Emily Henry Is the Queen of Happily Ever After

*Emily Henry helped turn romance into publishing’s hottest genre. But as Hollywood races to adapt its biggest hits, she says the industry still doesn’t understand why readers love them.*

*Madison Darbyshire for Bloomberg News*

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but in 2020 Emily Henry’s publisher decided to test the theory.

It was the early days of the pandemic and *Beach Read* — Henry’s first romance novel, about a romance writer who swaps genres with her rakish nemesis — was slated for release into a culture stuck at home and on TikTok. Behind the scenes, the team at Berkley Books had been quietly pursuing a hypothesis: Give romance novels bright, contemporary covers that looked more book club than bodice ripper, and skeptical readers would find they loved the genre. “Trojan horse romance,” Henry jokes.

The experiment paid off. *Beach Read* became a BookTok darling, and spent 55 weeks on the *New York Times* bestseller list. Henry followed it with five more romance novels; together, the six books have sold more than 12 million copies.

It wasn’t just Henry who broke out. Romance overtook thrillers in 2021 to become the bestselling fiction category in the US, and a billion-dollar business. Five of the top 10 fiction authors last year — Henry, Colleen Hoover, Rebecca Yarros, Ana Huang and Sarah J. Maas — were romance writers, collectively accounting for 7% of all fiction sales. One in three romantic comedies sold in the US in 2025 were Henry’s, according to Circana BookScan.

[Read the full profile here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-10/emily-henry-s-beach-read-happy-place-put-hollywood-spotlight-on-romance?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4Mzc3NTI4OSwiZXhwIjoxNzg0MzgwMDg5LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSFk4V0tOM04wOFgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.WKcEEXKR9mxXfTqvBY1ORBa3UR53V80gY4TTCo_ns68)