Romance’s time to shine

With new bookstores, events, and the hottest TV series ever to grace our screens, my beloved genre is finally starting to get its due.

Prior to writing, I worked at a romance publisher. For fifteen years, I acquired, edited and published books across commercial fiction genres, but romance was always the genre that kept the business’s lights on. It’s long been a bestselling genre with a dedicated readership. Including yours truly.

But in the context of the wider world in which I lived, romance was a ghost. Nobody I knew outside of work read it, and there was always a bit of a smirk on anyone’s face when I’d mention it was my favourite genre. There were so many times I walked into indie bookstores in Toronto and asked where the romance section was, only to be faced with blank stares. I could find romance novels at big retailers like Indigo, maybe, but lots of other bookstores didn’t stock them. Or, if they did, they certainly didn’t have dedicated sections for them. Among Canadian publishers besides the one I worked for, it was hard to find editors or imprints interested in acquiring romance. Despite it being a massive, successful industry, the stigma against the genre felt very real.

(I won’t get into the general societal misogyny that fed this stigma—that’s a whole nother conversation we can have over a drink sometime…)

Fast-forward to a post-pandemic world in which romance’s readership has grown exponentially, driven in large part by passionate young readers who are doing the lord’s work by singing their favourite books from the rooftops (or, more accurately, their booktoks and bookstagrams). Suddenly publishers and retailers have started clamoring to acquire, publish, stock, and sell romance novels in a way they never have before. (Lucky for me, since that paved the way for The Book Tour to find its publishing home. 💛)

In just 2025 in Toronto alone, we’ve seen so many strides forward for romance: The Toronto Public Library’s BookCrush festival in the summer was a great event for the romance community to come together and celebrate their favourite authors and books. The first-ever romance-only brick-and-mortar bookstore, Hopeless Romantic, opened its doors this fall (and it is GORGEOUS—if you are local, or even if you’re not, it is worth a trip or ten). And just a few weeks ago the Toronto International Festival of Authors hosted Ever After, its first ever in-person festival celebrating the genre of our hearts.

I was happy to be invited to be a panelist at Ever After, where I got to chat with other fabulous authors about tropes, our unique roads to publishing, and what it is about romance that draws so many readers and allows it to stand the test of time.

Lipsticked and lanyarded at TIFA’s Ever After

It is really starting to feel like, after so many years of being relegated into unseen corners in Canada, romance is finally starting to get its day in the sun.

Cue the next significant leap forward: Heated Rivalry. A fan-favourite m/m hockey romance by Canadian author Rachel Reid, adapted for Canadian TV by Jacob Tierney, this show has taken the world by storm—and for good reason. As of my writing this we’ve only seen three episodes since its premiere on November 28^th, but already this show is an absolute masterpiece. Not only do the actors bring our beloved MMCs, Shane & Ilya, to life with superb acting and the best chemistry I’ve seen between romance leads in…my life?...but Tierney is treating this adaptation with the utmost care and respect for the book on which it’s based, its author, its fans, and the romance genre in general. He and everyone on the show very clearly took it seriously, which I’m convinced is one of the major reasons romance fans are going feral for it (me included—if you follow me on socials you are well aware…maybe too well aware 🙃).

I can’t stress how meaningful this is. Often when we’ve seen romances adapted to screen, they’ve been watered down or changed so much that they fail to hit the very notes that made fans love the book in the first place. Producers try to get as broad a reach as possible, to scoop up mainstream viewers outside of the romance community, usually to the adaptation’s disservice. Not so with HR, which is so faithful to the source material that readers get to see every element that made them rabid for the book brought to life on screen. Including the spice, which is so central to the romantic development between our MMCs in this story, and which the show is leaning right into—beautifully I might add (the rarest of all in adaptations). This show is the opposite of watered-down: it’s concentrated—romance in its original form, satisfying to both longtime romance readers hungry to see the genre properly represented on screen and to non-romance readers who realize they’ve never seen something like this on TV…and they are into it.

Seeing a beloved book adapted with such love, respect, and belief in the genre and its readership is one of the most validating experiences I, as a longtime romance reader, have had. (And, judging by the internet, I am but one among millions!) It feels like a massive stride forward for the genre and I hope it only heralds more great things to come.

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Recent reads (and rereads):

Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second book in Rachel’s Game Changers series is my emotional support reread of the season. At this point, just hook it to my veins. It’s the perfect fodder for obsessive reading: the character dynamics, their connection that builds through physical intimacy toward the emotional, and in this case the level-11 yearning brought on by the context of their circumstances. Ilya and Shane simply own my heart. Read before or during or after watching the show—or all of the above.

Sparring Partners by Erin Rose (coming March 31/26): This high-heat enemies-to-lovers debut packs a serious emotional punch. Writing duo Erin Rose have the laudable talent of being able to combine scorching-hot spice with aching tenderness, a true masterclass in romance writing that I’ve bookmarked for further studying, LOL. The banter, the chemistry, the vulnerability—I fell hard for their characters and am so looking forward to their next offering. With the cast of characters they introduced in this first of a series, I know we’re in for treat after treat.

Don’t Tell Me How It Ends by Adrienne Thurman (coming April 14/26): An author to watch! Adrienne has such a gift for words, such a command of language, such a depth of insight into the human psyche, such a razor-sharp wit and an emotional acumen that reading her debut novel is less entertainment (although it is definitely that) and more cathartic experience. The characters feel vividly alive and their romantic and familial relationships jump off the page through the author’s uniquely creative, funny, thoughtful voice. Greedily hankering for her next book already…

Crash Test by Amy James: I thought I’d read a chapter or two before bed and the next thing I knew it was 200 pages later and the only thing asleep were my legs. This F1 m/m story is unlike any romance I’ve ever read—the structure is utterly unique and captivating, the stakes are sky-high from page 1, and the pace moves like the race cars the characters drive for a living. Also if you love a good “dudes in therapy” trope, which who doesn’t, this’ll scratch your itch nicely. I was fully sucked in.

*The middle two are fellow debuts whose books release this spring—they’re up for preorder now and I highly recommend scooping them up! 📚