BookTok’s combination of the century
Avery Nowicki (They/Them) // Communities Editor
Freya Emery // Illustrator
To my fellow Canadians, think for a minute about what comes to mind when I say ‘hockey boys,’ Do you get a little scared? Me too. Maybe you think of their slang, and the combined accents they all share. Maybe you think of those big Bass Pro hats they wear, or maybe, if you are like thousands of BookTok readers, you think of hockey romance books like ‘Icebreaker’, ‘Behind the Net,’ or dare I say ‘Double Pucked’ *vomiting in my mouth typing this*.
While many who went through the Canadian high school experience think of hockey boys as former boyfriends, friends or instillers of fear, they’ve become caught in a world I don’t think anyone could have anticipated; BookTok. While I am all for making you read books, this time, I have to say, cut it out, this is embarrassing. I know, I’m being harsh, and maybe there is something fun for everyone in this book. Who doesn’t have fond memories of ice skating, going to local hockey games, getting bullied by that one hockey guy who told me I had a pig nose? I don’t know about you, but I’d love to revisit that in written form.
Now, what really is the problem here? Most of us love a cheesy romance novel, and the thousands of teen and young-adult girls on BookTok do as well. What really is the harm in a cute book about a ballerina going ice skating with a hockey player and falling in love? That sounds adorable.
Well, I’m glad you asked. The problem is that the ballerinas are self-inserts for 16-year-old girls, and the hockey players they idolize as they read are not the ones in their highschools but real life NHL players with wives, who cannot be fantasized about in real-life as they do in these books.
I’m sure we all remember hearing snippets about BookTok girls graphic flirting with Seattle Kraken’s Alex Wennberg online, so much so he and his wife had to beg them to stop. If you vaguely remember this story, it’s likely because major publications like the New York Times, ESPN, NBC News, Rolling Stone, the Cut and CBC all covered the rise of BookTok’s obsession with hockey and how that influenced thousands of teenagers to sexually harass a married NHL player. You can make fun of these BookTokers all you want, but at some point must admit—they are also worryingly powerful. So let’s look closer into the books themselves, what could be all that bad in a cutesy little romance novel that a couple people read and discuss online?
First off, let’s crunch the numbers, remember how I said thousands of young people love Booktok? I may have been lowballing just a bit, #Booktok itself has over 203.7 billion views. With the highest grossing (also New York Times Bestselling) Hockey romance book ‘Icebreaker’ by Hannah Grace getting 247.8 million views on #hannahgrace alone.
When you see a book like this on your bookstore’s #Booktok table, with the cute 2D animations on the cover, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you probably don’t expect to be reading full-on smut (graphic porn). To quantify some of these numbers into actual sales, Circana BookScan tracked over $760 million sales in 2022 for books from the top 100 BookTok authors, a 60 per cent increase from 2021. People are not only consuming this content online, they are purchasing these books more and more every day. Now, is that such a bad thing?
If TikTok can be a platform that gets people reading again, we should be all for it. There also is no shame in the amount of hidden sexualization in these books, however with the innocent and misleading cover-art and the way readers have become full sexual harassers of real-life men, it does mean we need to question who exactly #Booktok is marketing this hockey smut too. So sure, maybe this is less about the cheesiness of the Hockey Boy being turned into the BookTok love interest, and maybe it’s more a question of ethics. When anyone can access #BookTok, and anyone can buy the books, how do parents know what their youth are reading, and much more importantly, how can it be taught that just because something exists in cute fiction packaging, doesn’t mean we can sexually harass real-life figures online?
There are a lot of moral questions that come into play when considering BookTok. While you think about BookTok and its effects, I’ll leave you with a quote from the famed ‘Icebreakers’ by Hannah Grace.
“I’m heavy,” she mutters as my arms scoop under her legs and around her waist. We leave Brady and Shithead behind us as I start the walk toward the locker rooms, where the first aid room is. “Shut up, Anastasia. You’re not even half my warm-up weight.”
Icebreakers, Hannah Grace.
