BookTok: the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

TW: discussions of domestic abuse and assault

If you’ve walked into Barnes & Noble recently, one of the first tables to greet you was probably labeled #BookTok. It’s just as likely that you also saw shelves dedicated to popular BookTok authors like Colleen Hoover—more on her later—and Sarah J. Maas. 

BookTok is a community on the popular social media platform TikTok where creators make content centered around—well, books. Books I wish I could read for the first time again. My thoughts on Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Book recommendations for a cozy winter. All of these are examples of the types of videos that frequently show up under the BookTok hashtag. And on paper, BookTok seems great. It has revitalized reading among the younger generation, created an online community of book lovers, and boosted salesboosted in sales for many authors, bookstores, and publishing houses alike. However, despite these positives, like any social media, BookTok is also full of problems and less-than-ideal situations. 

First is the lack of diversity. While it’s true that many authors are finding great success—six-figure book deals, movie contracts, weeks and weeks spent on bestseller lists—thanks to their books taking off on BookTok, the majority of them are white. As such, diverse authors and characters don’t frequently appear on many users’ “For You” pages. The importance of diversity in literature cannot be understated enough, and BookTok simply doesn’t reflect that. A common complaint by users is that BookTok constantly promotes the same books over and over again, which creates an echo chamber that further perpetuates the lack of diversity within the publishing industry. And because TikTok videos are so short, books are often oversimplified, reduced to a “core aesthetic” that simply cannot encapsulate its complexity. Similarly, works are marketed as merely a trope, like enemies-to-lovers, dark academia, and found family, rather than placing importance on the writing and plot. Those books with popular core aesthetics and tropes are continuously pushed out to users, and as a result, diversity is pushed aside.

To add to the issue, the books that BookTok’s algorithm tends to favor often romanticize abuse or trauma for the sake of the plot or character development. Colleen Hoover has been hailed by BookTok as a “must-read” author, and as a result, she has dominated the charts, even managing to place 6 of her books in 2022’s 10 best-seller list. Despite this, she is also—in our opinion—one of BookTok’s most controversial authors. She has seemingly split BookTok into two: those who like her and her books, and those who despise them. One of the best examples of this is the debate surrounding her 2016 book, It Ends With Us, which arguably propelled her to fame. The story starts innocently enough with a lighthearted romance between main characters Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid. However, the relationship deteriorates as Ryle becomes increasingly abusive. Lily’s journey throughout the book is meant to illustrate the complexities of domestic abuse as she debates whether or not to leave Ryle, but Hoover seems to merely brush off the topic as part of the plot throughout the novel. She portrays Ryle as merely a flawed character rather than an abuser and uses his childhood trauma as an excuse for his behavior. This can be seen in many of her other stories where she also uses trauma to justify the male love interest’s actions and reinforces the stereotype that women can “fix” their partners themselves—despite the fact that the issues the love interests in Hoover’s books have would likely require professional help in real life.

While depictions of abuse in stories that spread awareness and teach readers about it are completely fine, the way Hoover depicts domestic violence romanticizes it instead. In one of her other books, November 9, the protagonist is—spoiler alert—burned by her love interest, who then justifies the scars by saying that they make her more beautiful and symbolize his claim over her. In the end, the protagonist ends up staying with her abuser. 

Hoover’s audience is largely young adults aged 16-24 (and even younger, in some cases). Her books normalize toxic relationships, and as a result, her mishandling of serious topics can have a strong negative impact on impressionable younger readers, like creating the belief that the events in her books are normal, and, in turn, skew readers’ perceptions of what romance should look like. Contributing to the issue is the fact that her books are often marketed as romances instead of literary fiction—some of her works are even labeled as young adult novels—which adds to the idea that the things she depicts in her books are part of healthy relationships when, in reality, they aren’t. Hoover also provides no trigger warnings of the disturbing and potentially triggering content in her books, justifying it by saying the “thrill” would be spoiled for the reader. This can be extremely harmful to readers who may be suffering or have suffered from similar trauma. “I read It Ends With Us and was so absolutely overcome with PTSD from my own abusive relationship that I was shaking and throwing up while reading…I can’t believe there wasn’t a content warning???” one user wrote. 

However, Hoover isn’t the only author to romanticize abuse (although many others whose books deal with similarly triggering topics—often in the “dark romance” genre—tend to make content warnings well known to a reader in advance), nor is she the only author to include unnecessary amounts of background character trauma (although she may be the only one so far to announce a planned coloring book based on a story about domestic abuse and then promptly cancel it due to backlash from readers). A common criticism of many popular BookTok books is that the main characters, usually women, have dealt with almost unrealistic levels of personal trauma. Some of the authors—we’re looking at you, Ana Huang—gloss over the character’s trauma and perpetuate the notion that disregarding and/or effortlessly overcoming trauma is necessary to be successful and desirable, as the characters are. The focus on “strong female characters” can turn said characters into caricatures, using their often unresolved trauma to demonstrate to the reader just how strong they are.

Even though BookTok has its issues, we hesitate to condemn it entirely due to its myriad of benefits. There’s nothing inherently wrong with reading and enjoying Colleen Hoover’s work, and the community BookTok has brought together certainly isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps an oversimplification of work is present, but there are also genuinely good book recommendations to be found. For each negative aspect, we can name a positive one, and vice versa. As always, the issue isn’t black and white, rather, BookTok exists in an ambiguous gray area. In the end, the problem lies with how TikTok’s algorithm promotes books. 

BY ALLISON MA AND ELISSA FAN