A hot new romance bookstore is first of its kind in Kansas City, one of a few in US

David Hudnall
·2 min read

Sales of romance novels are booming, up 52% last year and another 35% in the first six months of 2023, says Publishers Weekly.

Explanations vary. Some credit BookTok, an influential community of TikTok readers and authors, for boosting the genre among Gen Z audiences. Others have posited that the pandemic flung readers desperate for human interaction into the warm bosom of bodice rippers.

Carley Morton has been noticing. She reads romance almost exclusively, has a podcast about it and last year attended Mid-Continent Public Library’s romance convention Romance GenreCon, where she learned an interesting fact.

“Somebody said that even though romance is the number one fiction category, there are only six romance-only bookstores in the country,” Morton said. (A few have opened since last year, including Blush in Wichita.) “I was talking to my husband afterward and was like, ‘Look, I think we could do a romance bookstore.’ And then he did a bunch of research and was like, ‘Look, you could totally do a romance bookstore.’”

So Morton found a space to lease, quit her job at Beacon Mental Health and, on Wednesday, softly opened Under the Cover at 605 E. 31st St., in the former House of Flowers building.

On the shelves at Under the Cover are sections for multiple romance sub-genres, including Yes, Your Majesty! (about royalty), Sports, and As Seen on TV (books that have been turned into films and series).
On the shelves at Under the Cover are sections for multiple romance sub-genres, including Yes, Your Majesty! (about royalty), Sports, and As Seen on TV (books that have been turned into films and series).

She is already off to a steamy start. On opening day, a friend stopped by and shot a quick TikTok video about the shop. It has since gone viral, with more than 160,000 views as of Friday morning.

“She isn’t even a marketing person or anything,” Morton said. “She only had, like, 100 followers. So, it’s been crazy. I’ve been getting so many texts about it.”

The bookshelves in the store are divided into romance subgenres, including Yes, Your Majesty (about royalty), Oh, a Billionaire (about wealthy paramours), and Sports. Under the Cover also has a BookTok section for novels that have blown up on that platform, and a section featuring local authors.

“Sierra Simone is a really big romance author, and she’s local,” Morton said. “She’ll be here for the grand opening party, too.” That’s planned for Saturday, Nov. 25, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will feature food from Happy Belly and drinks from J. Rieger & Co.

Morton said she’s still playing with the regular hours for Under the Cover, but for now it will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays, open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 3 p.m.