When the BookTok trend on TikTok amassed popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, crowds made up of almost entirely women found a renewed love of reading. Some of the most popular titles that emerged on social media were newfound celebrities in the romance genre — “Ice Plant Barbarians,” “A Court of Thorns and Roses” and the 2022 hockey rom-com “Icebreaker.”
However, with the rising popularity of romance in public spheres instead of the traditionally hidden bookstore shelves full of mass-market paperbacks came a new wave of criticism — a claim that BookTok’s recommendations and community “ruin” the intellectualism of literature in the modern day.
I am no stranger to wandering the whimsical, chaotic lands of BookTok. As an avid reader, I’ve watched the platform grow from a niche obsession to a full-blown cultural force, and through this, I realized that what many critics might call “cringe” can actually be revolutionary.
On a platform like BookTok, women aren’t just reading — they’re making space for their fantasies, their crushes and their desires. Romance novels dominate the subculture, but young adult novels, indulgent fantasy worlds, and even teen rom-coms that might have once been hidden in the shame aisle of your local bookstore are now flaunted across social media platforms.
Content creators post unabashedly about swoony heroes, scandalous plot twists and morally grey love interests, creating a culture where female pleasure is not just acknowledged, but actually celebrated. In these spaces, female desire is no longer relegated to soft whispers in a book club. It’s now shouted across feeds with hashtags, recommendations and video essays, challenging the centuries of literary gatekeeping that have dismissed women’s interests as trivial.
In American literature, women’s desire has always been seen as less important and relevant than men’s. While men read less than women, they also have a habit of avoiding books written by women themselves.
A Nielsen Book Research study states that out of 10 bestselling male authors, “readership was roughly evenly divided by gender, with 55% male readers and 45% female readers. In contrast, only 19% of the 10 bestselling female authors’ readers were male, compared to 81% female.” Most of the authors featured in online communities like BookTok are female, so it’s no surprise that most of their audience is as well.
Of course, some of the criticism the community faces isn’t entirely unfounded. BookTok tends to lean toward viral, emotionally intense reads, which are often romance, fantasy or young adult novels, over the more traditional “literary” works. This ideal can explode certain titles into the mainstream while leaving others in the shadows.
There is also a performative and commodifying aspect to many of these trends, and a book’s virality does not necessarily guarantee its quality. However, BookTok also does an excellent job at challenging the rigid gatekeeping that has long dictated which books are considered “worthy” of attention and praise.
The platform may not be perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. In celebrating female desire, pleasure and communal joy in reading, it accomplishes something far more radical than online intellectual elitism can.
BookTok is less about educational approval, and more about cultivating a culture of imagination and joy. It’s a space where women are not just consumers of culture, but recommenders, curators and critics who shape the conversations around which stories matter to them.
By amplifying voices and genres that traditional literary hierarchies have often ignored, BookTok doesn’t diminish our intellectualism — it redefines it in terms that center the unique perspectives of women. It proves that joy, desire and community are important intellectual forces in their own right.
