The perversion of modern literature must end

Literature has not been the same since the rise of romance novels, a movement largely led by BookTok.

Romance is the leading genre in book sales in the U.S. According to Writers of The West, in 2026, the leading genre’s sales are 44 million in romance, 26 million in suspense and thriller, 24 million in fantasy and six million in science fiction.

The overwhelming market share of romance novels compared to other genres makes sense when you consider the recent generation’s high levels of self-reported loneliness and a rapidly growing need to fill their lives with characters from popular literature. The growth of romance, however, has some serious implications the reputation of modern literature.

One of the most troubling outlooks in literature recently is that it is heavily oversexualized and entangled with social media. A growing trend called BookTok, which started on TikTok, is group made up of mainly women who share books with one another, give reviews and have literary discussions. The BookTok community has been widely associated with adult and young adult books that involve sexual topics.

Romance has a shaky reputation for being repetitive, corny, and unfiltered.

Stat Significant says modern romance books are the result of three cultural shifts in literature: BookTok/book clubs, the blending of romance and fantasy and graphic sex. BookTok, which supported the romance genre greatly, accumulated a large community of readers very quickly, leading people to label every popular book they do not know as a “BookTok thing.”

The blending of romance and fantasy into a subgenre called romantasy was inspired by the novel “Twilight,” by Stephanie Meyer. Romantasy has many different subdivisions which incorporate things like werewolves, vampires, fairies and various other types of magical creatures into a stereotypical romance story but has also popularized a common trope in writing known as “enemies-to-lovers.” Romantasy also inspired a not so wholesome change in the romance genre, which often finds itself entangled with romantasy: unambiguous depictions of sex, often of an explicit or nearly pornographic nature. For example, he bestselling romance novel of all time, Fifty Shades of Grey is infamous for its explicit sex scenes and depictions of BDSM and has only further encouraged the normalization of lewd content into the mainstream.

According to Ryleigh Roper from The Collegian, it is nearly impossible to go to bookstores today and not have sexually explicit books shoved down your throat. Ryleigh attributed this trend to a rise in BookTok culture, which rose significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ryleigh mentioned how the community began as wholesome but took a dark turn into books such as “Credence” by Penelope Douglas, which they describe as “nothing less than diabolical.” Ryleigh poses an important question regarding the sanctity of modern literature, but especially BookTok: “To buy pornography, one must be at least 18 years old, so why isn’t that standard applied to books with the same material?”

As a side note, Ryleigh also mentions how certain books appear child friendly on the cover, with pastel colors and cute characters and thus actively draw in the wrong audiences. I personally agree with this and think there should be greater warning surrounding books with explicit content, so minors will not unwillingly be exposed.

Books that relate to growing themes of feminine ideals, homosexuality, race and identity were some of the first books to be placed on the easily visible stands in most bookstores I came across. Many of the novels I came across had finely decorated covers, which I believe are meant to entice readers with cool art instead of actual literary substance. Books do not sell based on merit in today's economy; they feed the innermost desires of the reader.

One of the more recognisable, grossly explicit, books that I have encountered when shopping for books has the rather unsavory name “Morning Glory Milking Farm.” Written by C. M. Nascosta, this book is one of the loudest examples of the despicable decline of the romance genre I have encountered so far.

The novel is accessible to anyone with a credit card on Goodreads, has highly suggestive cover art and contains a combination of extreme sexual content and romantasy in a story about a desperate woman who starts a career of “milking” minotaurs for a living.

It is books like Morning Glory Milking Farm, that show the direction that modern literature is starting to slip into, and for the sake of people’s reading habits, shows how important it is for the perversion of modern literature to be stopped.