Romance novels are picking up steam
Love affair for romance books
The following article appeared in the June 24, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
As Charlotte libraries are primed for record check-outs, a mobile bookstore taps into the growing desire for love stories; ‘Bookstagram’ chats about ‘book boyfriends’
Inside Trope Bookshop, a mobile romance bookstore, owner Katie Mitchell organizes the shelves around “tropes,” or how the plot is structured. Mitchell drives the converted school bus around Charlotte, parking outside of coffee shops, breweries, street markets and more.
by Lindsey Banks
Katie Mitchell serves as a matchmaker for women all over Charlotte — not in the traditional sense of pairing them with flesh-and-blood partners, but by helping them find love in a different way.
Outside of her place of business, which happens to be a dark green bus, a sign reveals her mission: “Come on in and find your new book boyfriend.”
Mitchell, 33, is the owner of Trope Bookshop, a mobile bookstore that travels around the Charlotte area, partnering with breweries, coffee shops, street markets and other local events. Inside, she sells a curated selection of romance novels replete with perfectly crafted fictional boyfriends.
Business is hot, Mitchell says. And for those who follow literary trends, it’s not surprising, given the rise of the romance genre in Charlotte and elsewhere. Charlotte’s library system predicts a record number of romance books will be checked out in 2024, and any shyness that might have once accompanied the genre has been replaced by flames.
Most of Trope’s customers are women, Mitchell says, looking to escape into a fictional world where the men are always tall, attentive and sensitive. (Avid romance readers call this phenomenon “men written by women” — or how a woman would cast her ideal man.)
Heterosexual love interests are at the center of most of the books, although the mobile shop does carry a section of LGBTQ+ romance novels. In an occasional plot twist, Mitchell says she’s seen men wander into her English pub-style book bus, usually confused and leaving empty-handed.
“We (women) are taking back something that was taken from us — what people used to call ‘cheugy’ or ‘basic’ or ‘frivolous,’” she said.
Why is romance on fire? Readers have devoured romance novels for centuries, like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” In recent history, they’ve included the bodice-rippers of the 1970s and the Harlequin romances and prolific authors like Danielle Steel of the 1980s and 1990s. And there have been breakthrough hits, like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which was published in 2011.
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library didn’t list romance as a genre until 2018, according to the library’s romantic fiction selector, Megan Millea.
Big increase in borrowing: Now, it’s a genre that’s capturing hearts by the thousands. Charlotte Mecklenburg Library patrons checked out 45,767 romance books during the 2023 fiscal year. So far this fiscal year, which ends on July 1, more than 60,380 romance books have been borrowed. The library system has a monthly book club for romance novel enthusiasts, called the “Shelf Indulgence Book Club.”
Nationally, romance is now the highest-earning fiction genre. In the U.S., sales more than doubled from 2020 to 2023, from $18M in 2020 to $36M in 2023.
There are multiple reasons for the love affair with romance books, Mitchell said. Online communities like TikTok’s “BookTok” and Instagram’s “Bookstagram” allow readers to chat about books and their favorite “book boyfriends,” or desirable male characters.
The pandemic was also a defining time for reading, as many people turned to books after exhausting TV show and movie options, Mitchell said, desperate for a good story to distract from all the bad happening in the world. Romance offered lighthearted plots and happy endings.
Cheryl Campbell, a local indie author who appeared at a book signing event Trope held last week at Legion Brewing in Plaza Midwood, said she read 300 books in 2020 during quarantine. She found herself gravitating toward romance novels, which was out of her norm.
“I'm much more of a whodunit (mystery) person, but I didn’t need the angst,” she said. “So I started reading a lot of romance novels, and then eventually I was like, ‘I can do this.’”
She decided to try her hand at writing a love story. Campbell has since written and self-published three sports romance books inspired by the Savannah Bananas baseball team — “Trouble at First,” “Sliding into Home” and “Living the Suite Life” — and is currently working on her fourth.
Kelsey Painter, another local indie author at Trope’s book signing event, said she believes the mindset around the genre is changing, too.
“It’s always been a popular genre,” Painter said, “but I feel like more and more, people are just not ashamed of liking the genre anymore. It does sort of imply sex, and I think that there’s less sexual shame, and therefore, the romance genre has been able to come to the forefront.”
Painter, 29, has written three books — “We’ll Meet Again,” “The Keeper and I” and “Ship of Dreams” — and has another coming out next month. In her day job, she works in sales for an electrical manufacturing representative.
A bookstore on wheels — and a community: Mitchell, who’s from Arkansas and moved to Charlotte in 2013, left her corporate logistics job in July of 2022 and worked at a wine and cheese shop in the Belmont neighborhood. Her love for reading reignited during the pandemic, and when she stumbled upon a romance-only book store in Los Angeles called the Ripped Bodice on social media, she was inspired to open one of her own.
Mitchell searched for potential storefront locations in Plaza Midwood, but she realized that with high rents, a brick-and-mortar store wouldn’t be possible. One of her friends mentioned a mobile book cart she saw in Central Park on a recent New York City trip. Mitchell went on Facebook Marketplace and found a school bus on her first search, something she calls “happenstance.”
Mitchell purchased the bus and hired the seller to help her convert it into an English pub-style, dark and cozy bookstore. In October 2023, Mitchell opened Trope Bookshop.
The bus, known as “Green Girl,” is organized by tropes, ranging from workplace romance to romantasy (romantic fantasy). There’s even a section for local romance authors.
Trope Bookshop, affectionately known as “Green Girl,” was once a school bus. Owner Katie Mitchell (pictured) hired someone to convert the vehicle to a bookstore, which involved removing the seats, laying down flooring and building shelves. (Headshot courtesy of Katie Mitchell)
Mitchell spends her free time scouring BookTok and Bookstagram, searching for books to add to her store and own reading list. She also sells bookish merchandise, like T-shirts, tote bags and stickers for Kindle covers.
Mitchell has created a community for romance book lovers in Charlotte. She started a book club in January, called the Troop Trope Book Club, which is held on the second Thursday of the month at Monday Night Brewing in South End. The club averages about 30 to 40 people at each meeting, and they spend the time sharing their thoughts on the selected book and discussing which actors they would cast if the book were to be made into a movie.
Playing literary matchmaker: When someone comes into Trope Bookshop asking for a recommendation, Mitchell says she first asks if they have any hard boundaries on things they don’t want to read. She then asks for their favorite TV shows or other books they like.
Mitchell says the appeal of a romance book is similar to that of watching a comfort show — something you return to again and again because it’s a familiar and warm escape from the real world.
📕 Curious about romance? Here’s a glossary of terms and some notes on trends:
Romance subgenres: It’s not just “romance” anymore. It’s romantasy (a mix of romance and fantasy), or it’s sports romance (a love story that takes place in a sports setting) or it’s dark romance (which usually features a toxic male lead with trauma), among many others.
Tropes: Tropes describe the type of love story that unfolds between the love interests. There are more than a dozen, including enemies-to-lovers or friends-to-lovers, grumpy-sunshine (which usually features a bubbly main character who softens the heart of the grumpy love interest), one bed (which means the love interests are forced to share a room with only one bed) and fake dating (when two people decide they’re going to pretend to date to make someone jealous, and then they accidentally fall in love).
Spice level: It’s a common inquiry these days to ask what the “spice” level of a certain book is before reading, referring to the amount and intensity of the sex scenes in the book.
Interconnected standalones: This refers to a series of books that can be read out of order. There are overlapping characters among the books, but each character gets their story to shine, Mitchell said.
Third-act breakup: It’s typical for the two romantic leads in a book to have a big fight or breakup toward the end of the book before they inevitably get back together. But some romance authors are straying away from that, Campbell said she’s noticed. (All of her books have a third-act breakup, she says.) Some readers purposefully seek out books without a third-act breakup.
Ending acronyms: If you see HEA or HFN written in a book review, know that HEA stands for “Happily Ever After” and HFN stands for “Happy For Now.” HEAs wrap up the love story in a neat, pretty bow in which the couple stays together indefinitely. Books that end with an HFN mean the couple is in a good spot for now, but their future together is not guaranteed.
Lindsey Banks is a staff reporter for The Ledger: lindsey@cltledger.com
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