Chicas Booktok Novels & Stories

Alright, so if you're scrolling through BookTok lately, you can't escape the 'dark academia' wave, but honestly, I think it's starting to feel a little derivative? 'If We Were Villains' and 'The Secret History' are obviously the pillars, but the trend has bled into stuff like 'Ninth House' and even YA like 'A Lesson in Vengeance'. They're all moody, obsessed with aesthetics, and have that competitive, toxic friend group vibe. It's less about the mystery sometimes and more about wanting to wear tweed and quote Latin while feeling morally grey.

That said, the real viral energy lately feels like it's shifted to 'romantasy'. 'Fourth Wing' and 'Iron Flame' dominated last year, and now it's Rebecca Yarros's world and we're all just living in it. The combination of dragon riders, a deadly school, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers plot hit every single popular trope. My FYP is still flooded with fan casts for Xaden and theories about the next book.

A quieter trend I've noticed, which I'm way more into personally, is the rise of 'sad girl' literary fiction. Books like 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation', 'Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine', or 'Convenience Store Woman'. They're not new, but TikTok has a way of resurrecting backlist titles that perfectly fit a certain aesthetic of detached, messy, contemporary female despair. The discussions around them are less about plot and more about vibe and relatability, which is kind of fascinating.

It's wild how fast a trope can blow up now because of a few viral stitches or a 'you need to read this' capcut. I saw 'grumpy x sunshine' become utterly unavoidable last year after a handful of mega-creators latched onto books like 'The Love Hypothesis' and did those super-edited videos of the grumpy male lead lines. Suddenly, every 'For You' page was flooded with it, and publishers were slapping 'grumpy x sunshine' on every new cover like a stamp of approval.

But what's more interesting to me is the sheer power they have to pivot. They'll collectively declare a book 'mid' for a certain trope, and the whole trend can stall. Or they'll dig up an older, underrated title that executes the trope 'perfectly,' and it rockets to the top of the charts overnight. It feels less like they're just following trends and more like they're the committee deciding what the trend even is. My TBR is basically just a list of their weekly hype picks at this point, for better or worse.

I notice a lot of BookTokers approach it by focusing on specific tropes or moods, honestly. Instead of just saying 'read diverse books,' they'll frame it like, 'if you loved the rivals-to-lovers dynamic in 'The Cruel Prince' but want that tension between two Latina witches in a historical setting, you need 'A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon.' It makes the recommendation feel like a natural next step in your reading journey, not a homework assignment.

They also highlight the author's identity in a very casual, integrated way. It's less 'this is an Own Voices novel' and more 'the way the Filipino family meals are described in 'The Last Song of Orpheus' made me so hungry, and the respect for elders hit me right in the heart.' That personal, sensory connection sells the book way more than any checklist ever could.