Book Influencers Worth Following

by Jenna Harte

The book world moves fast. New releases, industry news, and bookish drama seem to pop up every day. And we at T&TT are here for it. We discuss it every week on our podcast, Illicit Liaisons.

This is our curated list of book influencers we turn to for recommendations, publishing news, thoughtful discussions, and book-world drama. Plus a few extra that I, Jenna, enjoy watching.

Whether you’re looking for your next five-star read, want to stay on top of what’s happening in the romance community, or simply enjoy spending time with fellow book lovers, these are creators we think are worth following.

Mama Needs to Read Romance: Bea offers a lighthearted and entertaining approach to book reviews, recommendations, hauls, and more. She also has tea times and collab episodes with other readers. She covers several categories of romance, but her specialty is historical romance.

Be sure to check out our interview with Bea on Illicit Liasons.

Peace Love Books: Jess is a former English teacher with a love for romance books. She offers recommendations, shares updates on her current reads, book hauls, and more. Some of her most helpful episodes focus on books in specific categories or tropes. She has an episode on weather/science romances, queer romances, dystopian romances, hockey romances… You get the drift. She also does hauls, unhauls, monthly reading vlog, and more.

Lizy Hartwell: Lizy is an author who recently started sharing book reviews/recommendations on TikTok. She does quick, concise reviews of a single book at a time. Most of her reviews are in the romance genre. As of this writing, her most recent post was a quick overview defining Omegaverse and then a review of A Pack for Summer.

Steph Reads A Lot: Also on TikTok, Steph offers entertaining videos on the books she’s read and whether they’re a yes, no, or maybe. My favorites are the ones in which she doesn’t talk but through facial expressions and gestures tells you her opinion. Steph reads a variety of genres, and not too much romance, but I always enjoy her videos.

Rachel Reads: My favorite Rachel Reads episodes are about Authors Behaving Badly, but she also does deep-dive reviews of books. Admittedly, she doesn’t like most books she reads, but her insights are thoughtful and interesting. Her delivery can be irreverent, which for me adds to the entertainment.

Read with Cindy: Cindy has been a favorite of mine for some time. Her videos range from sharing the books she reads in a month to deep-dive reviews, to bookish drama and watching book adaptations. She travels quite a bit and shares her reading while she travels. She reads fiction and non-fiction, offering thoughtful insights and reviews. She almost always has at least one romance in her videos, unless she’s doing a single book review. Like Rachel, her delivery may not be for everyone.

Laura Rae Says: Laura started out discussing books, but has morphed into sharing book news and drama, and in particular highlighting scams and bad players in the bookish world, whether they’re authors who don’t fulfill their Kickstarter, editors who bully their clients, or book box companies that don’t deliver books.

Be sure to check out our recent Illicit Liaisons podcast in which Laura was our guest host.

Jess Owens: Jess is a BookTuber who covers bookish communitea (her spelling), as well as book reviews and news. She also does live reading sprints. She has a recent video in which she discusses an article from The Atlantic about the end of reading.

Taylor Rose: Similar to Laura Rae, Taylor Rose covers bookish news and drama. She also does rant reviews.

Susanna Friesen: Susanna covers a variety of news and drama on the Internet, including the bookish sort.

Plot Twist, Please and Susannah Friesen: Susanna has a bookish podcast with two other women, where they cover all sorts of bookish topics.

Do you have go-to book influencers for reviews or news? We’d love to hear your recommendations!

Has it been a year already?

I attended C3, a book conference in Maryland, two years ago, and found mystery and sci-fi short-story magazines in my swag bag. I pondered out loud to the romance authors I chat with each week on Zoom why there wasn’t a magazine like that for romance readers.

Before I knew it, I was heading the creation of a romance anthology, Tender & Tempting Tales. Our very first publication, Moonlight & Margaritas, released June 30, 2025.

It’s still available in KU and print!

Since then, we’ve published two more anthologies and two zines!

Congratulations to all the editors and writers of Moonlight & Margaritas! Happy 1-year birthday!