In the matter of a few days, two romance reading friends I follow on Instagram joined the bookish corner of Youtube referred to as Booktube. I was so excited for them and seeing them join this very influential community made me begin reflecting on the gradual surge I’ve noticed in romance reading creators on Booktube.
I discovered Booktube in 2014 shortly after moving to Texas where I knew no one. I was also coming off a four year reading hiatus, so when I found the community it was all around perfect timing. As the experience goes I think for anyone just kind of randomly coming across the community, I was initially introduced to the really big booktubers who all tend to read mostly Young Adult and Fantasy. Being freshly back into reading and just wanting to read everything I could, books in those genres are what I began picking up. Fast forward about two years though and my reading tastes started to change. I wanted something different but I wasn’t sure what. I’d just figured out that fantasy wasn’t really my thing, and I felt myself growing out of young adult. Then one day, I discovered Jessica from PeaceLoveBooksxo and she was reading romance. I spent an entire Saturday binge watching all of her old videos and thought, “Wow, she’s in lane of her own,” there wasn’t anyone else talking about the books she was talking about. That can be thing when you’re following the really popular creators, you hear about the same books because they all tend to read the same stuff. When I discovered Jess, it felt like I’d discovered Booktube all over again.
Booktube still has a lot of work to do in all aspects of representation but I’m excited to see the growing numbers of creators who are romance readers. I chatted with both Jess and another Booktube creator, Stephanie from Steph’s Romance Book Talk about the surge we are seeing.