Let me just preface this by saying I have read a lot of fantasy-romance, spicy fantasy, smutty romance, whatever you want to call it. I’m glad Sarah J. Maas (SJM) and Rebecca Yarros got a lot of people back into reading. But their astronomical success has led to a deluge of “But is it spicy???” responses on a lot of book recommendation sites. I wouldn’t mind if it was someone asking to clarify if it was an appropriate bedtime story to read to their children, but the majority of social media posts I read intend for it to mean “Is it any good if there’s no sex?”
I have recommended countless books to several readers on platforms other than Reddit and this is me writing a rant in an echo chamber to say that spice does not equate good story telling. Going through this sub I think a lot of people share this view. There are plenty of trashy, overhyped books that get torn apart here (See: ACOTAR, Fourth Wing, Haunting Adeline and more). It drives me crazy that somewhere in the world, some people have decided that if a book has sex, it must be a good book. Did they forget the times of reading lemony fanfic where even the most utterly garbage filth had readers? Maybe this started with GoT and the oversexualization of the fantasy genre when it was adapted for the big screen. Maybe social media algorithms pushing us trendy content, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
Ultimately people can read what makes them happy, but it bothers me that someone will ask for an epic fantasy with all these great plots only to snub a recommendation because there’s no steamy scenes. Tolkien wrote one of the best selling series of all time and there wasn’t anything explicit in there. Once I got out of the fantasy romance sphere, I discovered so many incredibly talented writers with very different world building that was much more elaborate than the shallow waters of what Kindle Unlimited could provide. I hope that this is just a trend and I can curate my social media feeds to be less trope-y but for now, I’ll have to carefully curate my TBR based on a more specific criteria.
by Featherflight09