat. Anubha Mathur from HarperCollins’s marketing team explains that this cover style is a deliberate choice to attract younger readers such as Gen Z and new adults, who might not pick up a traditional ‘bodice ripper’.

In fact, some old-school romance novel loyalists may be shocked to see what lies between the cover. “Illustrations nowadays have open interpretation (there may or may not be smut), and that’s what the readers want to have on the cover of the books they purchase, especially those who may feel a bit less comfortable reading in a public space,” says illustrator Lilith Kiss, who worked on Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, of the clever camouflage. The result? Spicy stories flying off the shelves in deceptively sweet packaging.

The genre’s racy turn now has subreddits and Bookstagram pages devoted to curating lists of books where the main characters are locking lips (or more) by chapter five. Post-pandemic, there’s been a noticeable shift—more and more readers want their romance quick, spicy, and low on filler. Shinjini Guha, a 23-year-old reader, admits that she got into romance thanks to Bookstagram and BookTok. “I used to be the kid who read 700-page novels without blinking, but now I need something that grabs me immediately,” she says. “Fast-burn romances are perfect. They hook me before my attention span fizzles.” The rise of fast-burns is less about lack of patience and more about fitting romance into an era of overstimulation.

There was a time when reading smut meant strategic disguises, like hiding its title behind a textbook or pretending it was just about the love story. But now? Those same books are proudly stacked at the front, glowing under store lights like romance royalty. They’re topping charts, taking over book clubs, and making their way into mainstream pop culture. Women are reading what they want, writing what they want, and talking about it with zero shame. Sure, you might still tilt your Kindle when the aunty on the metro peeks over your shoulder but that’s more about privacy than prudishness. The verdict? We want the spice. We want the story. And if it comes with a bubblegum-pink cover and a couple mid-flirt, we’re all in.