Not Exactly <i>Boyfriend Material</i>: A Romance Reader's Guide to the London Literary Scene

Photo credit: Grace Williams |

When traveling outside your favorite literary genre, one should go where the road takes you.  ♦

For a New Adult Romance reader, shopping in a Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million in the United States is a study in self-control. Shelves upon shelves of colorful, slightly cartoonish covers line the walls, and there is always a new romance story to discover. However, when I walked into my first Waterstones bookstore in London, my eyes were not drawn to the hundreds of colorful paperbacks that mark my favorite section. Instead, I had to search high and low for a table titled “Booktok Romances.” As I glanced over the table, I quickly realized there was going to be a problem. When Booktok, TikTok’s community for readers, became popular during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, I spent all of my time reading every recommendation. It is safe to say that if a romance book has been featured on Booktok in the last three years, I have read it. This became precisely my problem when I looked at the table in that pivotal Waterstones: out of fifteen Booktok recommendations, I had read twelve. My brain, though, was hardwired to stick with my favorite genre, so I chose one of the three I didn’t know and walked to the register. But as I stood there, my new status as a “London Adventurer” gave me pause. I thought to myself, “If romance books are not as popular here, maybe I should try something new.” So I quickly snatched up a highly recommended mystery called The Three Dahlias and purchased it. My reading adventure as a Literary Tourist in London had begun.

The first change I made when visiting bookstores in London was to buy books in gen-

Discovering something new (in a second-
hand bookshop)

res I never would have considered before. At my second Waterstones, I purchased a mystery that was described as “Agatha Christie-esque.” Next, I purchased a horror novel at a Foyles near Southbank Market. I have always had an aversion to scary movies, but I reminded myself that I was not in London to stay in my comfort zone, so I chose a Stephen King novel and ran with it. Finally, as a New Adult Romance reader, I tend to avoid classics such as Dickens and Brontë. However, on a trip to a small, family-run bookseller, I spotted the most beautiful copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I felt drawn to it in a way I do not think I would have been if I were only perusing the familiar romance section. My "comfort zone" was shattered during my tour of London’s bookstores, but I am incredibly excited to discover new worlds and genres.

I was absolutely not opposed to purchasing books that included romance, though. I found during my journey that an interesting game to play was to find romance books in other sections of stores instead of relying on their paltry tables specifically for the genre. My first stop was to the fantasy section in Foyles. It took at least two walkthroughs and the help of my friends, but I found a novel titled Once Upon a Broken Heart, which follows a strong heroine who partners with a man for a mission. I visited Forbidden Planet, a comic book store, and was convinced I would not be interested in any of the stories I found there. However, while parsing the shelves, I discovered a copy of Heartstopper, a graphic novel about the growing romance between two teenage boys. Melding my first love (pun intended) with another type of book has been a satisfying way to be a book-buyer in London, and it’s helped me realize there’s more out there for romance readers like me than second-chance romances and enemies-to-lovers stories.

A return to the familiar

Interestingly, once I left the confines of London I discovered a store which reminded me of every bookstore in the United States, with wall-to-wall displays of both the most popular Booktok Romances and brand-new reads by authors such as Ana Huang, Tessa Bailey, and Ali Hazelwood. This was in a bookstore in Stratford Upon Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, and I took the opportunity in Stratford to purchase every book I typically would have bought the day it came out back in my hometown. This return to normalcy brought me comfort on the fifth week of my stay in London, and I enjoyed finally being able to introduce some of the novelists I love to my travel companions.

When I first came to London, I did not expect to be barred so drastically from my favorite genre. I’d traveled here with the goal of bringing home a whole shelf’s worth of books, and at first it felt like I would have to let that goal go. But my experience as a literary tourist has changed my view, and I’ve learned that staying inside my comfort zone may be easy, but it won’t always impact my perspective and how I look at the world the same way that travelling outside my comfortable genres will. When I return to America, my goal is to walk into a Barnes and Noble and ignore the colorful call of the romance section in favor of fantasy, mystery, or some entirely new category. I came to London a New Adult Romance reader with no interest in other genres, but I’m leaving as a reader who does not sequester herself into one genre or category of literature. I couldn’t be prouder of that.

About the Author

Grace Williams is an English Literature major at Miami University. Her hobbies include reading and buying books (yes, those are two separate activities) and traveling the world. She is currently studying abroad in London, England.