Eager readers lined up on Saturday as Ottawa opened up its first bookstore entirely dedicated specifically to romance novels. Evermore Books is now open at 857-B Bank Street in the Glebe. The line up, which ran down Bank Street and around the corner onto Fifth Avenue, told the story of a big, eager debut for the shop. Stephanie Speer says she had been eagerly awaiting the opening of the store since she found out about it. But even though she arrived right as the doors opened, it still wasn’t enough to get her in the door right away. “I got in line with my friends at 10 a.m. It’s now 11. So, an hour,” she says when asked how long she had been waiting. She says she’s happy to see it. “It’s super exciting. I mean, I love books and to have a local bookstore (dedicated to romance) is amazing.” Owner Amanda Holmes says there are more than 1,000 unique titles inside the store and that romance is one of the hottest genres on the shelf right now. “This is what romance girls in Ottawa want,” Holmes said. “They want a space where they can just shop for the genre of a fiction that they want, in a space where I feel they won’t be judged when they bring their book to the cash.” The popularity of the category is in large part fueled by social media and “BookTok” – where people share and critique the books they’ve read on TikTok. Meaqia Pardo says, “romance is for everyone.” “I feel like mainly the BookTok community has broadened people’s interest in romance books. I find it really nice that people are more outspoken about reading romance,” she said. “There are so many different levels. It’s not always just straight up like ‘spicy’ romance books. There’s fantasy, world building, mystery.” Holmes says the love of romance books is something that’s always been there. “Romance has been one of the highest profitable genres of fiction for many, many years. I think what we’re seeing with BookTok is it’s becoming more normalized, women reading romance and smut in public and talking about it.” Holmes says inside the store, readers can find a range of topics from contemporary to fantasy and science fiction to 2SLGBTQ+ novels. She says opening the store was about following her heart. “I started reading romance in the fall of 2024 and fell in love with it,” she said. “In the spring of last year, I jokingly told my husband that I was going to quit my job and open a romance bookstore and I just kept thinking about the idea over many months, and then I just decided to take that plunge and to really invest in this space.” Romance novel-oriented bookstores can be found in other cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Readers like Nadia Mitchell say they are excited to dive in and find something new or re-connect with an old favourite in the nation’s capital. “I really found that I wasn’t reading as much anymore and recently I was like, let me try reading the book and just getting back to reading and with that, I found that I was reading a lot more fantasy romance and it kind of reignited my love for reading,” said Mitchell. “With the opening of the bookstore… it’s perfect timing.”
