Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Emily Henry. You can even throw Sarah J. Mass or Otessa Moshfegh in the mix. These are the authors I’d like to pronounce as the crowned jewels of a magical place called BookTok.
BookTok is likely the most educational side of the short-form video app TikTok, where bibliophiles gather to share opinions and recommendations. All of the aforementioned authors have found explosive fame in the past two years since BookTok has imprinted itself on millennials and Gen Zers.
Many children of my generation, born circa the late ’90s and early 2000s, grew up opting to watch “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” instead of picking up the outdated entertainment form, a book. Quite often, I was in the minority of students who brought a book to read during downtime at school or annotated my book for English class.
Now, the book world is experiencing a resurgence in youth readership and BookTok is at the forefront of this revolution.
According to Publishers Weekly, young adult fiction sales from 2020 to 2021 rose by 30.7% and adult fiction is up by 25.5%. While a good explanation for the rise in sales is the added free time due to the pandemic, the influence of BookTok cannot be understated.
In BookTok videos, readers share their favorite reads, tropes, books they wouldn’t recommend and books they want to see turned into movies or TV series. Not only are readers taking to the platform, but authors and publishing companies are also learning how to use the algorithm to keep book sales and popularity increasing.
For example, Penguin Books frequently features Penguin-published novels with the #booktok hashtag in the caption to hopefully gain traction for new and old releases.
A wild success story for BookTok is author Colleen Hoover, whose novel “It Ends with Us,” which was published six years ago, went viral on TikTok within the past year and a half. In 2021, the book sold 18 times more copies than it did in 2020. Good luck finding a BookTok user who has never read this emotionally devastating book.
“It Ends with Us” was picked up by actor Justin Baldoni’s company Wayfarer Entertainment for a movie adaptation following it going viral on TikTok. Hoover even recently penned a prequel to “It Ends with Us,” titled “It Starts with Us,” which will be released in October.
BookTok fans have also gushed over Hoover’s 21 other novels, including “Verity” and “November 9.” The love for Hoover is evident; she’s amassed more than 800,000 followers and 13 million likes on TikTok.
When a book like “It Ends with Us” gains fame on BookTok, readers flock to the library and bookstores to sell it out, and they do it quickly. The book becomes a new craze for BookTok users, and if you haven’t read it, you risk feeling completely left out of the conversation.
Naturally, after BookTok users recently raved about Emily Henry’s new novel “Book Lovers,” I had to get my hands on it. Her cheesy romance novels “The People We Meet on Vacation” and “Beach Read” had me captivated last summer. They were also recommended to me per BookTok. I logged on to Manheim Township Public Library’s website to put a hold on Henry’s recent release only to find that 55 people were ahead of me on the list. Yes, 55. If I had the desire to read “Book Lovers,” I would have to wait for 55 people to read it before me. BookTok strikes again.
BookTok, however, has its fair share of naysayers and gatekeepers. While publishers and authors are benefiting in sales and teens and adults are reading more than ever, many readers criticize the narrow genre of books that tend to be boosted by the BookTok algorithm.
TikTok user @redcoffeebrand posted a video saying “‘It Ends with Us’ by Colleen Hoover was “the biggest waste of paper I have ever encountered,” accompanied by a caption encouraging TikTok users to “read real literature.” This is a common critique of book culture.
As BookTok books usually appeal to a younger, mainly female generation, the novels tend to be emotional romances using common tropes such as: enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, or one of my personal favorites, lovers to strangers to lovers. Plenty of viral BookTok recommendations have staggeringly similar story lines, which leaves them open to criticism from people who want to defend the “integrity” of literature.
As a student studying English, I am unashamed to come out and say I love reading popular BookTok books. Give me Taylor Jenkin Reid’s chore list. I’d read it. These romances, as cheesy and predictable as they may be, are fun to read. There’s not much more to it, and there does not have to be. Their predictability makes them comfortable, and sometimes I am perfectly happy with being comfortable.
While I enjoy reading literature from Joan Didion, Toni Morrison or Charles Dickens, we all need a little simplicity from time to time. At the end of the day, reading “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Mass will look the same on a Goodreads goal as reading “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Books and reading do not need to be gatekept. So, please, log on to TikTok, grab a snack. Find a viral, cliche book — and enjoy yourself.
Chloe Miller is the 2022 features intern at LNP | LancasterOnline. “Unscripted” is an entertainment column produced by a team of writers.
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