“How spicy is it? What’s the spice rating? #SpicyTok. How many 🌶️s?” These are just a few quips I have recently observed floating around the general reading space, whether on social media, in real-life conversations, or even in bookstores.
Lately, TikTok’s obsession with “spicy” books has started to shift how we value reading. The focus has moved toward explicit romance as the main marker of a book’s appeal. Although this may not be intentional, it is starting to overshadow stories with rich plots and character development. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying spicy reads—truly, to each their own! It’s just that lately, TikTok’s obsession with them has started to shift how reading is valued. Truthfully, this emerging phenomenon is in some ways, chipping away at the respect we give to storytelling as a whole and that’s something worth reflecting on.
TikTok: Where It All Began
Like many sensations nowadays, it all started with TikTok. The app has a way of turning individual opinions into trends and trends into standards. BookTok, the corner of TikTok dedicated to readers, is one of the many casualties of this process. Scroll through the comment section of almost any book review these days and it won’t take long to locate a stream of questions regarding the “spice” level of a book. So what does spice refer to exactly? This term was coined to describe the level of sexual content in a book. It isn’t just romance novels catching this heat. This interest in explicit content is being shown just as often under fantasy book reviews, if not more! As a result, many of the books blowing up on TikTok are the ones with the highest spice factor. Whatever happened to reading for the plot?
The One Where TikTok Rewrites the Bestseller Formula
Walk into any Indigo bookstore right now, and I guarantee one of the first tables you will see is a “#BookTok” or even a“SpicyTok” display. We can thank TikTok’s viral “spicy” recs for that! This is a perfect example of how a trend that started as a conversation on BookTok has made its way off our screens and into real-life spaces.
It’s not just the way we talk about books that has changed, it’s starting to shape the books being written too. To please the market, explicit subject matter is becoming a major factor in what makes a book commercially successful. One major example that many readers have noticed is the content shift in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, commonly referred to as ACOTAR. The first few books were plot-driven fantasy-romance novels with a few steamy scenes that felt naturally woven into the story. The same cannot be said for the latest book in the series. Instead, it was a story about two horny individuals with a side of plot and friendship. For many fans —myself included, this was a huge letdown, especially since the author built her reputation on character-driven narratives with real emotional weight. Evidently, prioritizing spice can shift the tone of an entire series.
The Hidden Cost—Plot-Driven Readers Left in the Dust
It is important to reiterate that the issue isn’t people’s taste in books, but how reading as a whole is starting to be associated almost exclusively with this type of content. The presence of spice is becoming such a normalized standard that more profound plot and character-driven stories are getting pushed to the background. For readers who crave more substance, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find recommendations that are not led by spice. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a steamy scene. However, when spice becomes a main measure of a book’s appeal, it ends up narrowing people’s idea of what’s worth reading, as if books without spice aren’t exciting or captivating enough to be a part of the conversation.
In the past, being a reader was associated with a sense of being bookish or thoughtful. Now, with so many book conversations revolving around spice, it can make readers who prefer deeper, plot-driven stories feel like outsiders, or even a little prudish! And for non-readers, there’s this assumption that spicy books are all we’re into, which can take away from the personal meaning and intellectual connection a lot of us find in reading. It’s not about saying one type of book is better than another—it’s simply about making sure there is space for all kinds of stories, so that every reader feels seen.
From Young Adult to 🌶️ a Little Too Fast?
This spice-focused trend isn’t just shaping current adult reading tastes and the publishing industry. It is affecting the views of younger readers too. TikTok has made spicy books incredibly accessible. How can age ratings stand a chance when spicy novels are so popular, especially if they’re one of the first things you see at the bookstore? Like, what do you mean I’m overhearing 13-year-olds talking about Fourth Wing—a fantasy book with dragons, war, and more steam than a bathroom mirror?
To be fair, in the past, Gen Z (and let’s be real, millennials too) have found their way to Wattpad or Tumblr for that kind of content, so this occurrence isn’t exactly new. But the difference is that there used to be a distinct separation. Now, the lines are blurred and for newer readers, reading is becoming synonymous with spice. And since reading is being redefined for a younger generation as a consequence of BookTok, there’s a real chance they won’t learn to separate the emotional depth behind real connection from the exaggerated (and sometimes straight-up cringe) portrayals of intimacy that dominate today’s most-hyped reads. It’s just not the greatest foundation for young readers figuring it all out.
Spicy books have every right to pop off and if it’s something you enjoy — great! However, they shouldn’t be the only face of modern reading. When one trend starts to redefine what literature looks like for everyone, we risk losing the diversity, depth, and connection that made so many of us fall in love with reading books in the first place.