I’m hardly the first person to point out an issue with BookTok but as more people in my life are turning to social media for their book recommendations I feel compelled to speak up.
Tyler McCall said this all very eloquently over on The Cut but for those of the TLDR variety let me boil it down for you. TikTok creators want to go viral. TikTok’s algorithm will promote posts that it thinks are more likely to gain traction. In order to be competitive and get views creators will use hashtags and promote content that is already viral or popular. This creates an echo chamber where everyone is just shouting about the same books over and over again.
Those same books? They’re majority written by white ladies. Colleen Hoover ever heard of her? She outsold the bible this year. And honestly, her books aren’t even that good.
As a fellow white lady myself I am definitely complicit in this. I adore BookTok famous authors such as Sarah J. Maas and Emily Henry. What I can offer though are some recommendations by BIPOC authors that are great read alikes for your favorite BookTok books.
If you like Emily Henry might I suggest Jasmine Guillory. She burst onto the contemporary romance scene with The Wedding Date and her most recent novel, Drunk on Love, is a pure delight.
If Tessa Bailey, renowned for her spicy scenes, is your cup of tea I would offer you Alexis Daria and Alisha Rai. Daria’s latest series, Primas of Power, is hot and features badass women making career moves and finding love. Rai’s latest series is more traditional romcom romance but her Forbidden Hearts books are hot AF.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably heard of Julia Quinn and Bridgerton. While the show has been praised for its casting, the books are super white. Authors like Courtney Milan and Adriana Herrera are doing fun things in the historical romance genre.
Madeline Miller has cornered the market on retellings and rightly so. She’s fantastic. But I also think Sonali Dev is highly underrated. Her Rajes series tackles Jane Austen’s greatest hits and Incense and Sensibility might be my favorite Austen retelling to date.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of my auto-buy authors and has written some fantastic books including my all time favorite audio-book. I think if you like her work, you’ll enjoy Tia Williams, especially Seven Days in June.
Honestly, I could go on about this forever and reading recommendations is my love language but I’ll leave it here for now. If you have any titles or authors you’d like to share please leave a comment!
That’s all for now. In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my favorite books of 2022 including a top ten and my favorites by genre as well as my most anticipated books of 2023. Until then!