Cowboy Romances Are Riding Hard On BookTok

Heated Rivalry may dominate the romance category right now, but there’s another site-specific steamy genre that's finding a love-hungry reading population.

Cowboy-inspired romances have saddled up and are riding hard in pursuit of one of publishing’s most desirable buying populations: the avid romance reader.

And it appears they've managed to rustle up quite a few fans of late.

What Is Cowboy Romance?

Growing affection for cowboy romances, i.e. stories set in rural landscapes and that feature hunky horse guys, rugged renegades and swoon-worthy cow wranglers—have been lighting up BookTok over the past few years, with readers trading recommendations and reviews for steamy books from authors like Meredith Trapp, Lyla Sage and Jessica Peterson.

This spring, a new cowboy romance—from a Canadian author, to boot—is likely to kick up even more BookTok chatter.

New York Times best-selling novelist Elsie Silver’s latest, Fever Dream, is reportedly the first in a proposed western romance series called Emerald Lake. The B.C.-born novelist has carved a niche for herself for her ability to craft winning small-town love stories that lean into wild west tropes featuring "dirty-talking alpha heroes and strong heroines that clap back." (Her Rose Hill novels are reportedly set to become a series on Amazon.)

To be released on May 19, Fever Dream is a steamy rodeo-meets-reality-TV mashup. The "small-town, forbidden, rivals-to-lovers romance" centres on an encounter between a beautiful, whip-smart location consultant for a reality-tv show called Romance Ranch and Emmet Bush, the cocky bull rider who is set to star as its leading man.

The Market Is There

Cowboys are already a hot cultural commodity; look no further than Yellowstone and its myriad spinoffs, as well as country music's mainstream success. And there's definitely a heated market out there for these fictional rural heroes and anti-heroes to plant their spurs in.

Romance novels are the bread and butter of publishing, accounting for reportedly more than a billion dollars in annual revenue globally. Canadian readers are just as hot for romance as the rest of the globe. Data from BookNet’s national sales tracking service reveals that sales of romance books in Canada have increased by 105% from 2020 to 2025.

Those numbers represent the kind of reader interest that could even make a cowboy blush.

Want more book reccos? Here are 11 new releases our editor-in-chief loved.