March 4, 2025

Romance Readers Love Libraries

behind the scenes of a recent interview

I am so excited to share an article that I was recently interviewed for! Nikki DeMarco’s piece How Libraries and Librarians Support Romance was published on Book Riot last week, and I do hope that many of you will head on over there to read it.

As with most interview situations, only a portion of my full responses were included in the published piece, but Nikki was fine with me sharing my entire answers with YOU!

Here you go ~ my unedited initial answers to Nikki’s prompts copied straight from our Google Doc. I had a lot more to say about these things than I thought I would when I sat down to dash off some quick answers!

• How do you curate romance titles to ensure the collection meets your patrons’ needs?

In my grades 6-8 middle school library, I seek out romances targeted for middle and high schoolers, typically purchasing any well-reviewed titles recommended through age 14. My students very much want more queer romances and culturally diverse romances, so I try to buy any that I can find. My library was very conservative with a tiny skewed-young romance collection before I took over this fall, and I have dedicated a lot of time and money to building this collection. It’s interesting, though, because although the adult market is (over)saturated with romance, it feels like there just aren’t as many young adult and middle grade romances being published as there are realistic fiction (general) and fantasy, thrillers, etc, or maybe the line is just murkier given the sex of it all. 

My library is genrefied, so students are always able to find romance titles easily, and I have also taught them how to utilize filters in the catalog to search for specific subgenres and representation. For example, tap on Romance, and then choose the LGBTQIA+ filter, or Graphic Novel filter, etc. 

Middle school is pretty wild, though, because 11 year old 6th graders and 14-year-old 8th graders are completely different readers, just like kindergartners and 5th graders are in elementary school. For some reason, though, that’s more accepted and delineated than the 6th-8th maturity gap. If you do a search for “middle school romance” it’s not much that my students are actually wanting to read. Everyone wants to read up, which is a tale as old as reading has existed, I’m sure, so 6th graders don’t really want to read about 6th grade relationships, and everyone in middle school wants to read about high schoolers and older. Maybe the 6th graders would read about an 8th grader, but they’d prefer high school.

The students willing to read from my collection are gaga for Jenny Han and Heartstopper still (thanks Netflix!)  and we really need another series like those to take off.  I would also love for there to be another mega-series like Sweet Valley High again, with the promise of eternally new titles providing a healthy soapy dramatic diet for these young adults. 

In addition, my 8th graders especially are flocking to BookTok for their book recommendations, which is landing them in solidly adult territory. This has caused some discontent, since I can’t purchase the “spicy” books they are wanting, so they are bringing titles such as Icebreaker by Hannah Grace and Twisted Love by Ana Huang to school from home. I don’t really have a solution for this, as nothing I can buy can really compare? So I guess my message to young adult authors is to write about characters shortly after high school who do things besides actually having graphic sex on the page? Emma Lord actually does a great job of this!

Another example I’m thinking of that isn’t quite romance, but is technically an adult title and still perfectly acceptable for middle school. The new version of Ambition by Natalie Keller Reinert is a great example ~ drama in the adult horse world with a younger adult protagonist that scratches the “reading up” itch, but doesn’t center sex despite there being romance in the book. 

In general, I think the topic of whether there can be sex, or even an allusion to sex, in books for middle schoolers is a fascinating one, and one that library colleagues (and the general population) around the country definitely have different feelings about. 

• What do you think libraries are doing—or could do—to help romance gain more recognition as a serious genre?

I think many public libraries are doing great things, and there are always Valentines’ Day displays and such, but I think that promoting romance year-round is always helpful. There are high school libraries doing romance book clubs, including ones with sexy older titles, but that’s not really something I can do at my middle school. I plan to do genre deep dives this semester with my students and exposing all students of all genders and preferences to the genre through 1st chapter read alouds and such can definitely help as well. 

As a librarian to my staff, I am talking a LOT about my own reading preferences and included steamy romances right along National Book Award winners in my recommended adult title lists that I share with staff. James by Percival Everett is next to Flawless by Elsie Silver because they should be equal as valid reading experiences.. When I shared about our Mystery Date with a Book event coming up at a staff meeting, I included “super steamy” along with “contains mention of suicide” as a content note people might want to include on the wrapper. I want staff to feel comfortable bringing a romance book for the book exchange! 

When a staff member handed me a copy of a super graphically brutal thriller that she wanted me to read, we had a great discussion about why things like that are perfectly acceptable to talk about and pass around at work, but some people feel that sexy romances aren’t acceptable to talk about or have on our desks. Oh, and at a library meeting, I was loud and proud about my favorite subgenre being queer hockey romances. We have to TALK about these books, the same as we talk about any other books! One of my librarian friends said that her book count for a recent year was a certain number, “not counting the smut, of course.” Wait, what?!? SMUT COUNTS!

I hope you enjoyed getting to read my full input for the Book Riot piece, and don’t forget to head over there to read the full article! I know I certainly wouldn’t have fallen in love with the romance genre when I was a teen if it hadn’t been for the public library, and I know my students are very happy that my own school library’s romance collection is growing so much this year.

Thanks for stopping by!