Parents, publishers and booksellers have generally welcomed “BookTok”, the videos on TikTok promoting literature. In an age when many worry about children spending too much time in front of a screen, reading has become “cool” on the platform.
But a trend for “spicy” (ie sexy) books has led to fears children may be reading titles with adult content.
Romance fiction is the genre most discussed on the app, with users referring to tropes such as “enemies to lovers” or “forbidden love”.
Many of the books popular with BookTokkers, such as Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series, are aimed at teenagers. Other titles, such as the Maple Hill Series by Hannah Grace, The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas, have adult themes.
These books have pastel covers with cute cartoonish drawings, so some adults might mistake them for young adult fiction and not realise exactly what children are reading.
Young-adult author Alexandra Christo said: “There is a rise of younger readers engaging with ‘new adult’ or adult books because now it is easier to find them with the success of social media marketing.
“A greater issue is the definition of what is or isn’t an adult book has been blurred with many books using marketing based on similar tropes across audiences, making things confusing for potential readers.
“When clips and content are often short, focusing on fun tropes without getting into real specifics, it’s hard to know who the intended audience is for any given book.”
Schools have become aware teenagers are being drawn to such books, and at least one London headteacher has written to parents urging them to check whether their children are reading age-appropriate books.
Booksellers have also been trying to make clear when books contain adult content. On the Waterstones online listing of Icebreaker, the first in Grace’s Maple Hill Series, the first review is by one of the shop’s booksellers and says that the novel is a “Spicy romance for readers 18+”.
US retailer Target includes a “parental info” tab in its listing. “Parents need to know that Icebreaker is a light college romance with a lot of very graphic, detailed descriptions of sex between main characters,” the description reads. It goes on to list the sexual acts that are described in the novel, as well as listing some of the expletive terms used and other content warnings such as a character’s disordered eating.
BookTokker Jasmin Mann said: “Books often go viral on BookTok with a mass of creators sharing what they love about the books and one of the key describers is ‘spicy’. But there is a sliding scale of what that means.”
Her own first exposure to “spice” was through the books she read as a teenager. “Coming from an Indian background, it’s not often discussed so my books were my only real exposure to it. So as long as creators and publishers are proactively indicating just how spicy a book is, I don’t think exposure is a bad thing,” she said.
Christo said she has noticed “a surge” in teens asking for content warnings and “spice ratings” (usually using chilli emojis). “Rather than seeing teens recommend spicy books, I’m seeing more and more asking for books with less spice,” Christo said.
Thriller writer and journalist Kat Rosenfield criticised a bookseller on X last year for sharing a video offering alternatives to teenage readers who want to read adult books. “Imagine being a normal teenage girl, just trying to buy some good old-fashioned smut” and “getting shooed out of the romance section”, she tweeted.
“It’s normal and healthy for teenagers to be interested in sex, and there’s no safer way to explore that interest than by reading stories about it,” she added. “The problem is not the kids who are reading spicy books. It’s the ones who don’t – or can’t – read at all.”
Grace and Armas’s UK publisher Simon & Schuster said: “It is important to us that our books find their way to the right readers, and we’re conscious of age-appropriateness as part of that. We include warnings of explicit content and make it clear when books are for adult readers.”
