{"id":307887,"date":"2026-05-09T16:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T16:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307887\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T16:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T16:55:11","slug":"horny-on-main-peep-inside-san-franciscos-first-romance-novel-bookstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307887\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Horny on main\u2019: Peep inside San Francisco\u2019s first romance-novel bookstore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veena Patel, owner of San Francisco’s first and only romance bookstore, The Love Potion Library, in the Castro. | Source: Alexa Trevi\u00f1o for SF Standard<\/p>\n

A lonely young project manager quits her tech job to pursue her life\u2019s passion: opening a bookstore and cafe dedicated to romance novels and the people who love them. She is assisted by her husband \u2014 the sunshine to her grumpiness, (opens in new tab)<\/a> the golden retriever to her black cat \u2014 a man who previously read only nonfiction. Customers become regulars, sexual inklings become awakenings, and a community of hardcore romantic lit lovers is born.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This blurb is not pulled from the back of a bodice ripper. Veena Patel has been living out this fantasy since opening The Love Potion Library, San Francisco\u2019s first store devoted entirely to romance fiction, last month in the Castro. Patel, 33, read her first romance-adjacent novel as a child. She was scandalized by a sex scene involving a big-city career woman and a Montana horse whisperer and passed the book around to her friends. She remembers her mother concealing her own Mills & Boon romance novels behind reusable dust jackets.<\/p>\n

For years, Patel\u2019s love of romance fiction was worlds away from her day job. She studied geophysics at Stanford and worked in alternative energy for nearly a decade before stepping down in February 2025 after dealing with persistent anxiety. \u201cI realized it wasn\u2019t something I enjoyed doing, being behind my computer all day,\u201d she said. \u201cI just felt really lonely.\u201d She opened the store \u2014 funded through her and her husband\u2019s savings \u2014 on April 25, Independent Bookstore Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"APatel says she isn\u2019t drawn to romance fiction for the sex. \u201cI just have always loved a happily ever after.\u201d | Source: Alexa Trevi\u00f1o for SF Standard<\/p>\n

The reason she reads romance, she said, isn\u2019t the unbridled sex or eroticism: \u201cI just have always loved a happily ever after.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Increasingly, romance fans are proud and public about their beloved genre. \u201cEveryone\u2019s getting horny on main,\u201d said Alyssa Jarrett, an Oakland-based romance novelist who visited The Love Potion Library on opening day. \u201cPeople are really owning their sexuality.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2025, 44 million romance books were sold (opens in new tab)<\/a>, up almost 4% from the previous year and vastly outnumbering the combined sales of science fiction (6 million) and fantasy (24 million), according to Publisher\u2019s Weekly. Last summer, BookScan reported (opens in new tab)<\/a> that romance was the fastest-growing genre among all print books.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have thoughts on this story?Start the conversation<\/p>\n

The commercial value in the genre has extended to a nationwide explosion of brick-and-mortar stores. In 2016, two sisters in Los Angeles opened The Ripped Bodice (opens in new tab)<\/a>, the country\u2019s first romance bookstore. Today, there are more than (opens in new tab)<\/a> 200 in North America, including 14 in California. Sex sells, and so do stories about strangers having a one-night stand after meeting at a Napa winery (as happens in Oakland author Jasmine Guillory\u2019s 2022 novel \u201cDrunk on Love\u201d).<\/p>\n

At Love Potion on May 2, readers filled the green velvet loveseats, sipping tea from floral-patterned china and paging through stacks of novels piled high on cafe tables. Patel serves loose-leaf tea from Aroma Tea Shop in the Outer Richmond and pastries from Elaichai Co.<\/a>, another San Francisco pioneer that last month opened the city\u2019s first standalone chai cafe<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s husband, Varun Datta, a software engineer, was manning the cash register and greeting shoppers. Patel introduced him to romance with Brynne Weaver\u2019s \u201cButcher & Blackbird,\u201d a novel about two serial killers who share sensual post-murder baths, getting it on while cleaning dried blood off their bodies. \u201cAfter the first chapter he was like, \u2018What is this?\u2019\u201d Patel said, laughing. \u201cI think he really liked it \u2014 he has been reading more romance since.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romance novels offer a vision of an idyllic world, where love and pleasure triumph. For some readers, Patel said, a good one can become \u201can instruction manual for what you should expect out of a sexual relationship in terms of communication and consent, which is nice to have in a world where incels exist and we have to be aware of their presence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was the case for Grace Green, a 25-year-old accountant who lives in Hayes Valley and grew up in a religious community in which \u201csex is very taboo and a woman enjoying sex is not something that you really talk about.\u201d Romance novels, she said, have \u201creally helped me be able to explore myself, and not be ashamed of taboo topics, and really feel more confident and secure in my own sexuality.\u201d She has visited Love Potion twice, once with her husband.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A\"Several<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, Green noted, \u201cWe have so many other amazing bookstores: the anarchist bookstore, the queer bookstore, vintage bookstores.\u201d The Love Potion Library, she said, provides a beautiful, curated experience for the people who don\u2019t want to feel judged for asking, \u201cWhere\u2019s the romance section?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frederick Smith, a romance author who lives near West Portal, writes male-male romances, largely set in the Bay Area and featuring Black men. \u201cI think that having a romance-specific bookstore in the Castro is going to open up doors for queer readers to be a little more open to the romance genre,\u201d he said. \u201cIt signals to the community that romance is indeed a genre to be taken seriously.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s early novels tended to handle sex by fading out of the scene. Fans told him they wanted more. \u201cI ran into readers who said, \u2018We like your novels, Fred, but want to see swords crossing,\u2019\u201d he said, laughing. His next novel, \u201cLove Is a Contact Sport,\u201d out June 16, is more explicit. Romance novels range from \u201clow spice\u201d \u2014 heavy eye contact and kissing \u2014 to lascivious. \u201cA lot of romance readers will use the word \u2018smut\u2019 tongue-in-cheek, lovingly, reclaiming that term,\u201d said Jarrett.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The store is licensed to sell beer and wine, and Patel plans to host regular book clubs and game nights to facilitate friendship and community among customers. She has already had to turn people away from a \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d trivia night that attracted nearly 50 and a long waitlist. She envisions speed-dating events with queer and straight options.<\/p>\n

\"ARomance novels sold at The Love Potion Library range from \u201clow spice\u201d \u2014 heavy eye contact and kissing \u2014 to lascivious.\u200b<\/p>\n

The Love Potion Library\u2019s shelves are organized by tropes \u2014\u201cenemies to lovers,\u201d \u201cfated mates\u201d \u2014 as well as subgenres like fantasy and literary fiction. The science fiction section has been particularly popular, Patel said \u2014 she had to restock \u201cThis Is How You Lose the Time War\u201d by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone and \u201cThe Darkness Outside Us\u201d by Eliot Schrefer within days of opening the store. \u201cI get a lot of customers coming in and saying, \u2018I don\u2019t read romance,\u2019 and then looking around and saying, \u2018I read more romance than I think,\u2019\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She has seen a diversity of customers by every metric. The only exception, she said, is straight men, who have a tendency to wander in and turn right around when they realize the store\u2019s focus. \u201cA lot of romance is written from a woman\u2019s perspective on what she\u2019s looking for in a man,\u201d Patel pointed out. Straight men aren\u2019t yet realizing how to leverage this intel, she said. Give them time.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veena Patel, owner of San Francisco’s first and only romance bookstore, The Love Potion Library, in the Castro.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[647,27474,21856,101,103,102,8702,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-307887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-books","tag-bookstores","tag-castro","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sex","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}