Ever had a crush on a faerie? If not, then you clearly haven’t embraced the “romantasy” craze yet — the book genre, known for the “spicy” (a.k.a.
smutty) scenes, that’s set to hit over $600 million in sales in 2024. It all began with the A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series by Sarah J. Maas.
The books were a pretty big hit when the first title was published back in 2015 but went truly, epically global when BookTok cottoned on more recently. Maas has now sold over 40 million copies of the five books in her series, in 38 different languages, and hashtags related to them have attracted more than 14 billion views on TikTok, by devoted fans of all ages who spout theories, play dress-up and rank their favorite titles. It’s no surprise that the ACOTAR series, which begins with 19-year-old huntress Feyre being held captive by a sexy-but-dangerous faerie overlord after she kills a wolf in the woods, has now been optioned for a TV adaptation by Hulu too.
Maas isn’t the only runaway success story in the genre either: Rebecca Yarros, author of the Empyrean series, which includes Fourth Wing, and Jennifer L. Armentrout, known for the Blood and Ash series, are also huge players and have adaptations in development at Amazon. Of course, lusting over mythical figures is nothing new: look at Interview With The Vampire, Twilight and even Beauty and the Beast.
But in the “romantasy” genre (we don’t need to explain that it’s a portmanteau of romance and fantasy, r.