Are we ready to take romance novels seriously? St. Louis area book clubs say yes.

The book is a contemporary romance about a mage (magician) opening a large witchcraft business in a small town. The witch who already operates a similar, family-run business doesn’t think the town is big enough for the both of them. (If the plot sounds familiar, it is a reworking of “You’ve Got Mail,” the 1998 Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie, which was a remake of 1940s “The Shop Around the Corner.”)

The rivals become lovers by the end of the book with the requisite happily ever after.

But some folks in the group have taken issue with the business aspect of the book.

“I don’t think Charlie (the heroine) is very good at business,” says one. “Like Fitz (the hero) was sending her clients and she was getting offended that these were ‘pity clients.’ I mean, a client is a client.”

Everyone starts to laugh and agree.

This is the contemporary romance book club at the Novel Neighbor, one of three romance book clubs that the store hosts.

It feels like a casual English class with everyone sitting in a circle and raising their hands to add to the discussion. On the floor are Kassie King, Stefanie Skees and Maddie McDermott, who together run the store’s romance book clubs. Skees asks most of the questions, with King and McDermott occasionally chiming in.

Themes are discussed, sure, but jokes are also made about character chemistry and if people think this HEA, the abbreviation for happily ever after, is going to last.

There are about 30 people there, which fills the basement. Previously, Novel Neighbor only had one contemporary romance book club that included all the genres: paranormal, sports, Western, queer, etc.

That book club started in August 2019. Those meetings usually drew 60 or more participants, pushing the constraints of the space.

“Everybody wanted more options, so we talked to everybody about the sub genres they would be most interested in, and we decided to expand our offerings,” says King, who is also director of marketing for the Novel Neighbor.

The Novel Neighbor expanded to three romance book clubs. It kept the contemporary one and added historical and queer. Each book club is now a bit more manageable, though contemporary romance is still the biggest of the three.

The expansion, which happened in September, coincided with Novel Neighbor adding Open Door Romance, a space in the shop devoted entirely to romance novels, in August.

(The space’s name reflects a trope of the genre. Open-door romances have sex scenes. Closed-door romances have characters get busy behind closed doors.)

Romance books are popular nationwide and buoyed the publishing industry this year, according to Publisher’s Weekly. In 2024, seven of the Top 10 books of the year were romance or romantasy titles (a combination of romance and fantasy). Romantasy writers Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros have been top sellers this year.

King attributes the increased interest in romance to the pandemic.

“I think during COVID a lot of people rediscovered their love of reading,” she says. “And romance was a genre that was accessible to so many people during that time. People who had always loved romance then started getting to share that love with new readers.”

This led to an explosion of book-related content on Instagram and TikTok. It is so popular that it actually has a name, BookTok. Books can become bestsellers from word-of-mouth on the short-video social media platform.

In fact, several people in the book club discovered it because Novel Neighbor created TikToks about it.

Lauren Hawkins is one such member. Contemporary romance book club is just one of the clubs she attends, and she’s been a member since January 2023.

“I’m a software engineer, and I work remotely,” she says, “but I got an English degree and I missed talking to other people about books.”

She didn’t really like romance before she joined. “I mostly read literary fiction,” she says. “But I thought this would be maybe the best vibe, the most fun. So now I feel I have a much larger romance education than I once did.”

She liked getting out and meeting new people, plus after a few months, she made some new friends. She’s had fellow book club members over to watch movies, and a group of them attended a Hozier concert in the summer.

“I started making friends whenever I went to Frisco’s,” she says.

Frisco Barroom is a restaurant down the street from the Novel Neighbor. After book club, which lasts an hour, everyone heads into the Open Door Romance space to shop for next month’s book and chat. A half hour after that, people migrate over to Frisco Barroom.

“It’s about a three-hour affair,” says King, who usually goes to Frisco Barroom with the contemporary romance book clubbers each month.

The friendships that result are what keep people coming back to the clubs.

At Frisco Barroom that evening, the book clubbers are at different tables, just sitting with whomever they happened to come in with.

At one table, a group of six start talking about how they joined the club and why they like it. Two of them are best friends who joined together. Another migrated over from other book clubs. (Novel Neighbor has a bunch, including ones for mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, nonfiction and movies.)

The conversation is all about books, and not the one everyone just discussed at book club. Instead, folks talk about anything they’ve been reading lately.

Then the conversation shifts to the election. It seems as if everyone there holds similar political views: left-leaning. The club is also heavily female, though there are some members with they/them pronouns, and predominantly white. The queer book club that month attracted the largest share of men (fewer than 5), and while some of the participants are middle-aged, most of the book clubbers are in their 20s and 30s.

Some might be surprised that romance book club members are left-leaning. Isn’t this the genre with sexist stereotypes: Strong alpha males rescuing damsels in distress? Maybe 20 years ago. The romance genre of today includes all kinds of romances.

In the queer romance book club, they read “Rules for Ghosting” by Shelly Jay Shore about a trans hero who sees ghosts and works at his Jewish family’s funeral home.

“I picked up (my first romance), and I was like ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know that books like this existed,’” recalls King, whose first entry into the genre was the 2019 novel “Red, White & Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston, a queer romance that later became a film.

Books now include all types of heroes and heroines and all types of relationships, including polyamorous.

Despite the genre having a stigma of being frivolous, King says the books engender discussion about big topics. “Larger discussions are being had with most of these romance books. The only point isn’t romance. We’re having discussions about disability. We’re having a discussion about what it’s like to be a Black woman and a single mom in a working class neighborhood.”

The stigma, though, that romance is frivolous seems to linger. Of the bookstores around town, Novel Neighbor seemed to be the only one with a public romance book club. St. Louis County Library does host a romance discussion group, Romance After Dark.

Bookstores in the area have added romance only spaces like Novel Neighbor’s Open Door Romance. Rose’s Bookhouse in O’Fallon, Missouri, for example, features a huge inventory of romance novels. In Kansas City, there’s also a bookstore called Under the Cover that only sells romance. The bookstores are modeling themselves after places like the Ripped Bodice in Los Angeles and Love’s Sweet Arrow in Chicago, both romance only bookstores.

“There was a longtime stigma in the literary world, especially among indie bookstores, that romance was lesser than, and I think that’s because romance largely appeals to women and to queer people,” King says. “But it is such a fun space to build community.”

The queer romance book club is an example of that community. Led by Stephanie Skees (Maddie McDermott leads the historical club and Skees and King share the contemporary club), the group discussion included a lot of laughter, and a lot of people sharing what really struck them in the book: a trans girl’s funeral that was very respectful, a look at Jewish customs around death, a slow-burn romance that included realistic arguments.

“Good discourse, good vibes, good conversation,” says Brittany Robb, who was attending her first queer romance book club meeting. “I wanted to come in and laugh about this, especially at a time when it’s not always that easy to laugh.”

Her friend Cam McKay has been coming to the romance book club since 2022. “(Novel Neighbor) created this incredible community,” they say. “It’s unreal. The enthusiasm, the safe space of it. It feels like you don’t even have to read the book. You can show up and just be with the people that are here.”

The book clubbers are enthusiastic. At Frisco Barroom, one of the newer attendees gets up to go. Everyone at the table is a chorus of encouragements to come again.

“It’s so hard to make friends as an adult, and having this thing that you have in common and a reason to come together every month has been invaluable,” says King. “People’s new best friends are made in these romance book clubs.”