66 pages • 2 hours read
Hannah GraceIcebreaker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: New Adult Romance
The new adult romance genre emerged in the late 2000s with the release of E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. The subgenre tends to focus on characters between the ages of 18 and 25 as they negotiate the challenges of college life or of finding new career paths. While the genre uses many of the same narrative tropes as young adult or teen romances, new adult romance is marketed toward adult readers and often features sexually explicit scenes with an emphasis on female pleasure. Like James’s best-selling novel, new adult romance is heavily influenced by fan fiction and sometimes begins as self-published online erotica.
New adult romance combines two genres that were very popular in the 20th century: chick-lit and the Harlequin romance. Chick-lit novels, like Bridget Jones' Diary and Confessions of a Shopaholic, often feature a single career woman with an active dating life whose career plans and independence are disrupted when she unexpectedly falls in love with a man. The Harlequin romance, typified by paperbacks published by Harlequin/Mills & Boon and Avon, is a subgenre that evolved from Gothic literature and tends to feature a virginal, submissive heroine who encounters a brutish, dominant man who both frightens and excites her. New adult romances typically combine the characters and rom-com narrative structure of chick-lit with the sexual adventurism of Harlequin romances.
Traditionally, contemporary romance novels end with a female protagonist’s ultimate fulfillment through mutual professions of love and heteronormative marriage. New adult romance often adheres to this formula as well, but some books within the subgenre subvert expectations by adding elements of fantasy or horror, centering queer relationships, or eroticizing gender roles through extreme sexual power dynamics like bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism (BDSM) and affirmation play.
Cultural Context: BookTok
Before the internet, books were promoted mostly by newspaper reviews, publishers, and bookstores. However, in the early 2000s, online discussion boards and personal blogs began to change the methods readers used to discover new book recommendations. Within these platforms, readers were suddenly able to form niche online communities, contribute to the growth of their favorite genre, and support authors directly. This effect was magnified by social media platforms like Tumblr, YouTube, and Instagram; sub-communities like BookTube and Bookstagram emerged around 2010, led by influencers sharing photos of themselves (or their pets) with books and video reviews of popular novels. These platforms influenced reading trends to such an extent that publishers began taking serious note of online reader communities.
TikTok, which launched in 2016, is the fastest-growing social media platform among teenagers and new adults. Unlike other platforms, TikTok shares videos based on the basis of user engagement rather than the size of a user’s social network. Due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, a BookTok sub-community exploded around #booktok and similar hashtags in 2020. BookTok is more informal than other online reader communities, focusing more on personal tastes, emotional responses, and book-collecting than on book reviews. It also is far more robust than BookTube and Bookstagram. As of 2021, BookTok has been responsible for previously unknown and even older books reaching national bestseller lists.
Prior to the BookTok phenomenon, romance novels were historically neglected by publishing company marketing departments for a variety of reasons, and romance authors rarely went on book tours or had their books reviewed in major publications. For this reason, the genre has had to rely on grocery store shelves and word-of-mouth marketing. However, BookTok has revolutionized the way people find genre literature, especially new adult romance novels, and has provided previously unknown authors with an unexpected and lucrative form of alternative promotion. Icebreaker is a prime example of a novel which has greatly benefited from its TikTok popularity.
