Romance Readers Swoon for Brooklyn’s Newest Bookstore

At 10 a.m. on a recent Saturday, a line of nearly 50 people — mostly women — stretched down a busy block in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Their eyes were on a pink-painted storefront adorned with pink balloons.

Moments later, sisters Bea Koch, 33, and Leah Koch, 31, emerged with an announcement: “We are open!”

The crowd cheered and applauded. Photos were taken. An hour later, the store was at capacity. And out on the sidewalk, the line kept growing.

It wasn’t a trendy croissant, or an influencer hawking a new video game console, that had generated so much enthusiasm. It was a bookstore: The Ripped Bodice, a shop devoted almost entirely to romance novels. Many fans had planned their weekend around the opening. Some traveled a significant distance to be there.

The store opened just as the Beyoncé tour, Taylor Swift concerts and the “Barbie” movie have dramatically demonstrated the economic power of women. It is the second location of The Ripped Bodice; the first opened in Culver City, Calif., in 2016 after a crowdfunding effort in which the Koch sisters received $90,000 in donations. They credit readers with making it possible to expand.

“The romance community is a force to be reckoned with,” Bea Koch said.

There is ample proof in the data: According to Publishers Weekly, last year saw a 52.4 percent increase in sales of romance books, at a time when other fiction categories rose only modestly and adult nonfiction sales were down 10.3 percent.

At least eight of the 15 books on the current New York Times paperback best-seller list are romantic fiction; on TV, hit series like “Virgin River” and “Bridgerton” have been adapted from romance novels. The box-office juggernauts “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Twilight” were also based on romance novels.

And yet. For decades, romance has been considered tacky, trashy or worse. Perhaps tainted by memories of Fabio — who appeared on the covers of hundreds of romance novels — or previous generations’ attitudes toward sex, the genre is sometimes hard to find in libraries, and bookstores often stock a limited selection.

Which is why Molly Murray, 28, was compelled to travel from Poughkeepsie for the opening.

“I was finding a lot of my local independent bookstores had a very small selection in store of romance — or just had the Nicholas Sparks kind of stuff my mom might read,” she said.

“Even when I go to my local Barnes & Noble, the romance section is a corner, kind of hidden with the manga in the plastic bags,” she said. “There’s just that level of like, ‘Oh, it feels shady to buy it,’ when really it’s not.”

Sarah MacLean, a best-selling romance author who graduated from Smith College and earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University, has had trouble finding her own books. “I lived in Park Slope for 20 years,” she said. “And none of the bookstores in Park Slope carried romance.”

In fact, outside the Ripped Bodice opening, at least one passer-by expressed disapproval, and possibly worse.

“What is all this for?” she asked. Informed that it was the grand opening of a romance-focused bookstore, her face contorted into an elaborate grimace, but she declined to elaborate. “You wouldn’t be able to print it,” she told a reporter.

Romance fans are voracious readers, and though they might buy digital editions, they’re very interested in physical copies of books, often lending them to one another — or to friends who have never read romance and just don’t understand.

The most important thing to comprehend, romance fiction experts say, is that the genre comes with a guaranteed hit of joy: The first rule of romance is the happy ending.

It can be Happily Ever After (HEA) or Happy for Now (HFN), but a happy, satisfying ending is “nonnegotiable,” said Jayashree Kamblé, an English professor with a Ph.D. in romance fiction. (“People will say, Oh, do you mean like the Romantics? And I have to explain, no, I read mass-market romance fiction.”)

Under the romance umbrella, there are many subgenres: historical, contemporary, young adult and much, much more. The Ripped Bodice carries all of those, and also has sections specifically for L.G.B.T.Q. romances, paranormal romances, sci-fi romances and erotica — with a diverse array of heroines and heroes: Black winery owners, Asian fitness influencers, Latina telenovela stars. Readers will also find classics that led to the modern romance genre, like “Pride and Prejudice.” In addition: poetry, children’s books and a small section of general fiction, under a sign that reads “everything else.” (The sign also warns, “No HEA guaranteed here.”)

Holly Lauren Riley, a criminal defense lawyer, especially loves cowboy romance. “I grew up in Brooklyn, and there’s something about just being totally transported,” she said. “There’s something about that wide open space, a man riding on horseback and a woman falling for him — I’m a sucker for that.”

Ms. Riley, who is in a book club with Dr. Kamblé, attended the grand opening hoping to purchase a new Maisey Yates book, “The Rough Rider.” It wasn’t in stock, but Ms. Riley went home with two other books: “The Portrait of a Duchess” and “How to Tame a Wild Rogue.”

To be among the first shoppers, Joy Adamonis, 40, had driven with her husband five hours from Warwick, R.I., to Brooklyn and stayed in a hotel nearby. She was drawn by Casey McQuiston, the author of the best-selling L.G.B.T.Q. romance novel “Red, White and Royal Blue,” who would be signing books at noon.

Mx. McQuiston’s novel, which revolves around the son of the president of the United States falling in love with a British prince, has been adapted as a movie that was released on Amazon Prime on Aug. 11. It is a classic “enemies to lovers” narrative, a common trope in romance fiction, alongside “forbidden love,” “fake relationship,” “mistaken identity” and “forced proximity/one bed.”

Mx. McQuiston, who is queer and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, arrived wearing a brightly colored printed shirtdress and asked if there was time to shop before the autograph session started.

“Sure, what are you looking for?” Leah Koch asked, and listened intently as she guided Mx. McQuiston around the store.

Leah relocated to New York from Los Angeles to renovate the space herself, posting photos of its transformation from pet store to bookstore on social media. A video clip of her painting hearts on the floors of the new store has over 26,000 views on Instagram; fans cheered her along every step of the way.

As romance novel fans surely know, the store’s name comes from the term “bodice-ripper,” a moniker given to the genre in the 1980s. It may conjure up now-problematic visions of an innocent virgin being manhandled by a swashbuckling brute, but today’s stories are different.

“As an identity, as a genre, romance is the almost the antithesis of anti-feminist,” said Ms. MacLean, whose book “Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake” involves a heroine determined to do everything British ladies were not supposed to do in 1813: smoking, drinking Scotch, riding a horse astride. “It’s about joy and love and partnership and parity and equity and triumph and sexual pleasure and sexual identity,” she said. “And all these things, when you unpack them in the world, they’re uniquely feminist.”

As the books have evolved, so have the covers. You may still see a couple embracing here and there, but many romances, including the upcoming Sarah MacLean novel “Knockout,” feature a woman posed alone. Often there are bright colors, as in the Emily Henry books, or abstract illustrations, as in the Colleen Hoover books.

A new, younger demographic is looking at romance in a different way, said Susan Swinwood, the editorial director of Canary Street Press, the romance-focused imprint of Harper Collins. “And it’s being published in a different way.”

Because The Ripped Bodice was founded through crowdfunding, community has been important from the beginning, and shoppers are deeply invested in the sisters’ success.

Mary Lynne Nielsen, who started reading romance novels as a teenager 45 years ago, was among those who donated to the Ripped Bodice back in 2015.

By day, Ms. Nielsen is the director of a nonprofit. But in her off time, she posts vintage romance covers from her extensive library — she has “thousands, without exaggeration” — on her Instagram account and is among the many fans who feel connected to Leah and Bea Koch through social media. “You follow them to say, ‘Hey, how’s this store that I funded doing? Is it doing all right?’”

Ms. Nielsen, who lives in Westfield, N.J., has told people she reads romance only to have them answer, “Oh, wow. I thought you were smart,” she said. She attended the Brooklyn grand opening and posted a selfie with each Koch sister on Instagram.

Pressed to explain just what role romance plays in readers’ lives, Leah Koch was philosophical. “Boys are raised to be fans of things and talk about their interest in superhero movies and comic books and sports. Girls are raised to talk about …” she trailed off. “Celebrities? Makeup?” To her, being able to commune offline is key. “This is something you can share and enjoy, the way that boys talk about sports. It’s a way to connect with other people.”

Bea Koch agreed. “Reading is an individual pursuit,” she said. “A bookstore makes an individual pursuit community-oriented.”

By the end of the day, the store had sold out of the 15 most popular romance titles. Shoppers left with full Ripped-Bodice-branded tote bags, proud walking advertisements. Zero shame.

In fact, many romance fans bristle at the term “guilty pleasure.” “I decided I am never going to be ashamed of what I read,” Ms. Nielsen said. “I am a proud romance reader.”