Readers Bond Over Faeries, Hockey Players and Dukes at This Romance Bookstore

This story is part of Finding Your People, a series celebrating the Bay Area’s meetups and subcultures that bring people together IRL in an increasingly online world.

Not many book clubs go from “opposites-attract workplace liaisons” one month to “bloody sapphic vampires” the next. But romance readers are just built different.   

Tucked away in a charming corner of the South Bay town of Los Altos, A Novel Affair — the Bay Area’s first bookstore devoted to romance literature — is a proud home for them. 

The readers convene every last Sunday of the month. For June, the pick was the aforementioned vampire novel: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. 

Jeffery Spafford of Santa Clara gave it 4.8 stars. 

“Schwab really likes to explore the idea of hunger and want — and the sacrifice one makes for it,” he said. He’s a fan of her pandemic hit, a poetically tragic tale of immortality called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. “It questions all the characters’ moral compasses, and some of them were truly terrible.”

Right across from him was Daly City resident Janella Juan. She smiled and held up her whiteboard, revealing her rating: 1 star.

No hard feelings, though. Unlike your pandemic-era book club, A Novel Affair’s members actually do their reading. Taylor Wardwell of Santa Clara was even head down, catching up on the last few pages before things got started. Fremont’s Ariel Flores said she started and finished the book in the last 24 hours. “[I] gotta get rid of this toxic book,” she said, laughing. 

And then, they got into it. For over an hour, they laughed, debated and shot back and forth about the gothic affairs of the lesbian undead throughout time (“I don’t think she loved anyone.” “I think she loved herself!” “I hate her mother-in-law. Absolutely not.”) 

It’s that kind of spirited discussion that has brought Spafford back to every single book club hosted by the store so far. 

“I always kind of leave a little bit more inspired by other people’s perspective,” he said. 

Romance novel discussions can get contentious online. It’s also much harder to make genuine connections on Goodreads. But the regular members of A Novel Affair’s book club are much more cordial, and have gotten to know each other through their tastes. Wardell, who was sitting next to Spafford, said to him, “I knew you were not gonna like this character.”

Spafford admitted that at first, he didn’t consider himself a romance reader. 

“It turned out to be the last few years, it was my top-most read genre,” Spafford said. “I’m a teacher. So my job can be stressful. And our world is really terrible.” 

It can be nice to revisit the familiar beats of a good romance story, he explained. His favorite tropes are second-chance love and enemies-to-lovers. “Most of [the stories] have happy endings,” he added.

Spafford is not alone in looking for an escape: Romance novel sales tend to go up during destabilizing times, including after the attack on the Twin Towers, during the Great Recession and in the early days of the pandemic.

Romance’s impact in the publishing world has never been more apparent. This formidable genre’s sales support almost the entire industry, and its passionate, built-in fanbase make romance novels no-brainers for TV and film adaptation, quenching viewers’ thirst for swoon-worthy plots. A host of themed bookstores, some of them part cafes and part wine bars, are opening across the country — including The Love Potion Library, which opened last spring in San Francisco’s Castro District.

No matter the subgenre, no matter “how high-concept it is,” romance “just reaches people in a really deep way,” said Abigail Hing Wen, Bay Area writer of young adult romance Loveboat, Taipei, which was adapted into a 2023 Netflix film.

“The longing and that desire for companionship — desire to be seen and understood and accepted for who you are — I think that’s something that’s just innate to all of us,” she continued (favorite trope: enemies-to-lovers).

But as a genre, romance doesn’t exactly get its dues or respect, said Yung Le, co-founder of A Novel Affair.

“It’s a genre majorly written by women and enjoyed by women — and a lot of people dismiss it as a category,” said Le. “Maybe because of it or not, but we thought that we’ll be the place to celebrate romance.”

Le started A Novel Affair over a year ago with Julie Pham when they “realized there really isn’t a third space for people like us, and we also realized that ‘people like us’ is a huge community — especially in the Bay Area.”

A Novel Affair is bright and airy, with bookshelves lining the edges of the store and an open floor in the center — giving people an opportunity to strike up conversations. Or be “at forced proximity,” Spafford said, using a beloved romance trope. 

It feels a little like BookTok coming to life. For Pride, rainbow-themed paper chains are draped along the ceiling. Pop music gently plays in the background. A corner displays T-shirts and baseball hats with snappy one-liners: “Everything I Know About Hockey I Learned From Romance Novels.” “death by tbr.” There’s a Shane Hollander-scented candle for sale. (This reporter unfortunately could not verify the smell.)

The most eye-catching part, however, is a window with a collage of Valentines stuck to it. A sign mimicking Bridgerton’s elusive gossip Lady Whistledown asks readers to share their “most scandalous bookish confession.” Some highlights: 

“Most love ‘triangles’ are just angles. Someone’s gotta be gay!” 

“I hate a book featuring a man.” 

“Hockey romances aren’t all that. Where are the karate romances?!?” 

Hannah Phamvu (favorite trope: enemies-to-lovers, fake dating) from Milpitas was at a full crafting event during a cozy May evening, bedazzling a copy of Ali Hazelwood’s Deep End. As she methodically placed teal plastic jewels onto the paperback cover, Phamvu and others around the table snacked and recommended titles. 

“A lot of people who were there did not come with anybody else,” she said. “It’s just a really wholesome space.” 

She recalled her first big event: a Regency-romance tea party. “I was really nervous, because none of my friends locally in the Bay Area are [on] their reading game.”

Now she’s a regular, attending craft nights and watch parties, and curling up on the couch with a book in front of the shop’s synthetic fireplace.

“I’m a creature of habit, and so I feel like I’m always around people who are just like me, except when I’m at work,” Phamvu said. “A Novel Affair has really opened my world to like different people, different genres, different lifestyles. But everybody bonds over the same thing, which is reading.”

Romance — and its fans — also brought back her hunger to read for pleasure like she did in high school.

“I used to just love going to Borders Bookstores and Barnes & Noble, and begging my parents to buy a stack of books for me,” Phamvu said. “And laying around with my friends just reading.”

“It has brought that love back.” 

A Novel Affair’s book club meets on the last Sunday of the month. The next meetings are on Aug. 30 at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.