“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
It’s a lesson instilled in us early, meant to teach us not to jump to conclusions. Yet, on BookTok, books are judged not just by their covers, but by how they make you feel. A single video saying that a book will “emotionally destroy you” or “heal your inner child” can catapult it to the top of the best sellers list. These aren’t just reviews—they’re emotional endorsements that are changing the way we read.
“BookTok” is a side of TikTok catering to book lovers and avid readers that has gained increasing popularity post–pandemic. It has revolutionized the publishing industry by increasing print sales by 9% to a record 825 million books in its first year of popularity on the platform, as well as bringing more new authors into the spotlight. However, a less talked about part of BookTok is how a reader’s emotional reactions to books are centered in how they are discussed: “I cried for DAYS,” “these five books had my jaw on the floor,” “books that remind us we are deeply human.” These are more than dramatic captions; they set expectations and make promises. They promote an idea of what someone should feel before beginning a novel, creating a community based on the emotional experience of reading popular books.
One of the most prominent examples of this is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. The novel is often recommended with disclaimers like, “do NOT read this unless you want to sob uncontrollably,” or “I will never recover from this book.” On BookTok, readers discussing this novel often record themselves crying, staring blankly at the wall, or covering their mouths in reaction to the story, accompanied by sad music playing in the background.
Reading the book, seems to demand a certain level of mental preparation after given the countless TikToks and an extensive list of its trigger warnings. The novel follows Jude, a litigator in New York City who keeps his past hidden from his friends, as he deals with companionship, pain, and complex trauma. Its popularity on BookTok has less to do with its literary complexity and more to do with the raw emotion that the story evokes. Indeed, Jude’s story and Yanagihara’s writing linger in the mind long after reading, leaving behind a haunting sense of emptiness and grief. In this space, it’s not just a story, but a collective experience—a shared emotional journey taken by those who choose to pick up the book. To read it is to belong to a sort of informal club, where the sadness and grief felt from the story create a sense of community.
BookTok thrives on emotional intensity, but on a platform built to reward spectacle and instant gratification, it’s worth questioning whether these reactions are authentic or performative. TikTok’s algorithm favors extremes, and videos that create shock or strong reactions typically garner more views, likes, comments, and shares. This explains why emotional responses to books perform so well and why many of the stories that people choose to engage with contain controversial subject matter. Books that inspire tears, gasps, or existential dread are more likely to go viral, while creators learn to perform whatever emotional cues garner the most online traction. The more intense their performance—sobbing, trembling while holding the novel, dramatic music—the more visibility they will likely receive.
But this raises a tricky question: are people reading to feel or reading to be seen feeling?
Some readers may genuinely have strong emotional reactions to the books they read. Others may feel pressured to respond a certain way based on the media they have seen about a text. For instance, if A Little Life is consistently described as a book that ‘will wreck you,’ readers may feel pressured to have a strong emotional reaction or question the validity of their response if their experience differs. The algorithm doesn’t just elevate books, it sets emotional expectations about them. This creates an environment where a story’s ability to elicit strong reactions is given more value than the quality of its prose. A quiet, contemplative book that is beautifully written but doesn’t provoke a strong response may never gain popularity. In a sense, BookTok shapes both what people read and how they judge the quality of a work.
As an english major, I’m used to approaching literature with a different lens: analyzing themes, narrative techniques, and structure. However, on BookTok, emotional experiences often overshadow traditional literary elements such as prose and narrative style. This tension between literary analysis and emotional expectation is part of what makes BookTok so fascinating. It has made reading more popular, allowed people to feel seen in their emotions, and given creators an outlet to express themselves. However, it also risks collapsing critical literary analysis into one simple question: Did it make me feel enough?
BookTok reflects a cultural shift in reading from intellectual pursuit to emotional experience, which some critics interpret as part of a broader trend of anti–intellectualism. Anti–intellectualism in this context refers to a cultural tendency to minimize in–depth, analytical engagement with texts in favor of entertainment and emotional gratification (in other words, reading as a hobby rather than a means of learning). For example, walking into a Barnes & Noble today, the “BookTok” shelf is often filled with smutty romance novels. While reading for pleasure is certainly valid and essential, this trend raises questions about whether platforms like TikTok have diminished the value of critical thought in engaging with literature.
This emphasis on emotional engagement can also veer into voyeurism, particularly in books like A Little Life that center graphic trauma. The novel’s extreme depictions of Jude’s suffering are often not consumed for critical reflection, but rather for the intense reactions they create, shared through tearful videos and “emotional damage” memes. This raises concerns about how trauma has been packaged for consumption—such reading experiences are more about personal catharsis or spectacle than meaningfully engaging with difficult topics. In this sense, A Little Life exists in an ambiguous space: literary in form but marketed and consumed through the same economy of performance that elevates romance and smut on BookTok.
Reading with both heart and highlighters, BookTok reveals that engaging with literature involves not just interpretation, but also identification. It’s not just about the words written on the page, but the emotion that the language creates. In the rush to translate how we feel into a video with tears and TikTok sounds, however, we risk flattening emotional narratives and reducing the value of well–rounded stories. Not every good book will wreck you.
Still, there’s something powerful about a platform that can create such a deep sense of community among people who are moved by literature. In a world that often makes us feel detached, BookTok inspires us to lean into our emotions. BookTok isn’t asking everyone to be a scholar or an english major. It’s a promise that books will always be a way of breaking us open and bringing us together, even in a very online age. In a world of curated grief and viral vulnerability, BookTok proves that fiction still moves us—and maybe that’s all it needs to do.