I love following reading habits. They’re sociologically interesting and offer valuable insight for writers. The latest Circana BookScan report, which tracks what’s been selling in the United States, shows that dark romance continues to dominate reader interest in the first half of 2025.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The latest report shows what people have been reading in the first half of 2025. And one thing hasn’t changed: “Romance with a dark twist” remains the hottest property. Rebecca Yarros has four of the top ten best-selling books. Romance overall continues to rise in popularity, up 24 percent from last year.
Darkness Dominates the Charts
But the “dark twist” is, overall, the thing that stands out most. Dark fantasy is also up 23 percent, with horror up 13 percent and psychological thrillers up 29 percent. As a writer, this fills my heart with joy.
After years of realizing I just can’t put myself in the cozy mystery headspace, this is a sign that I may no longer have to try to do so.
Darker and more dangerous books may be on the rise when it comes to reading. But that’s also a segue into a fascinating story I am delighted to find a way to shoehorn into the news. We hear a lot about books being dangerous, but when people say that, they tend to mean the ideas they contain.
It’s only really since the introduction of the European Union’s General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) that we have given much thought to the books themselves being dangerous. It turns out dangerous books are quite a thing.
Poisoned Pages and Spectral Solutions
Specifically, their covers. Publishers were very fond of producing green covers back in the day (if you’ve been to a secondhand bookstore, you’ve probably noticed this). And they made that color by mixing copper and arsenic. (Name of the Rose, anyone?) Which is not ideal for readers’ health.
The unfortunate consequence is that most books with green covers from a certain era have been deshelved, including many that do not contain arsenic.
Now it seems the University of St Andrews has introduced a test using spectroscopy to identify the culprits, meaning thousands of innocent books can be returned to the wild where they belong.
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