Romance and fantasy have long been bedfellows. But thanks to BookTok, ‘romantasy’ is trending – online, in bookshops and on bestseller lists.
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Articles on Romance fiction
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Are romance novels all the same? Are their readers all bored housewives and BookTok girlies? Of course not! Romance experts Jodi McAlister and Jayashree Kamble debunk the myths and deliver the facts.
Briohny Doyle picked up Lessons in Chemistry not for its sassy-romance cover – which this subversive international bestseller does not deliver – but because she heard it featured a ‘good dog’.
Cultural differences and stereotypes between the Englishman and American are at the heart of the film’s humour and play a significant role in the development of their relationship.
Royal romances have been popular teen fantasies since The Princess Diaries – and earlier. Now, smash-hits like Red, White and Royal Blue are part of a wider queer young adult fiction boom.
A UK university has attached a trigger warning to Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s biting satire, for ‘toxic relationships’. Ironically, Jodi McAlister loves it for the gentle romance at its centre.
A romance writer’s bizarre fake death has gone viral. That her being alive stayed undetected for 2.5 years reminds us that our online and published personas are still separate from real life.
Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie navigates dating as a Black woman, living in a Black body, and what it’s like to straddle two cultures while never really feeling as though you fit.
Romance fiction has a reputation for being conservative, but in reality it is an innovative and uncontrollable genre.
Pre-pandemic, reading rates among teenagers were falling. But BookTok, a subculture of social media platform TikTok, has made teens read more often – and influences what they read. Here’s how it works.
Top contributors
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Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University
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Phd Candidate, Research Assistant, Queensland University of Technology
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Associate professor, Deakin University
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Professor in Writing, Deputy Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of HASS, The University of Queensland, The University of Queensland
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Professor, Queensland University of Technology
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Associate Professor in English Literatures, University of Wollongong
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Professor of Audience Research, Edith Cowan University
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PhD, Paratexts in Genre Fiction, The University of Queensland
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Research Fellow, Deakin University
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Lecturer, Creative Writing, Queensland University of Technology
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Lecturer in Education (Literacy and Language), Deakin University
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Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Surrey
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Lecturer, Creative Writing, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of English, City University of New York
