romantasy
noun
| roh-MAN-tuh-see
a literary subgenre blending fantasy and romance
What does romantasy mean?
Romantasy refers to a literary subgenre that blends together (to varying degrees) elements of fantasy and romance. It is also used for a story/novel/graphic novel/etc. in that subgenre.
Examples of romantasy
If you’ve been anywhere near a bookstore, library or BookTok feed in the last five years, you’ve probably encountered a growing crowd of … fated mates of various magical persuasions. These are among the hallmarks of romantasy, the crossover genre that blends the passion and spice of romance with the escapism and high-stakes drama of fantasy.
—Jenny Hamilton, The New York Times, 14 July 2025
Romantic fantasy, increasingly marketed as “romantasy,” pairs the idealism of romance with the surrealism of fantasy, giving readers a break from dire headlines and humdrum daily life. … The best romance stories portray all the joys and complexities of lovers learning to navigate their lives and emotions together, and romantasy offers fertile ground to explore that complexity against the backdrop of an imagined world that operates by its own rules.
—To discover that she [Venessa Vida Kelley] has a historical romantasy coming out and that it’s fully illustrated feels like coming up from a dive with buried treasure. In Coney Island’s Luna Park, Benny Caldera struggles to make a living building ironworks while struggling with how New York City will accept him as a queer Afro-Boricua migrant. His latest creation earns him a found family in Coney Island’s freaks, but then he falls hard for the creature that he has unwittingly helped cage: Río, a beautiful merman from a distant land.
—My only complaint about romantasy is that people are starting to demand it of me, and I am not a spicy author. I am the Midwestern casserole of authors. There’s cream of mushroom soup in there. Please don’t make me write sex. It makes me want to die.
—… to me Romantasy means less emphasis on plot and world building and more emphasis on the romance.
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Where does romantasy come from?
Romantasy is a blend of romance and fantasy. Although the popularity of romantasy has been recently exploding, and some commentators believe the coinage to be similarly recent, our records indicate use of romantasy with this meaning goes back at least to 2010. The word romantasy has also been used as the name of at least one musical group and is the name of a long-running corsetry store.
How is romantasy used?
There is no small amount of online debate about what precise calibration of romance/fantasy qualifies as romantasy, but the word’s use has skyrocketed over the past few years. It is usually encountered in the singular, or before another noun (as in “a romantasy novel”), but the plural is romantasies.
BookTok’s influence on modern publishing cannot be overstated, and one shining example was the rise of the romantasy genre in 2024. Despite being discounted by some critics as “fairy porn,” romantasies ushered in an era of new fans of steamy fiction this year, with primarily women writers at the helm of this industry-shifting genre.
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