I was reading a highly-rated romance novel, the kind everyone on my FYP was losing their minds over. Five-star reviews with readers screaming, crying, throwing up over the tension. Hundreds of thirsty comments trailing fire emojis.
The meet-cute happened on page twelve. A charged glance across a crowded room. He said something cocky. She retorted something clever. Their fingers lingered during an “electric” handshake. By page fifteen, the main character was thinking, “I’ve never wanted anyone like this before.”
I reread those pages twice, searching for what I’d missed.
All I could feel was… nothing. Worse than nothing — I was confused. Why did she want him? They’d had a handful of polite conversations. What did they even have in common besides being attractive and in the same room?
I felt broken.
It took me years to realise: I wasn’t broken. I was demisexual — and the entire romance industry wasn’t built for readers like me.
Demisexuality means you don’t experience sexual attraction until you’ve formed a strong emotional bond with someone. It’s part of the asexual spectrum, and for a long time, I thought it only applied to real-world relationships.
Then one day, mid-reading slump, it hit me: demisexuality doesn’t turn off when you open a book.
My brain is wired to need emotional connection before attraction registers. Those “boring” friendship chapters everyone complained about skipping? Those were my romance. The slow build wasn’t slow to me — it was necessary. It was the actual love story.
The loneliness of reading differently.
For years, I thought something was fundamentally wrong with me as a romance reader.
I loved romance — the idea of it, the promise of connection and intimacy. But book after book left me cold in the beginning, only catching fire much later if the characters spent enough time actually talking, sharing vulnerabilities, building something real.
The worst part was the isolation. I’d see entire comment sections screaming about the instant chemistry, the tension in that first meeting, how they “knew” these characters belonged together from page one. And I’d be sitting there thinking, “But they’re still strangers. Why does anyone care yet?”
When BookTok exploded, the conversation around romance became visible in a way it never had been before. Millions of readers articulated exactly what they wanted — morally grey men, instant obsession, enemies who hated each other on page three and were ripping each other’s clothes off by page fifty.
Here’s the thing: I love dark and gritty. I love morally complex characters, high stakes, danger, revenge plots. On paper, darker romance should have been perfect for me.
But watching BookTok’s explosion made something clear: there are fundamentally different ways people experience attraction in stories. For many readers, that instant pull IS the romance. The tension comes from the taboo, the danger, the forbidden nature of desire itself.
For demisexual readers? We’re reading a different book. We’re waiting for a foundation that may never come.
What demisexual reading actually looks like.
When I finally understood what I needed, I started recognising it in the books that did work for me.
I need to watch characters learn each other — not just their tragic backstory in one convenient flashback, but the small things. The way someone’s voice changes when they’re lying. The specific humour they use as armour. What they’re afraid of in the dark.
I need the moment when banter shifts from clever sparring to something intimate. When one character sees past the mask the other wears and the dynamic fundamentally changes.
I need trust built in increments. The slow realisation that this person knows you in a way no one else does.
And then — finally — attraction floods in. Not because someone is conventionally attractive or dangerous, but because intimacy has created the conditions for desire. The wanting is earned.
For demisexual readers, dark romance can absolutely work—but the intimacy has to emerge from darkness, not replace it. The stakes have to be emotional, not just physical.
What the industry is missing.
Romance is a $1.44 billion industry, but the market is optimised for instant chemistry because that’s what’s most visible and commercially obvious. Agents want that spark on page one. Marketing needs the hook to be immediate.
But conservative estimates suggest 1% of the population is demisexual. That’s millions of readers whose experience of attraction is fundamentally different — and who deserve romance that understands intimacy is built, not instant.
Once I understood what I needed as a reader, I realised I’d been searching for something that barely existed. So I started writing it.
I write sci-fi romance where morally grey characters truly see each other first. When the attraction finally hits, it’s devastating precisely because it’s built on that foundation.
My readers tell me they’ve been searching for exactly this: “I finally understand why other romances never worked for me”. Another: “This is the first time I’ve felt seen as a reader”.
This isn’t a niche so small it doesn’t matter. This is an underserved audience that’s been quietly struggling, settling for books that don’t quite work.
You are not broken.
If you’ve ever felt like you were reading romance wrong because you needed more before you cared about the physical stuff, I see you.
If you’ve been confused by everyone screaming about instant chemistry while you’re still trying to figure out why these characters even like each other, you’re not alone.
You’ve just been waiting for stories that understand how you fall in love.
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One snake bite. One moment of clarity she really didn’t ask for. Sasha Barrett has survived two years at the Praetorian Academy — turns out her captain was always going to be the most dangerous thing in the field.
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