by Meredith Thompson 

There are more Romance bookstores in Alberta than any other province in Canada. Did you know this? Over the past few years, I have watched as several stores, shelves filled with hardcovers, bright colours and painted edges, sprang to life across this province, which made me wonder if perhaps this burgeoning interest in Romance was a nationwide phenomenon, or whether it was more localized. Romance is of course having a moment everywhere — has always been having a moment, one could argue — and there are indeed stores opening throughout the country, but not at the frequency that Romance stores have been opening in Alberta. 

“I wanted the store to feel almost like you were browsing books in your bedroom,” Kelsey Orlecki, owner of The Book Boudoir explained as I looked around her shop in Edmonton’s wîhkwêntôwin neighbourhood. I was awed, no overwhelmed, by the lushness of it all: floor to ceiling bookshelves, cascades of flowers, a stylize bathtub, book merch, 2SLGBTQIA+ stickers, badges, book nooks to build at home later, and most importantly, places to sit on as you look for your next read. I immediately wanted to bring everyone I knew to this store. 

In the weeks following my meeting with Kelsey, I brought several people to visit, including my friend, an artist, activist, and burlesque performer who was visiting from Montreal. Her face lit up as she walked around the shelves. “Smut is for intelligent women who need to decompress,” she laughed, reading the back of one of the pile of books she had pulled from the shelves before choosing a Dark Romance for her return flight to Montreal. There was also my aunt, visiting from the Sunshine Coast. She sat on the velvet couch, her hands folded in her lap and smile up at the shelves and shelves of books. “When I was young,” my aunt said, “I would read Romance books that were on spinning shelves in the grocery store. You could barely get them at the library. Nobody took them seriously — this is just so nice.” 

“The readers have always been here,” Kelsey says as she sits in the comfortable events space at the back of the The Book Boudoir. There’s a built-in bar, tables and chairs, and beautiful windows running the length of the room. “The missing puzzle piece was always the space for those readers to meet,” Kelsey continues. The space is currently set up for a paint night, featuring a local artist who has designed a painted edge for a specific book and will take the guests through the steps of the painting as they share a cocktail or beer at this “Sit and Stroke” night. 

Kelsey talks openly about the ostracization so many Romance readers felt when the only game in town was larger chains, who kept their Romance sections on a single, brightly lit shelf in the middle of the store, making nervous readers unlikely to approach and sending them to eReaders, which provided books but denied that in-person community they were seeking. 

  “The Romance community is just the best community alive, so I knew they would be the best customers,” Sam Jolliffe, owner of The Forbidden Library in Calgary beams. Sam is a lover of the Sports Romance who reclaimed her love or reading during the pandemic lockdowns. She has built her new store from the ground up as a first-time bookseller, with her specific community in mind. There’s a feeling of intimacy, of a book salon in an old home, with dark walls, lots of fun merch, and places for readers to sit while they browse. Sam believes in a safe, sex-positive space for all femme and female-identifying people to explore books in. Not just a place for people to find their next read but one where they can talk about what they have read, attend events, book clubs, and more. “We’ve done book bedazzling and sketching. We did a partner event with an adult store.” Sam pauses to think. “I have whole list of events I want to try. I’m so open at this stage. If it fails it fails and if it works, we’ll do it again.” 

“Romance can of course be read by anyone,” Kelsey Orlecki says, “but it is a historically feminized genre. I believe that creating space for women’s pleasure is so important. It’s okay for books to be about escape, especially in our ever-changing world. The consistency of knowing there is a whole world inside those pages is a comfort.” 

What is evident in these stores is the prioritization of comfort, of spaces where readers who do not fit into typical book spaces can gather, feminized spaces where there is no pressure to pretend to like something you didn’t like, or to be anything but swept away in a story as realistic or as fantastical as you would like it to be. “I want Edmonton to be the city of books,” Kelsey grins, “the more niche the better!”