Steamy summer reading: How Maryland readers are falling for romance novels

Cheryl Keffer’s tiny shop in Cockeysville is bursting with love.

The shelves of Keffer’s romance bookstore contain the typical tales of a woman’s journey to find true love with a man. But there’s so much more.

There are books about women who fall in love with kidnappers, wizards, orcs or even an entire harem of men. A bookcase is devoted to sports-themed romances. Plots ranging from sweet to spicy, including fantasy books fans call “fairy smut.” Lovers in a wide range of ethnicities, shapes and abilities. Lesbian love stories. There’s even a gay werewolf hockey romance.

“Talk about suspension of disbelief,” said Keffer, who opened her shop, La Petite Mort, a French term for orgasm, in March.

We’re in the midst of a heady romance renaissance.

The Ballad of Falling Dragons, a romance-fantasy hybrid, tops the New York Times’ fiction best-seller list, and four more romances flush out the top ten. Two of the year’s most popular streaming shows, Heated Rivalry and Off-Campus, are adaptations of romance novels about hockey players. Romance novels led all genres for sales growth in 2025, according to market research from Circana Book Scan.

There has been an accompanying boom in romance bookstores across the country. While there were just two in 2022, there were more than 20 by 2024, according to The New York Times.

There are now three romance bookstores in Maryland: Romancelandia in Centerville and Overlea’s Sweet Nothings bookstore and plant shop, which opened in September.

Traditional local bookstores including Greedy Reads and Snug Books host romance book clubs, as do three branches of the Baltimore County Public Library system. Readers get recommendations and connect with authors on BookTok and share reviews and rate spiciness on romance.io. A Hunt Valley book festival, Romantasy in the Valley, will bring writers and readers together next month.

In interviews, many readers said they first turned to romance novels in 2020, seeking a mental escape from the stress of the COVID pandemic. The political turmoil of recent years has continued to lead readers to seek a reprieve from the real world.

“The world is heavy right now,” said Erin Van Alsten, 39, of Ellicott City, who estimates she reads at least 70 romance novels each year. “It’s nice to escape into a world where I know there will be a happy ending.”

Jade Banke, who opened Sweet Nothings in September, said most of her readers are women in their 20s through 60s, although increasingly more men are perusing the shelves.

“There’s something for everyone,” said Banke. “There’s the tension and the yearning the evolving relationships and friendships. Then there are books that delve more into the dark side or the more fantastical side.”

B.K. Borison, a popular romance author and North Baltimore resident, believes part of the draw for female readers is to see the complexities of their emotional lives represented in fiction.

“It’s a genre created by women for women,” Borison, 36. “It centers the female perspective and female pleasure. There aren’t many other media forms where that is the case.”

Unlike the pulp novels of the 1950s and 60s, or the bodice rippers of the ’80s and ’90s, recent romances often celebrate queer love. Rachel Reid writes about burly male hockey players falling for other men. Ashley Herring Blake spins sugar-sweet stories of sapphic love. Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, a love story between the son of a United States president and the heir to the British throne, was a New York Times bestseller that became a 2023 film. Even Harlequin has launched lines with queer characters.

“The modern romance writer has done a really good job of bringing the books to the 21st century,” said Maureen Roberts, a Baltimore County Public Library employee who supervises the selection of romance novels.

While traditional romances are still shelved in a dedicated section, about half of the library’s new fiction books could also be considered romances, Roberts said. Romance novels are also in high demand online, and more than half of the library’s currently top requested eBooks are romances — including titles by Borison.

A Harford County native, Borison picked up her first romance during a stay at her aunt’s Ocean City condo in the mid-aughts. It was by Western Maryland resident Nora Roberts and Borison was “swept away.”

“I’ve never read a romance that is just a love story,” she said. “There are underlying themes of grief and family and friendship.”

Borison remained a romance reader into adulthood but didn’t begin writing novels until the COVID pandemic.

Holed up at home with a newborn, Borison channeled her loneliness into creating the kind of book she would want to read: a romance set at a Christmas tree farm in the fictitious Maryland town of Inglewild.

Borison self-published the book, Lovelight Farms, on an Amazon platform and was delighted to see Kindle downloads take off. She self-published two more romance novels before catching the eye of agent who helped her ink a deal with Penguin Random House.

Now the mother of two is anticipating the publication of her eighth book: “Grim Tidings,” a magical realism romance coming this September.

“It happened so fast,” Borison said of her writing career. “It’s been life-changing for me and my family.”

Like Borison, Lee Ann Peterson of Sykesville began writing romance novels during the pandemic.

“I just realized life is too short and I’m going to make this happen,” said Peterson, 43, who writes under the pen name Victoria Dawson.

For Peterson, a math teacher turned stay-at-home mom, part of the allure of romance novels is that she can vicariously experience the thrill of new love.

“I have one husband and I love him. But after years, you miss that first feeling of excitement,” said Peterson. “I love romance novels because I get to fall in love over and over again.”