Love. There’s just something about reading of a love that fills your stomach with butterflies and your head with dreams of finding your special someone. 2023 in books brought this, and much more to the book community, and we are thankful for it. From the best-selling novel “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang which faces the harsh truths of cultural appropriation, to the New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros’s book “Fourth Wing,” which is filled with a fantastical romance that lures you and makes you wish dragons really did exist.
The real question though, is whether or not some 2023 book releases deserve the attention that they have received. What influences the majority of the book community is nothing more than a group of people who refer to themselves as “Booktok”. With the hashtag, #booktok, being used in over 60 billion videos on social media, Booktok has both authors and readers in a chokehold.
But some of the biggest 2023 books on Booktok such as “Check and Mate” By Ali Hazelwood, an author who is widely known and supported by the Book Tok community, are nothing more than copies and pastes of previous books. With the well-known and well-loved trope of enemies to lovers, Hazelwood’s booklet fans down with another disappointing story.
Her attempt at sports rivals with an academic twist is a simple rom-com read, with no real depth or intricacy. The way Booktok has been fangirling over it for the past year is simply because of the amorous stereotypes that fill its pages. Although Booktok does not get everything right, they did do some things right when helping to make “Divine Rivals” by Rebecca Ross an instant best seller. Ross creates a fantastical, historic world for us in the pages, using dual perspectives from both main characters to tell the story of family, magic, war, and love. Booktok had its very own love-at-first-sight moment when this book came out. They wasted no time in reading the second one, “Ruthless Vows,” which came out just a few months after the first.
The phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is widely known, but not practiced by most of the book community. Readers will be in a bookstore and see a cute little rom-com book cover and instantly assume that it’s a short, fun, little read. This is not always the case, especially regarding “Happy Place” by Emily Henry. Henry is known for her romantic reads and, most of the time, does not disappoint. Sadly, when it comes to her latest release, she does nothing but that. “Happy Place” was made out to be a fun second chance romance, when in truth it’s about two exes getting back together not even six months after breaking up. The absence of female empowerment and lack of depth in the side characters are just a few of many reasons why Booktok cannot be trusted when it comes to choosing what books should be popular.
Booktok falls head over heels for the same tropes at every turn. Falling for toxic males and burning tension between two characters, most Booktok books fail to develop unique storylines with characters that aren’t like every other book persona. With overhyped, and popular reads filled with romance, life lessons, and magic, 2023 book releases will not be forgotten anytime soon.
