Let’s talk about spice, baby!🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

The rise of spice in women’s fiction.

If you’ve spent any time in online book spaces lately, especially on BookTok, Bookstagram, or romance blogs that rate heat levels like wine notes, you’ve probably noticed one thing: everyone is talking about spice. Billionaire sado-masochists, fake-dating mafia bosses, and rampant romantasy-ists are everywhere, usually with their shirts off on the cover.
Readers don’t just recommend books anymore. They qualify them, rate them, and warn their friends about them. Some accounts even brand themselves around loving “high spice,” “unhinged spice,” or “spice with emotional damage.” Give me all the triggers!
This trilogy takes a playful look at how spice became such a big part of women’s fiction: why readers love it, what it really means, and where it fits best.
Think of this as your friendly, slightly chaotic guide to the spicy side of books.

🌶️Why Is Everyone So Horny All of a Sudden? The Rise of Spice in Women’s Fiction

Search engines might call it “trends in women’s fiction.”
Readers call it “books that made me feral.”
Either way, spice is everywhere, and women aren’t being subtle about enjoying it. If you scroll through BookTok or Bookstagram for more than thirty seconds, you’ll see readers proudly sharing their tastes. Bios say things like “romantasy + spice enthusiast” or “here for the plot (and the spice)”. Some bloggers focus almost entirely on reviewing high-heat romance, offering detailed spice ratings and cheerful warnings like, “Do not read this in public.” Many have even defined spice scales.
This wasn’t always the case.
Women’s fiction used to treat sex like a polite rumour. You knew it happened, but only because the characters woke up smiling and the candles had mysteriously gone out. Explicit desire was either heavily coded or quietly skipped over.
Then Romantasy arrived and said, "Absolutely not."
Series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, From Blood and Ash, and many indie romantasy titles didn’t just include spice. They made it part of the worldbuilding. Magical bonds made intimacy stronger. Power dynamics blurred the lines. Emotional connection and physical desire became part of the plot.
Online reviewers noticed this and celebrated it.
Many popular romance bloggers now openly define their niches in terms of spice. Some pride themselves on “no fade-to-black allowed” policies. Others gleefully compare scenes, ranking them by intensity, emotional impact, or how long it took them to recover.
This openness matters. It normalises the idea that women can read for pleasure without embarrassment. Enjoying spice isn’t treated as a guilty secret anymore; it’s a preference, like loving slow burns or second-chance romance.
Culturally, this shift matches women reclaiming their own stories about desire. These books aren’t written for the male gaze. They’re for readers who want agency, emotional depth, and intimacy that feels connected to character growth.
Romantasy also offers a safety net. When intimacy happens in a world with fae courts and dragon riders, it’s clearly fantasy. Readers can explore strong emotions, danger, and desire without turning any of it into real-life expectations.
Importantly, spice hasn’t replaced story. Bloggers and reviewers quickly point out when spice feels empty or unearned. The most beloved books are still those in which intimacy helps character arcs, deepens relationships, and rewards the tension built over many pages. Adding spice does not make a bad book good, but omit it at your peril for many readers.
So, Spice didn’t appear overnight. It just stopped hiding.

🌶️🌶️ I Would Never Do That… But I’ll Read About It Twice: Why Women Love Spicy Books

One of the most common comments you’ll see under spicy book reviews goes something like this:
“Loved it. Absolutely unhinged. Would never tolerate this man in real life.”
And yet… five stars.
Book bloggers who focus on spice are refreshingly honest about this contradiction. They openly admit that many fictional scenarios aren’t meant to be goals. They’re imaginative. Readers don’t confuse fantasy with reality; they enjoy the difference.
Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden explored this decades ago, showing that women’s fantasies often involve symbolism, power play, or heightened drama rather than literal desire. Fantasy is emotional, not instructional.
Spicy fiction gives readers a safe space. They know there will be a payoff. Emotional wounds will be addressed, and growth will happen. Consent is always part of the story, even if it’s not always discussed directly.
This is why readers can enjoy morally grey characters, enemies-to-lovers dynamics, or intense power imbalances in fiction, while rejecting them completely in real life. Bloggers often joke about this openly, warning followers with phrases like “fiction only, please seek therapy in reality.”
Spice-focused reviewers also highlight how these stories prioritise female pleasure. Desire isn’t passive. Wanting is not shameful. Characters choose, initiate, and enjoy intimacy without being punished for it.
There’s also the simple joy of exaggeration. Fictional intimacy is edited, polished, and designed to hit emotional beats. Real life, bless it, is messier.
Importantly, loving spice doesn’t mean someone is unhappy. Many bloggers say that reading spicy books can go along with happy relationships, or simply satisfy curiosity, no matter your relationship status. It’s entertainment, exploration, and escape.
Fantasy is a playground, not a blueprint.
And readers know the difference.

🌶️🌶️🌶️ Just Because You Can Add Spice, Doesn’t Mean You Should: Where Spice Actually Works

If you spend enough time following spice-loving bloggers, you’ll notice something surprising: they’re picky.
Even though they love explicit romance, many reviewers quickly criticize books where spice feels forced. “This didn’t need to be here” is a common phrase, showing that even the spiciest readers care more about intention than quantity.
Are romantic comedies a natural home for spice? Comedy and sex are an unnatural match, to our minds. Heptagon recently released The Attraction Abacus. It’s the story of a dating agency that summarises their customers as a single score. It’s rom-com with the emphasis on laughs and love. The novel has been described as fade-to-black, behind closed-door and no spice. But isn’t this more appropriate for the genre? Who hasn’t cringed at the love scenes in Love Actually while watching it with their family? Surely, there’s a time and a place?

When intimacy adds humour, awkwardness, or emotional payoff, it enhances the story. Bloggers often praise scenes that reveal vulnerability or deepen chemistry rather than just existing for shock value.
Romantasy earns its reputation again. When characters endure prolonged tension, danger, and emotional upheaval, intimacy feels like release. Reviewers frequently note that the best spicy scenes arrive after trust and connection have been established.
There are other genres certainly shouldn’t feature spice, to our minds. Cozy mysteries, slice-of-life fiction, or stories where romance isn’t the main focus often don’t work as well when explicit intimacy is added. Many bloggers say they prefer fade-to-black in these genres, not because they dislike spice, but because the tone matters.
The most insightful spice reviewers ask one question: What does this scene change?
If the answer is “nothing,” the spice is probably unnecessary.
Ironically, spaces that focus on spice have also brought back a love for slow burns. Bloggers often rave about tension, longing, and restraint, and sometimes rate books highly even if there’s little explicit content because the emotional payoff is stronger.
Spice works best when it has a purpose, reveals character, and completes an arc instead of interrupting it.
In other words, loving spice doesn’t mean you want it in every story.
Even people who love chili know when to put the bottle down.

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Spicy conclusion

Spice in women’s fiction isn’t just a trend. It’s a conversation, led loudly and proudly by readers, bloggers, and creators who aren’t embarrassed about what they enjoy.
Whether you love high heat, slow burns, or a well-placed fade-to-black, the main point is choice. Women’s stories now have room for all of it, and that’s something to celebrate.