Courtney Terwilliger in Camden Town

A BOOKSHOP that sells novels about steamy romance, magical worlds, dark curses and fictional heartthrobs has opened in Camden Town – tapping into a booming genre that has readers obsessing over every chapter.

Owner Courtney Terwilliger has opened her first pop-up bookshop, Enchanted Spine, in Pratt Street, specialising in “romantasy” – a blend of romance and fantasy. The genre has exploded in popularity fuelled by TikTok communities where readers dissect plots and swap recommendations for particularly spicy chapters.

“We don’t just sell books, we deliver obsessions,” she said. “It’s booming year on year. I don’t remember people ever talking about books this way because we’re not just reading, we’re a community.”

Enchanted Spine, usually an online bookshop, was started by Ms Terwilliger and her husband Paul Gernon in January 2025.

Ms Terwilliger said she had always been interested in fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings, but it was after having her second child, while struggling with postnatal depression and anxiety, that she discovered the genre after reading A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas.

She said: “That book is the gateway drug for romantasy fans. I inhaled that book and then I inhaled the rest of the series.

“And then I was looking for my next read. I was staying up all night getting through novels but all the mainstream bookshops just had the greatest hits, I wanted the hidden gems and it was really hard to find a place that could give me my next read.

“So I started my own website. One day my husband came home from work and asked me – what did you do today? I said I opened a bookshop.”

Ms Terwilliger said the shop’s main audience was women, and that most romantasy novels were written by women. She said the male protagonists were therefore often “very good communicators”.

She added: “What I love is now that romantasy is becoming so big, we’re getting a plurality of voices. There’s different types of stories being told. I’m hoping that the audience will change with that.

“Queer romantasy – I feel that will be huge in 2027. There is some of it already but I don’t think there is enough.”

A table of romantasy best-selling books at the Enchanted Spine

She said romantasy novels often explore pretty “spicy” and sometimes “unhinged” themes but trigger warnings helped readers make informed decisions about what they picked up.

She said: “It’s true some of the characters in the books are going through extremely traumatic things but customers do come back to me saying that it helped them work through something.

“Or that they found it really cathartic, being able to process their emotions about something because they experienced it with the character in this way.

“Some of them are not relationships you would want in real life, but that is why we have trigger warnings.”

The couple had originally planned to open their pop-up shop in Bloomsbury but the arrangement unexpectedly fell through two weeks ago. She said it was an act of “serendipity” when the Pratt Street premises became available as she had lived in nearby Inverness Street when she first moved to the UK from New York in 2010.

Enchanted Spine is open at 5 Pratt Street from 10am to 8pm until Saturday.