Smutless Romance is coming back!
There is a recent trend in the romance novel community- romance novels without smut.
Smut is any material that is of a sexual nature. I call them the ‘shirtless man’ books, as there is
almost always a shirtless man on the cover of the novels. The market is currently flooded with
smutty romance novels, and while it is great that people are expanding their reading material,
smut is not always necessarily for everyone.
Advanced readers of a young age should not be reading smut. I was once
a young reader, and I definitely read some books that I should not have read. That being said,
they were the only books thick and complex enough to capture my attention. I was a hyperlexic
reader, and as such, I read any book that I could get my hands on. With the expansion of
smutless romance coming back, there will be an expansion of novels without smut. While the
rest of the materials may be mature in nature, there will not be smut in most of the romance
novels.
It is not only the younger generation that will enjoy it, there are several other
communities that will enjoy them as well. There are asexual people that would prefer to read
their books without smut, as it does not align with their identity. There are also people that do
not want to read smut in every romance book that comes out. With the increase in smutless
romance coming back to the market, there will be a lot more materials to choose from. The Inkheart Trilogy is a good example of this.
This does not necessarily mean that smutty romance will ever go away; in fact, it is one
of the highest-selling genres in the world. With the popularity of A Court of Thorns and Roses
and Fourth Wing, it will never go away. I am choosing to look at this as an increase in the
market where there needs to be an increase. Smutty romance novels will not necessarily
decrease- there will be more material available for the communities that do not want to read
smut.
Kammie Darnold- Slice of life 