Arvyn Cerezo is an arts and culture writer/reporter with bylines in Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, South China Morning Post, PhilSTAR Life, the Asian Review of Books, and other publications. You can find them on arvyncerezo.com and @arvyncerezo.com on Bluesky.
The rise of romantasy was thanks largely to BookTok. The TikTok community, whose initial surge in popularity has leveled off, has given rise to numerous best-selling romantasy hits and BookTok sensations. Here at Book Riot, we somehow accurately predicted its continuous rise as more and more readers come to love the perfect blend of romance and fantasy.
But, as the publishing industry is known for being driven by trends, nothing lasts forever. Is the romantasy trend over after a few years of striking while the iron is hot? Have readers had enough with the subgenre? Has romantasy peaked, just as BookTok’s novelty has worn off?
The Current State of Romantasy
The genres of romance and fantasy have always been popular. But they have grown in immense popularity because of BookTok, to the point where publishers are releasing more and more of them, even as the community’s popularity plateaus.
All Access members, read on for more discussion about the current state of romantasy, including quotes from publishing and marketing experts.
Arvyn Cerezo is an arts and culture writer/reporter with bylines in Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, South China Morning Post, PhilSTAR Life, the Asian Review of Books, and other publications. You can find them on arvyncerezo.com and @arvyncerezo.com on Bluesky.
At the same time, some authors continue to employ the common tropes that Sarah J. Maas used in her best-selling romantasy novels. Maas didn’t invent romantic fantasy novels, and the tropes she employs aren’t exactly novel, but she popularized the term “romantasy” and helped to launch its popularity. The majority of her books feature stories about fae, enemies-turned-lovers, or princes and princesses, but readers have begun to express their fatigue with this formula.
Is the steam gone from romantasy, then?
Romantasy made sense during the pandemic and other worldly tragedies as it became our escapism, says Simran Kaur Sandhu, editor at The Novelry. But she’s noticed that since publishers are churning it out en masse and have so “cynically created a trope-driven market that boils down every interaction to a neat phrase,” it feels like we’re drowning in very similar stories rather than finding new ways to keep that guilty-pleasure feeling going, according to her.
“Romantasy used to feel exciting, and blocking out the world felt like a hard-earned treat—now the world is even scarier, and the books haven’t changed with it, so they often feel disconnected or like they’re missing opportunities to show us what we didn’t know we wanted, which is what romantasy did best. We’ve lost that sense of surprise, and honestly, with AI in the mix now, I want to feel connected to what my authors are saying and why they’re saying it, even in my escapism,” she says.
For Laura Chamberlain, Associate Director of Marketing at Bookshop.org, the romantasy trend is still alive and well—people will always enjoy a romance novel in which the heroine falls for a vampire, fae, or werewolf. “But the big romantasy trend with ACOTAR and Fourth Wing seems to be slowing a bit,” she elaborates. She believes that a movie or series based on these series would pique people’s interest significantly.
Romantasy remains popular, at least on Goodreads, according to its managing editor Cybil Wallace. She reports that three of the top four books marked as “read” in the platform’s 2025 Reading Challenge so far are Onyx Storm, Fourth Wing, and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. Furthermore, she reveals that from the website’s Reading Challenge data, Sarah J. Maas’s popularity remains strong, with eight titles ranking among the top 30 most-read books in the challenge.
Wallace also notes that romantasy is rapidly evolving and incorporating new elements, citing the rise of dystopian romance with the success of Dani Frances’ Silver Elite and early buzz surrounding Ariel Sullivan’s Conform.
She says that her team is also seeing lots of authors established in other genres diving into the romantasy waters, potentially bringing their fanbases with them such as historical romance authors Amalie Howard with The Starlight Heir and Sophie Jordan with A Fire in the Sky, thriller writer Rachel Howzell Hall with The Last One, and YA fantasy author Isabel Ibañez, making her adult romantasy debut next January with Graceless Heart.
“I think romantasy is not going anywhere anytime soon, but the elements of what we think of as a typical romantasy will evolve,” says Jane Nutter from independent publisher Kensington, noting that authors will continue to play with and remix the elements.
The romantasy subgenre may have reached its peak. But while the initial clamor surrounding it appears to have subsided, it’s heading in a different direction. Though the initial excitement surrounding ACOTAR and Fourth Wing—two of the most successful romantasy series so far—has faded, more and more authors are experimenting with other genres and niching down.
“When genres get hot, they tend to get oversold. It’s the whole bandwagon phenomenon, so then the market gets flooded with books that maybe aren’t as strong as those that started the trend, and then everyone says, ‘X is dead!’,” says CJ Spataro, author of More Strange Than True and director of the MA in publishing program at Rosemont College. “But everything cycles back around eventually. That’s just the nature of publishing.”
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