One of this century’s most popular romantasy series and BookTok phenomena, A Court of Thorns and Roses, celebrated its tenth anniversary on 5 May.
The people who think you are referring to “a guitar” in a weird accent are getting harder to find as the popularity of Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series continues to surge ten years after the first book’s publication.
The ACOTAR cult-like craze really kicked off in 2020 when the COVID-19 lockdowns led to an explosion of readers taking to TikTok and building up the thriving subcommunity BookTok, dominated mainly by female romance readers and authors.
Rebeka Finch, a literary agent specialising in romantasy at the Darley Anderson Agency, said: “I find the craze itself really interesting. Sarah J. Maas had been writing these kinds of books for such a long time, but BookTok took it to a whole different stratosphere.”
The acotar hashtag on TikTok has since reached 1.7 million posts and ranges from fanart character depictions to the entertaining Men Reading Acotar section that sees a number of husbands and boyfriends react to the series after their partners “convinced” them to read it.
London is fast becoming a hub for ACOTAR events, from themed balls to quizzes and discussion groups.
The Night Court Ball, hosted by Gauntlets and Gowns Events, was a high fantasy black tie event that took place at the Battersea Art Centre last year, and the romantasy lover and BookTok enthusiast community, The Book Nook, held an ACOTAR pub quiz just a few postcodes over in Clapham Common in March.
The Book Nook, which began as a WhatsApp community created by Kimberley Risley to bring together friends who were reading ACOTAR and fast falling into the world of romantasy, now hosts a range of public events across London.
Charlotte Sands, co-organiser of the quiz, said: “The energy in the room was unforgettable. We had attendees from all over London and beyond. ACOTAR has fans everywhere, but Clapham is a great hub to bring them together.”
The borough particularly hungry for romantasy and taking the spot as biggest ACOTAR fan in London is Wandsworth, known for its abundant green spaces, relative poshness, and for being one of London’s highest concentration areas of extraverts and people with emotional stability.
Around 70% of ACOTAR readers can be found south of the river, and almost one in five are concentrated in Wandsworth borough, where the total number of ACOTAR series loans in the past ten years is 7,810, according to London’s public library data.
The first book in the series is the most popular in London libraries, with 36% fewer people checking out the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury and a gradual decrease in loans of each subsequent book.
In Wandsworth alone, the number of readers from book one to book two more than halves, with an 80% drop in total e-book loans from 2,038 of A Court of Thorns and Roses to just 421 of A Court of Mist and Fury.
The drop in loans could be down to several factors, either the immediately hooked fans wanting to go out and purchase their own beloved copies of the series, or readers underwhelmed by the “fairy porn” hype or slow pace of the first book.
One TikTok user, LoisLanea, worked out the number of spicy pages in each ACOTAR book, and the results were all less than 6%, with A Court of Thorns and Roses receiving an “n/a” result.
She said: “If I ask you for a smutty read and you give me something with 5%, I’m never trusting you again.”
While Maas’ spicy vocabulary shifts from thunderstorm euphemisms and “shattering” synonyms to steamier anatomical descriptions in her later books, the popularised “fairy porn” descriptor of the series is misleading to some readers and off-putting to others.
Finch said: “The term itself is quite a statement: it gets people talking. But these books aren’t fairy porn. They’re just books written with a different kind of reader in mind.
“If you think about what porn actually is and, generally speaking, how much of a male audience it has, and then you compare that with what they’re classifying as the female equivalent, it’s just insane.”
Despite the vast offerings of public libraries, especially the ease and discretion of their digital and online services, many Londoners are still not taking full advantage of them.
Three in ten adults in London said they visited a public library in person last year, and less than one in five accessed digital library services, according to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2023/24 survey.
Finch said: “For the romantasy girlies, there’s so much accessible now on platforms like Kindle Unlimited and Wattpad, or borrowing it from the library, you can inhale books in a way you couldn’t before.
“I for one would be broke if I actually bought all the copies of the books these people are reading.”
However, Finch explained that buying the physical copies of your favourite series is still very common for romantasy readers who become so obsessed with their favourite characters they will buy 15 different copies of the same book.
A crucial part of a romantasy best seller is having it as a series, not a standalone.
Finch said: “It helps that when people had time during COVID to really invest in reading, the first three ACOTAR books were a completed series and immediately bingeable.
“The popularity of the genre is also so entwined with women wanting to see a glamorised version of what it could be like to be in a relationship with someone who is actually incredibly good to you, where you have mind-blowing sex, and it’s always your feelings first.”
Feature image credit: Lucy Dunnet
