For the past four years, Romantasy books have been sweeping the Top Audiobooks on Spotify, particularly with novels like Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. Both of which have made multiple appearances in the charts, and it is no surprise, as each book has sold over 12-13 million copies worldwide since their release dates in 2015 (ACOTAR) and 2023 (Fourth Wing). But what has caused this wave of popularity in the Romantasy genre?
The TikTok community, “BookTok,” has become an online space for content creators and scrollers to gather book reviews, recommendations, and theories about all the latest trending books and novels, accumulating more than 36 million videos with over 200 billion views altogether.
ACOTAR and Fourth Wing happen to be the most popular of the two, reigning over readers’ hearts even as new arrivals like Quicksilver by Callie Hart and Alchemised by SenLinYu are earning their way to the top. What makes the two champions of BookTok hold their place years after their release date?
Sarah J. Maas already had the previous legacy of her Throne of Glass series (published 2012-2018), allowing her to make a name for herself before BookTok and the app it was created on even existed. Maas published the first book in the ACOTAR series, the book the acronym takes after, A Court of Thorns and Roses, in 2015, with the most recent addition to the series published in 2021.
The incomplete, sixteen-book multiverse that is Mass’s oeuvre centers around the worlds of Faeries as they fight for love, justice, and long-awaited peace in their lands.
The inadvertent strategy of having an incomplete, multiverse series become something everyone can talk about online allowed her to create her own branch of the BookTok community that will last long after the multiverse between her three published series, Throne of Glass, ACOTAR, and Crescent City, is completed.
Rebecca Yarros is also a legacy author. Her book was published in 2014, and 28 others were published in the years leading up to her breakout novel, Fourth Wing. The fantasy dragon-riding war college that the novel takes place in surrounds a main character with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a condition that Yarros herself has been diagnosed with.
The spot-on accuracy of the military theme comes from Yarros, who has been married to her own war hero for over 20 years, with their six children. Though the only military-related question she has asked her husband to maintain said accuracy is how high one can be before they run out of oxygen. A rather fitting question for a book about dragon riders.
The relatability of feeling like the weakest person in the room, wanting nothing more than to protect those you love, and questioning everything you have ever been taught has roped in fans all over the world. So has Yarros’ writing style, where she reoccurs her tradition of twisting the plot, killing off a beloved side character, and then flipping the plot upside down on the very last page.
Like Maas, Yarros also has yet to complete her most popular series, which she has explained will be delayed due to her desire to focus on her mental health, but she announced back in January that a new contemporary book is on the way. Maas, however, just posted to her Instagram that her drafts for the sixth book in the ACOTAR series have, at last, been completed. The release dates are still uncertain, but fans have waited four years already, and any new information would surely be a boon.
The hypnotic stories and characters have captured the hearts of millions, and so has the community of BookTok as a whole. It has allowed reading to become a hobby and not a chore. So, while readers enjoy new books, they can wait for the latest additions to the series that got most of them out of their “reading slump.”
Yarros and Mass have created worlds that their fans would go Under the Mountain for and created characters readers would battle Wyvern to protect. There would be no surprise if these books were back on the Top Audiobooks for Spotify Wrapped 2026.
