It should come as no surprise that the first real exposé of a professional writer using AI at scale comes from the world of romance. This isn’t about ethics or art or anything, but two factors that have long driven romance writing: innovation and frequency.

• Romance has been at the forefront of most (all?) of the book trends of the last couple of decades: self-publishing, fan-fiction, ebooks, etc.
• And romance rewards publishing a lot of books quickly.

Generative AI sits right at that crossroads. From a purely market-fit point of view, romance would seem the most likely part of the book world to undertake serious, scaled experiments with AI.

Alexandra Alter’s profile of "Coral Hart" shows exactly what that looks like. Dozens of books under multiple pen names. Books generated in less than 45 minutes. A proprietary romance-writing LLM and paid classes for others to learn the tricks of the new trade. "Imprints" that specialize in AI-generated texts. As Carrie Fisher says in When Harry Met Sally: your basic nightmare.

This is the latest piece to clarify the single most important question about AI and book-writing: can LLMs write books, in any space, that can replace human-written books? It very much is starting to look like the answer is yes.

It does nothing to help us with the second most important question: what in the hell is that going to do to books and reading as a culture? - JO

Keep reading...

The only thing today’s featured new releases really have in common is that we’re excited to read them, and TBH, that’s all that matters. We make the rules! Let’s get into it.

Hot on the heels of Isola’s success, Allegra Goodman returns with This Is Not About Us, a novel about family dynamics, the weight of expectations, and the complexity of American life.

Nearly a decade since her last book, award-winning essayist Anne Fadiman is back with Frog: And Other Essays. If you’ve never read Fadiman before, you’re in for a treat.

Political strategist Maya Rupert makes her debut with The Real Ones, an exploration of the risks and costs of authenticity for people of color.

Also hitting shelves this week:

• 🇵🇷 A guide to Puerto Rican cooking to keep the Benito Bowl vibes flowing
• ✍️ An epic retelling of the story of Dido
• 🪦 A Black death doula’s reflections on how to plan for the end
• 🎶 A love story infused with music and ’ 90s nostalgia

📓 Stay up-to-date on exciting new releases and build your personal watch list with Book Riot’s New Release Index when you join All Access. - RJS

Get your next three audiobooks completely free from  Audiobooks.com. Choose from over 500,000 titles, like the book behind the newest sizzling season of Bridgerton: Julia Quinn’s An Offer from a Gentleman. Claim your three free audiobooks and start your free 30-day  Audiobooks.com trial today! 

Wuthering Heights is not a romance, and anyone who says differently is selling something.

Emily Bronté’s single—and singular—novel is a whole lot weirder than its position atop lists of readers’ favorite love stories would have you believe. So weird, in fact, that one early critic blamed the book’s "depravity" on...wait for it...cheese.

This most misunderstood of classics is a dark and twisty tale of obsession, revenge, and what happens when love curdles into possession. Get ready to get gothic and study up for the season’s buzziest adaptation with the latest episode of Zero to Well-Read.

Some readers hate when their favorite books are adapted for the big or small screen, and it makes sense: adaptations are just one vision of a story. But adaptations are on the rise, thanks to increasing attention from streamers. In January 2026 alone, Netflix released a new adaptation every week-and those adaptations caused sales of their respective books to soar. 

• 🌴 The People We Meet on Vacation , the adaptation of which released January 9, saw a 97% increase in sales across all formats in the two weeks following (no small potatoes for a book that already sold millions!). Spotify listens also increased by 515%. 
• 🔪 His & Hers , based on the 2020 novel by Alice Feeney, debuted on Netflix January 8. The book ranked #16 on the Amazon Best Sellers list for the next two weeks, rising to #15 for the week of January 29. The book also landed at #92 on USA Today’s Best Sellers list for January 29 after being unranked on the list before. Spotify reported a near 500% increase in audiobook listens.
• ⛸️ Finding Her Edge , adapted from the YA novel by Jennifer Iacopelli, released January 22. In the lead-up to the Netflix adaptation, the new paperback edition of the book sold 500% more copies in eight weeks compared to the hardcover. 

Netflix has at least 13 more book adaptations on its calendar for 2026, including Remarkably Bright Creatures, a film based on the novel by Shelby Van Pelt (May 8); Unaccustomed Earth, a series based on the short story by Jhumpa Lahiri; and a Pride and Prejudice series based on the classic Jane Austen novel.

📈 Dig into more data about the Netflix effect on book sales, including a look at what 2025 adaptations increased reader interest, over here. -KJ

🎧 Win a Year of Audiobooks!
Ready to make 2026 your best reading year yet? We’ve teamed up with our friends at Penguin Random House Audio to give one lucky reader a 12-credit bundle to  Libro.fm!

That is a full year of audiobooks (one per month!) waiting to hit your earbuds. Even better? Libro.fm  allows you to buy audiobooks through your local independent bookstore, so you can support your community while you listen. Enter the giveaway here!

As state legislative sessions get underway, several Freedom to Read bills are moving through statehouses. These proposals are designed to counter book censorship by clarifying who can challenge library materials and how those reviews work.

📍 Massachusetts — S.2726
This bill (formerly S.2696) passed the Senate with new amendments and now sits in the House Ways and Means Committee. It would strengthen free-expression protections and include new rights for authors to challenge a book’s removal from school libraries.

📍 New Mexico — Freedom to Read Bill
Advocates, including Freedom to Read New Mexico, are pushing a bill aimed at safeguarding access to a wide range of literature statewide. The coalition is organizing grassroots support and outreach to advance passage.

📍 Pennsylvania — Right to Read Protections
Literary and civil rights groups in Pennsylvania are working to enshrine reading rights into state law. Interested residents can connect with groups like the Education Law Center and PA WINS to learn how to engage.

📍 Virginia — Draft Freedom to Read Proposal
A version of a freedom to read bill has been proposed in Virginia following the lightweight right-to-read legislation passed two years ago. Details are still emerging, and the proposal bears watching as the session progresses. -KJ

Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees are the authors of You & Me and You & Me and You & Me , a time travel romance novel that is out today. Below, they discuss writing a romance as a married couple.

We didn’t know each other very well when a drunken conversation in our twenties led to us writing Come Together, a novel told in alternate chapters from a male and female point of view. It turned out to be such an intense and confessional process that we ended up getting together in real life. 

Rom-coms usually end at the "they’ve-finally-got-it-together" moment, but experience has taught us that the real love story happens after that. Which is why, twenty-five years after Come Together, we wanted to write a story about long-term love and be honest and authentic about the stage of life we’re in.

Our characters in You & Me & You & Me & You & Me , Adam and Jules, like us, are in midlife with grown-up kids. They’re full of regrets and "what-ifs" until they discover a time machine in their garden shed. It allows them to relive parts of their relationship, but also to tweak things about each other that have been niggling, and to be tempted into making certain decisions they’ve always regretted not making.

We didn’t know what it would be like writing together after so long, but it turned out to be like free marriage counselling, as we were forced to examine our own regrets and wrong turns. We also discovered how dangerous nostalgia can be. For research purposes, we played all our old home movies, but instead of finding them joyous, as we’d assumed they’d be, they were depressing. It just made us miss our babies and our parents even more. Looking backwards really does stop you moving forward. Happiness, after all, as Adam and Jules discover in the book, is learning to love what you already have. 

To write together, you have to be brutally honest, and there were some rows when we had to kill each other’s darlings in the editing process, but we’ve found it thrilling to be engaged in the same project again. It has definitely brought us closer.

This Valentine’s, give them a gift they’ll savor every single morning. A Peet’s Coffee gift subscription delivers hand-roasted, fresh beans that turn their kitchen into their favorite café. Take 30% off Gift Subscriptions with code: LOVE.

Did you know? E.L. Konigsburg would drop her children off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to wander while she attended her art classes.

🛍️ Stay cozy and save $70 on a cashmere sweater from Everlane.**

📚 Here’s what the biggest and most interesting book clubs are reading in February, and you can join them!

🤖 The romance industry is embracing AI.

❓ Can you match these passionate quotations to their book titles?

🍴 This is why we can’t stop reading food diaries.

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