COVID-19 and the rise of romantasy​

It’s been nearly 6 years since the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world. As we were all in quarantine, the books that flooded our social media feeds were filled with magical curses, forbidden romances, and fantasy lands far different from our own current reality.

A subgenre that I recall becoming more prominent than ever during the early 2020s was dubbed “romantasy,” a combination of romance and fantasy. Romantasy novels usually feature a fantastical setting, and the stakes are often driven by magical elements, but the overall plot focus is romantic.

One of the most popular romantasy book series, which really set a precedent for readers’ tastes during this era, was Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series. ACOTAR, as it is referred to online, follows human huntress Feyre after she mistakenly kills a faerie wolf and is taken to the magical faerie lands of Prythian by the High Lord Tamlin as punishment. There she discovers political corruption in Tamlin’s court and begins a journey to save the kingdom.

As someone who has never read the series but has seen probably hundreds of TikToks about it, I had no idea what the driving plot was. What did I know? There was a crazy enemies-to-lovers trope in the series.

In the first book, Feyre seems to develop some feelings for Lord Tamlin — who I’m pretty sure is evil — but throughout the whole series, a slow-burn romance develops between her and a character named Rhysand.

Oh, the girls on BookTok in 2020 LOVED Rhysand.

There was fan art, fan fiction, and songs dedicated to him. Readers love fantasy, but they also love a hot, brooding romantic interest.

Heather, how have you not read ACOTAR?

Back in 2020, when romantasy was on the rise, I really honed in on a few different media interests. One of the hobbies I adapted over quarantine was reading. I loved a romance book. I loved the tropes and the happily ever after. I also became a massive television binger — I’ve always been a TV connoisseur, but at this point, I upgraded to a fanfiction writer, fan account holder kind of girl. My favorite TV shows were The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. In a sort of ironic sense, I loved the Twilight Saga.

Due to its rising social media popularity and my adjacent interests, romantasy should have been the next step, but it wasn’t.

Rhysand, apparently a fan favorite.

I don’t know what turned me off from fantasy. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t pronounce

any of the characters’ names, maybe I had a lack of patience for worldbuilding, or maybe I had already covered the cultural interest in romance and fantasy through my taste in romance books and paranormal television.

Why did this subgenre become so popular in 2020?

​Now, I’m not trying to claim that romantasy wasn’t popular before — it was — but it really became a cultural phenomenon throughout the early 2020s for a number of reasons that all lead back to COVID-19.

Quarantine gave people the time to sit down and enjoy slower hobbies like reading. Reading a book takes a lot of time, and in a society that prioritizes hustle, most people prefer to dedicate their time to something more productive. However, when the pandemic hit, many items on people’s to-do lists became impossible, which allowed them to fill their days with hobbies they had long neglected.

According to a study conducted by Nielsen Books in May 2020, 41% of their survey participants were reading more since the beginning of the pandemic. 52% of those respondents said it was because they had more time.

I think this specific subgenre exploded because it offered a strong avenue of escapism. In the same Nielsen Books survey, 35% of participants said they turned to books for a sense of escape from the current crisis.

Many different stressors became present during the pandemic. Not only were people worried about the health crisis, but it also brought up political and economic uncertainty. Books have always served as a way for people to escape current troubles and transport themselves into other worlds. The farthest people could get from the word in 2020 was faerie kingdoms.

More than just escaping into something different, people wanted to read something that created excitement, and nothing is more exciting than a steamy romance.

The cherry on top of the romantasy takeover was digital marketing. TikTok turned from an app where people made dance and skit videos to a platform that hosted conversations. As a culture, we learned how to communicate over social media more efficiently than ever while we were stuck in our houses.

Niche communities and micro trends became more popular, and #BookTok became one of the most viewed tags on the app. People wanted to talk about the things they were reading with other people. Readers were promoting and sharing their favorite books, and the tropes present in romantasy really took off on social media.

The oversaturation of the field

Soon after everyone realized they loved to read romantasy, they also realized they wanted to write it. There was a fruitful market for the genre, as long as it had one thing: tropes.

Suddenly, every author on TikTok was promot

ing their book by acting out a scene in their book where there is only one bed in the inn between kingdoms, or a hot faerie hunter has a knife against the faerie protagonists throat, or the protagonist's enemy sees a cut on her leg and yells “who did this to you?” revealing that he cared all along.

If you have never read a book with those scenes before, you might be thinking, “Wow, that sounds really awesome, and I want to read that.” That’s what everyone on the internet thought. These plot devices created the perfect tension to propel a romantic storyline, and people wanted to read more and more of it. So, authors started to create more and more of it.

I had a hard time finding a PG "who did this to you" quote

Alex Aster began posting TikToks about the fantasy book she was writing in 2021. After a video detailing the plot went viral, she signed a 6-figure book deal. The book also received a movie deal with Universal Pictures before it was even published — Universal paid for the movie rights solely based on the promotion. For relatively unknown authors like Aster, the speed and magnitude of this deal were unheard of. But people were really excited about the book.

Her book, “Lightlark,” was published in 2022. Fans of Aster’s TikToks were not thrilled with the final product. They thought the marketing was misleading, and that the book didn’t exactly live up to the stakes Aster had promised. Readers also felt the storyline was weak and the book used “tropes,” or recurring plot devices, to give the narrative momentum. Many reviewers pointed out that the prioritization of tropes over original storylines was a trend in recent romantasy publications.

Not only did books of this genre become reliant on their tropes, but people grew tired of the tropes being used. They became predictable and dull because they had been done so many times. Not just in books, but in TV shows, and in mini social media series or skits. What makes enemies-to-lovers so great is that it’s an unlikely pairing, but the commercialization of romance tropes made them very “likely.”

It wasn’t just the romance that became predictable. The fantasy aspects of the world became less original, and even the book titles began to sound the same. We’ve talked about “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” but the 2020s saw the release of “The Empress of Salt and Fortune” by Nghi Vo and “From Blood and Ash” by Jennifer L. Armentrout. Do you see a pattern?

To me, it seems that what led to the success of romantasy in the 2020s is what ultimately killed it before the decade was even over. In a time where everything felt hopeless, and routines were filled with isolation and repetition, the public craved an outlet that felt new and different. Romantasy books satisfied that need for a large group of people, creating a global craze. Ultimately, the popularity led the genre to lose what made it fresh in the first place, and readers moved on to something new.

As the saying goes, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” BookTok ate romantasy up, and left no crumbs.

Of course, there are many great romantasy writers and books being published to this day. But in order to withstand the global takeover of romantasy, these works had to cater to the deep pillars of the genre and avoid flashy tropes that pose the risk of aging poorly.

If you think I should read ACOTAR and give romantasy a chance, send me a DM on Instagram.