London now has a new bookshop totally dedicated to romance novels

Being out and about in London, chances are you’ve spotted someone reading the A Court of Thorns and Roses book series by Sarah J Maas. These fantasy books, filled with faeries, hunters and X-rate scenes, first blew up on a literary corner of TikTok (AKA BookTok), and now you can’t catch the tube in the capital without seeing someone reading it. 

Now London has its first ever bookshop dedicated entirely to these kinds of romance books, as Saucy Books in Notting Hill officially opened at the end of last month. 

While these kinds of books are often called ‘smut’ or ‘fairy porn’ (many of them are packed full of NSFW scenes), they are extremely popular, particularly among young women. According to data gathered from 7,000 British booksellers, in 2024 there were record sales of ‘romance and sagas’ books, making up to £69 million. Sales of these ‘romantasy’ books even pushed UK fiction revenue above £1 billion for the first time. 

‘The popularity of the store speaks for itself,’ Sarah Maxwell, the founder of Saucy Books, told the Guardian. ‘We even had to ticket our first week and give time slots to customers.’ 

Saucy books even has a corner of the store dedicated entirely to erotic fiction, which Maxwell calls the ‘smut hut’. 

Maxwell told the Guardian that she thinks sexism, as well as ‘snobbery and bias’, is stopping these books, that are mainly read by women, from being as respected as they should be. 

‘I think there’s an inherent misogyny around it. A lot of the time, the sorts of things that women like across arts and culture tends to get discounted. These books are about the female perspective and female gaze when most media is through the male gaze,’ Maxwell said. 

Saucy Books is open at 232 Westbourne Park Road, W11 1EP now. 

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