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I was very aware of the hot take on it being conservative propaganda. I think the specific phrasing was conservative propaganda for tradwives with a patriarchy king.

We are putting a microscope into women's bookshelves. But women are still people and it can also reinforce patriarchy.

If you've been in a bookstore lately or even just walk by a newsstand or airport book display,

you might have seen a sudden increase in a certain type of book.

Maybe it has dragons on the cover, or those fancy colored edges,

or a portrait of a gorgeous fairy on the cover.

That's F-A-E-R-I-E fairy, if you're spelling it, by the way.

Dragons and fairies.

You might think these books contain some classic fantasy epic a la Lord of the Rings.

Well, you would be wrong.

Books like A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Moss, or Akatar, if you're in the know,

are being billed as romanticie, a blend of romance and fantasy.

And this new genre is taking the publishing industry by storm.

Bloomberg estimates that in 2024, Romanticy sales totaled over $600 million,

up from about $450 million the year before.

It's one of the fastest growing genres of books.

A lot of those readers will talk about it as a space for exploring feelings of feminine

rage about a culture that they feel is increasingly turning misogynistic.

But with all of this popularity comes a whole host of questions.

Is Romantic see just an old-fashioned reductive romance novel with a few dragons thrown in?

Or something more sinister?

...