Is BookTok terrible at book recommendations?

If there’s one thing TikTok‘s great at, it’s fostering communities of likeminded people with niche interests. One of the most popular of these is BookTok, an area of the app for people to review, recommend, and discuss books. BookTok has become somewhat of a phenomenon, and you can find sections at bookstores filled with books that have gained popularity on the platform. While a movement encouraging young people to read sounds great in theory, are the books BookTok recommends even good?

What exactly is BookTok?

As mentioned above, BookTok is a place on TikTok for users to post content about books. This content can range from simple reviews to creative fan content with users even cosplaying their fave book characters. The majority of books mentioned on BookTok are romance, young adult, or fantasy novels. The #BookTok hashtag is one of the most popular on the app, and videos with the tag gain millions of views. With this much popularity, it’s easy to see why TikTok is driving book sales.

Most of BookTok seems to agree on which books are their favorites. Fiction novels, especially romance with fantasy elements, are generally well-liked along with the occasional thriller novel. Books like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and A Court of Thorns and Roses get recommended consistently as well as books by authors, like Colleen Hoover.

What’s wrong with TikTok book recommendations?

While the majority of BookTok recommend these books, a growing portion of the community are pushing back. A TikTok posted by user @bannedfromletterboxd recently went viral on Twitter, inspiring many to share their own complaints about popular BookTok choices. The short clip of the user reading Hoover’s It Ends With Us jokes that the BookTok recommendation is “the worst piece of English literature” the user has ever read.

The user is not the only book lover who thinks BookTok recommendations are lacking. A quick search through the hashtag yields similar videos where users list overrated books or the BookTok books they refuse to read. The same authors TikTok loves to recommend, like Sarah J. Maas and the aforementioned Hoover, are simultaneously regarded as bad literature in these short clips.

TikTok might be a good place to grow a passion for reading, but should you judge a book by its cover? This author suggests combing through BookTok for recommendations but to take them with a grain of salt. One BookTok user’s least favorite book might be your next favorite and vice versa.