THE MEMBERS

Scarlett (28):

Opened Romancing the Novel, a bookstore dedicated to the genre, in Sydney’s Paddington last year. Upstairs there’s a pink reading lounge straight out of Bridgerton.

Frya (30):

Moved to Sydney from the Netherlands and found a new community through romance novels. Can often be found in said reading lounge with the latest release.

Mads (26):

A BookTokker (@madsrafferty) and the author of Heir of Broken Fate and Heir of Broken Kingdom.

Natasha (30):

Works at Romancing the Novel and throws the best book-themed parties. Identifies as a Fourth Wing fanatic.

InStyle: Have you always been avid readers?
Frya: After I came off the birth control pill last year, I suddenly felt this big pull to read romance. My first book was A Court of Thorns and Roses [by Sarah J. Maas], and I read it in a week.
Mads: I actually used to hate reading. I didn’t pick up a book until I was 20 and I only picked it up because I was getting sober from alcohol and needed to put my energy into something else. Similar to Frya, I picked up a book, read it in a day, and was completely hooked.
InStyle: And why romance?
Scarlett: Because it’s written by women! Well, usually. They say fictional men are great because they’re written by women. It’s the female gaze and it’s what women actually want in romance; this is what men should actually be like in real life, and this is how they should treat you. It’s fulfilling. Not to go all Real Housewives but, in the words of Vicki Gunvalson, it fills up your love tank.
Frya: It’s the fantasising part as well. I’m married and I’ll never get to experience the dating phase again, and I don’t want to. But through books you can still get that exciting feeling of a new love.
Mads: You can also discover what you do and don’t like [in a partner]. Personally, that helped me a lot in the dating world.
InStyle: Are there any particular romance novel tropes you love and hate?
Frya: I like enemies-to-lovers.
Scarlett: I don’t like instant love, when they fall in love within 20 pages. I’m more about the slow burn – not too slow; I like them to kiss by the halfway mark.
Frya: That’s quite slow.
Mads: No, you need that. If they kiss within 30 per cent I’m like, absolutely not. You need there to be that building of tension.
Natasha: Agreed. It’s 10 times better with the tension and sexual energy.
InStyle: How much spice do you like?
Scarlett: I like it filthy.
Frya: But it needs to fit into and add to the story. I don’t like reading smut for the sake of it; I need to be invested.
Mads: There’s this author, Sylvia Day, who writes fantastic erotica books, like the Crossfire series. I recommend it if someone wants a smutty book but with amazing characters and a developed plot.
Scarlett: It’s not just about spice and romance though. Female friendship is another important element in these books. We were discussing this in book club recently because we read a novel where the main character had no friends. She had no life outside the male, no identity outside of him. It irked us.
Frya: Yeah, where are your friends, girl? Also, I think most of us don’t like bully romance, right?
InStyle: Bully romance?
Mads: There’s a category within dark romance called bully romance where a character bullies and belittles their love interest. People have really divided opinions on it. We read Zodiac Academy in our book club; it’s brutal.
Scarlett: It was a risk picking a slightly darker book, and while some people loved it, it made some people angry. But that’s what I like about reading; it’s subjective. If we all had the same opinions, it would be so incredibly boring.
InStyle: So dark romance and romantasy are huge right now. Any other sub-genres you’re into?
Scarlett: I love gay romance – my favourite is Us by Elle Kennedy, plus anything by Eden Finley. Queer love was ignored and shamed for so long and their stories matter. But on top of that, these books are emotional, funny, heartfelt and sexy as hell. And I’d say last year was the year of the small-town romance; it was one of our bestselling
categories. I don’t know if it was the Yellowstone effect, but it was all about cowboys.
Mads: Elsie Silver...
Scarlett: Yeah, I give that woman so much credit. She wrote the small-town cowboy romance series Chestnut Springs – it blew up and inspired so many others.
Mads: She was indie-published, too...
Scarlett: Which we love. Romance is really big in independent publishing. Colleen Hoover was originally indie-
published. Kennedy Ryan is a Black romance author who was self-published; her book was recommended by Oprah and she has a novel that’s becoming a film. And Elle Kennedy was originally indie-published – she wrote The Deal, which is probably the biggest sports romance of all. It’s becoming a TV series.

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InStyle: It’s ice hockey, right?
Scarlett: Yeah. I mean, I could not understand sports if you paid me to learn it, but sports romance? I’ll eat it up.
Mads: I loved The Deal so much and then I went down a rabbit hole of just reading ice hockey romance books because I was so obsessed with it. And then I tried to watch hockey and I was like, “Oh, okay. No, it’s not the same.”
Scarlett: I would never.
Mads: The genre is huge on BookTok, which has got millions of people reading.
Scarlett: And it can change people’s lives. You have these independent authors, then BookTok will notice them and they’ll sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Also, the amount of 15-year-olds I have coming into the store because they saw something on BookTok... it makes me so happy. I think BookTok made it cool for younger generations to
read – especially romance, which is a polarising genre. People love to say it doesn’t really count as reading, that it’s not literature... Idiots.
InStyle: Do you feel that stigma has been lifting? That people are no longer embarrassed to read their romance novel on the train?
Scarlett: Yeah, it definitely has shifted. I’ve been writing for eight years [including novels Misery Loves Company and Saint Street] and for the first five I didn’t want to tell anyone I was a romance writer. And men would really put it down as well. They have a gross outlook on romance. It was disgusting, though it’s still common.
Mads: I don’t understand why people put down women’s hobbies. No one’s putting down men’s hobbies – they’re screaming at sport on TV every weekend, whereas we’re just sitting in a corner reading a book... It’s odd.
Scarlett: Even opening this bookstore was a struggle because of those preconceived notions. I spent three months trying to convince a landlord that a romance bookstore was a good idea; he wanted a Botox place. Eventually he gave in.
Frya: Thankfully he did, because I think it’s perfect. There’s something so special about this place. The fact that you can come here, read here, sit here, work from here. It’s light and bright and it feels like a community; it feels safe. We come here a few times a week at least.
Scarlett: It brings people together. The amount of people I’ve met just from opening the store... I never would have met these three women and they’ve become some of my closest friends.
Natasha: I just turned 30 and I’ve moved to a new country and I was kind of scared. But I’ve found some of the best friends I’ve made in years. We connected instantly through books.
Scarlett: And we meet so many others as we do a monthly book club and we do events for holidays like Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s/Galentine’s Day. In January, we did a midnight release party for about 50 people for the latest Fourth Wing book with themed drinks, trivia and games. A lot of what we do is like channelling your inner child – they’re things you would’ve done at a child’s birthday party. But we don’t even care; we love it. And I feel like, as an adult, you kind of want to get back to them, because the world is hard.
Frya: I also find that the types of people in the romance-book community are often very open-minded, so there’s no judgement. It’s warm and welcoming.
InStyle: What’s the breakdown of the store’s demographic?
Scarlett: I would say about 95 per cent of our customers are female, across all ages. I’ve got a couple of men who are regulars, but mainly women. Because let’s be real: the world is for men. So this is a place for the girls and the gays.
InStyle: Which fictional girls or women resonate most with you? Who would you love to be?
Scarlett: Aelin from Throne of Glass. I would die for her; I think about her every day. She goes through so much pain and she’s a badass. And also Lana from this series called Mindf*ck. She’s a serial killer, but she only kills bad men. I would love to have her strength.
Mads: I’m gonna have to go with Bree from Archer’s Voice, which is
a contemporary romance.

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Scarlett: She’s phenomenal.
Mads: She’s soft and kind and patient, but also strong and brave. It’s honestly the most precious romance book; my heart melts reading it.
Frya: I’m gonna go with Manon.
Scarlett and Mads: Ohh, can we change our answers?
Frya: She’s a witch from Throne of Glass and she’s dark and dangerous and sassy. Reading the books, I was never worried for her.
InStyle: You mention this underlying strength in the women you adore, how about the men?
Frya: I like Rowan from Throne of Glass because he’s super caring, super consistent, stable, reliable and not overly emotional. That’s literally how I picked my husband, so that’s why I love him. And then I like Kingfisher from Quicksilver, because he’s so dark and sexy.
Natasha: You know who mine is: Xaden from Fourth Wing, because he’s dark, mysterious, he’d burn down the world for his woman and he’s got shadow powers. He’s a shadow daddy.
Mads: I really like Knox from the series I wrote [Heir of Broken Fate], because the female main character, Delilah, comes from a really unsafe home, and he gives her emotional safety. I love a guy who’s dominant while letting her be who she is. And he’s, like, a cocky fae.
Scarlett: We love a cocky fae. And he’s loyal. I’ll read all types of men in my novels, but when I look at my favourites, they’re loyal. They’d die if they hurt her... so not like regular men.
InStyle: How important is the fantasy of it all? Apparently during WWII, Mills & Boon was able to keep its paper rations because women working in factories needed that escapism...
Scarlett: Yes, sometimes you just need to have a few hours reading about fae males jumping through portals and amazing female warriors. Like, this isn’t real, but it could be real. Or maybe it’s a small-town single dad, and you fall in love with him as the nanny. That’s escapism for me. That said, for a lot of people it’s the opposite: their reality
is mirrored in a book they’re reading and maybe that makes them feel better.
Mads: Yeah, some people read to heal. Sometimes I think you read a book and an author can so beautifully put into perspective what you’re feeling. You feel so seen, so heard.
Scarlett: That is the best feeling.
Natasha: It’s kind of like therapy; free therapy.
Scarlett: Well, $22.99 therapy.
Mads: Also, I think you can read to find or access the things that you want. For a long time I didn’t have a friend group as I moved around a lot. When I started reading it opened up this world – it was like, “Oh my God, this is what friendships are like and this is how it feels to have girlfriends.”
Frya: I felt like I used to have a lot of friends, but not a lot of them were into reading. And I wanted more wholesome people in my life because I’m an anxiety queen...
Scarlett: Same.
Frya: So I wanted to have my sisters in anxiety and my sisters in books. And I found them.