As I mentioned here yesterday, I am updating my genre program and one of the interesting things about the rise of Romantasy is the parallel trajectory of Dark Romance.
Dark Romance is not Horroromance. It is its own thing, but like Romantasy, Dark Romance definitely began as a BookTok trend. I have been following its growth since 2023 and this article via Paste entitled, "What is Dark Romance and Why is BookTok Obsessed With It?" From the article:
The name “dark romance” offers its own succinct definition of the genre. It’s a field of romantic stories where the themes and content are far more adult and taboo-busting than is generally seen in mainstream fare. If traditional romance is defined by its happy endings and declarations of love winning over all else, its shadowy sibling is more willing to push the boundaries of what actually counts as love. You tend to know a dark romance when you see one. The covers are typically black or red, with titles like Twisted Love, Forbidden, Hooked, Scarred, Deviant King, and so on. Dark romance books often contain stories about abduction and kidnapping or play around with BDSM and blur the lines of consent. Emotions are high, as is the sexual content. The heroes are anything but, often occupying roles in criminal underworlds such as motorcycle gangs and the mafia. Some are outright killers. Morality is optional, but pleasure is not.
That article was published back in November of 2023, and while the popularity about and conversation around Dark Romance has steadily grown since then, I did notice it burst into the mainstream through this February's Romance coverage across many different platforms.
So today, I thought I would share some of the links I have been collecting. Some, like the one above lists books and engage in a useful discussion about why people love these books, but others are just lists of books.
- Why Readers Love Dark Romance via The Saturday Evening Post
- Goodreads' shelf for Dark Romance
- All the threads discussing and suggesting Dark Romance on reddit
- Via SelfPublshing.com: How to Write Dark Romance: Defining This Alluring Genre
- An article from the author side of the equation. Fascinating. You should always consider a resource like this.
- The PRH page of their Dark Romances: When the largest publisher makes an entire page (that can be caught through a simple Google search) on a genre, you know that it is popular.
Before I let you go, another huge trend in all fiction for 2025 is that everything is "cozy." Now this may seem like I don't mean everything because by definition something like Dark Romance cannot be cozy. Well, let me present "What is 'Cozy' Dark Romance?" (via Book Riot) as evidence that I do mean everything.
However, let me also add as a caveat, that "cozy" means different things to each person. And in this case, someone who enjoys a Cozy Mystery or even a TJ Klune Cozy Fantasy, may not find cozy Dark Romance as appealing. But that is the way the human brain works as we have conversations to suss out each reader's unique appeal factors for the books they love and why. Thankfully, because the human brain does not make sense on a plotted data graph-- ever-- we will never be out of a job.
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