The future of romantasy plots? Fewer hunks, more nerds

Telegraph

08-04-2025

If you have a teenage daughter, today is likely to be a very important day: the publication of the final book in Lauren Roberts's mega-selling Young Adult trilogy, Powerless – the best-selling YA title of 2024. Bookshops are opening early in expectation of queues, over 100 Waterstones stores are running events with activities like origami rose-making, book trivia, crown-making and plot predictions. The participating stores will be decorated with in-world décor, featuring themed drinks, branded stickers and exclusive event tote bags. Roberts has sold out huge venues in Liverpool, Birmingham and London and one can only assume her hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers will get plenty of content to enjoy.
Roberts – who, at just 23 years old, has sold four million books in over 29 languages – is a key player in the romantasy reading phenomenon, a portmanteau of romance and fantasy that blew up on BookTok (the book themed area of TikTok) two years ago and has now become so popular among young women in particular that it boosted the fantasy/sci-fi genre by 41 per cent in the last year alone.
The genre has been embroiled in a growing moral panic of late, with critics finding its erotic content inappropriate for the YA (12-18 year old) readership – a recent Substack on the topic was titled 'If BookTok was a community of men we would be calling the police', lamenting that girls were deciding whether to pick up a book or not depending on its 'spiciness' rating. Roberts, however, is an outlier, with her trilogy being remarkably chaste for the genre.
The Powerless trilogy takes place in the kingdom of Ilya where Elites, who have inherited special powers from the Plague, live a privileged life whilst Ordinaries (those without gifts) are banished. Our heroine, Paedyn Gray, an Ordinary who fakes a power, is thrown into the brutal Purging Trials alongside Kai, a highly gifted, smoking hot Prince. The pair's relationship is at once sincere, relatable and cringe – and they don't even kiss until book two.
This might have something to do with the fact that Roberts, who became an instant New York Times best-seller aged 20, was raised in a typical Christian household in the US Midwest. She joined TikTok and the BookTok community in her mid-teens, initially to talk about her love of fantasy novels. But then she started reading extracts of her work, and her followers begged her to write a book. She began writing a first draft of Powerless aged 17.
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Whilst studying physical therapy at college and doing work experience, she dashed between ultrasound practice and her desk, where she scribbled down a character idea or plot hole. In her second year of university she persuaded her mother – 'a very practical, analytical maths teacher' – to let her come home for a term and complete the work. Together they worked out a budget with her limited student funds, until Roberts was able to hire a freelance editor, who spent four months working on the manuscript. Then Roberts Googled: 'How to publish your own book?'
It all paid off. By the time Roberts published Powerless she had an audience primed to buy it in the kinds of numbers that glowing New York Times reviews or publishing house marketing departments can't promise. The day the book was self-published, she sold over 4,000 copies. For context, that would have placed her in the top three of the UK's bestseller list this week.
Three months later, an email arrived from Simon & Schuster requesting a meeting, and Roberts became part of their roster. But why, when successful self-published authors generally receive about 60 per cent royalties for print sales versus around 10 per cent in traditional publishing? Simply put, to take the pressure off. 'Now there's so many people behind the scenes, working and pulling everything together. It's just a really well-oiled machine,' says Roberts, who can focus instead on writing – for Fearless she wrote for 12 hours a day for four months. At the moment she is in the process of completing the second of two novellas also purchased by Simon & Schuster, and working with a screenwriter to bring Powerless to the small screen.
The feedback loop with her readers is one of the most fascinating parts of Roberts's story. She's able to see how her fans respond to certain characters and plot devices in almost real-time, and even take on plot requests – apparently the 'nightmare' trope (where a character appears to be living through their worst fear, only to wake up screaming) was in high demand whilst writing.
Much of the YA and romantasy style of writing is built on tropes, which perhaps explains some of the snobbery towards the genre. But whilst some readers might think 'here we go again…' when enemies become lovers (or at another dagger to the throat), fans can't get enough of them. So long as the story she wants to write isn't altered, Roberts is relaxed about including a handful of requests. 'I know these people support me and love these stories and want to see more of that, so I'm happy to provide it.'
But as a result of these tropes, plagiarism accusations crop up repeatedly. Roberts has come under fire for some themes of her books closely resembling two in particular: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, which includes special powers, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which has brutal state-organised tests.
'I don't feel the need to address it because it's not the truth. I've always credited Powerless as a mixture of Red Queen and The Hunger Games,' Roberts says. 'Those tropes and those common themes are what help the authors get their foot in the door and market their books. But I do really think that the author is the variable that changes everything. It's their story and their characters that make it different.'
After all, she explains, Ancient Rome's gladiatorial games showed violence as entertainment was in demand millennia ago. Plagues and persecuted peoples are textbook Old Testament. People imbued with special powers are straight out of The Fantastic Four.
Roberts's books may be more PG than the majority of romantasy, but why, I ask her, does the genre seem to hit the perfect erotic note for women? 'I think women need some sort of an emotional connection. It's the banter, the yearning and longing that draws women in.' I think she's right. There's something almost Austenian in the meaningful glances, written notes and courtly behaviour between her lovers – certainly it must be more chivalrous than anything today's teenage girls have come to expect.
Romantasy also gets accused of perpetuating alpha male stereotypes. But Roberts thinks the genre is swinging away from this particular escapist fantasy 'towards a more attainable romance, or like a more everyday romance [with]... the nerdy, sweet, golden retriever boy'. Her own healthy relationship with her fiancé couldn't be further from the will-they-won't-they, enemies-to-lovers journey of her protagonists.
To the snobs who look down on romantasy, Roberts believes they're missing out. 'There's still this weird hierarchy in the reading world of some people looking down on others for reading a certain genre… but [romantasy] blends so perfectly the intensity and plot of a fantasy with the longing and like tension of romance. And that's what we're looking for, because we don't experience that in everyday life.' It might be worth giving those four million readers the benefit of the doubt.