Teachers, Nurses, and Caregivers Find Solace in Denver’s Smutty Book Club Community

Many people don’t imagine drinking beer and discussing dinosaur erotica on their Monday nights. But the women (and men) of Fiction Beer Company’s Smutty Book Club embrace it with open arms. In a table setting not too far off from the Last Supper, over plantains and IPAs, their conversation looked a little like this…

“It’s not gay if a dude and a dino get together.”

“I think it would be really good if she had a saddle to ride him into battle.”

“Is it like a cat tongue, long lizard tongue, or dog tongue?”

“I don’t care what furry porn you watch online, this book is worse.”

Underneath the chaos is enthusiasm. It’s only July, and some of the club members have already devoured 90 books this year. While some people show up because Bridgerton ran out of episodes, others are reading prehistoric spice for other reasons: Denver’s book club community is reclaiming smut as a hobby. 

Across the city, smutty book clubs are thriving third spaces that foster friendship and a safe space for self-discovery. Many of the books are written by women, for women, and unpoliced by men.

“The spicy romance and smut books are super important for women specifically and exploring the things that they want, or being able to talk about things that they may have never been able to talk about,” said Kat Long, the events manager for Tattered Cover and co-founder of its Spicy Lit Society Book Club. 

For Long, reading romance was “life-changing and life-giving.” 

“I came from a very religious background and I was kicked out of it.
The spicier books helped me explore safely a world that I was never a part of and was shamed a lot for. It’s a very powerful tool to help people explore different avenues of their sexuality and themselves. It’s not just about the smut or the sex. There’s a lot of self-discovery that goes on in these books.”

People are willing to be vulnerable, perhaps because there are few spaces to talk about why monster smut is helpful in addressing past trauma, she said. The fantastical elements can help pull people out of shame or seriousness and connect with themselves in a new way. There’s a lot of freedom in sharing and not hiding.

And books are good for your brain, Long added.

There is also a deep sense of female camaraderie and support, said Sidney Ivy, owner of Denver’s first and only romance bookstore, the Spicy Librarian.

“I once had a customer come in and she went, I followed the giggle of girls, and that’s how I found your store,” said Ivy. “That is such an amazing representation of what this community is. It’s girls just purely enjoying themselves.”

“They can sit there and they can talk about how weird this alien penis is and have the time of their life.”

Noticing the lack of independent bookstores in general, she sought to fill the gap with her passion for romance books. Romance-only bookstores were popping up all over post-pandemic and following the rise of BookTok, Ivy explained. Despite having a rather solitary hobby, people were missing that third space.

“I started being like wait a second. I’ve always been reading these books, but it was always a well-kept secret. You never told anybody what you were reading. You used your Kindle. It was like such a shameful thing.”

Finding community in college among romance readers, she saw the need for a more formal, centralized community in Denver that had only really existed online beforehand. Ivy opened shop in a January snowstorm. Despite the weather, the romance community of Denver nearly sold out her entire inventory. 

“My first week, I was handing out coupons, asking people to come back ’cause we had nothing on the shelves. But people kept coming, and people have still kept coming.” 

Prepared to embrace the slow life of a sleepy bookstore owner, she was instead met with hot mayhem. Now, Spicy Librarian runs several book clubs, hosts events, and even has a section called the Vault, which sells sex toys in the back. Denver readers tend to gravitate towards the spicier side of things, said Ivy. The city is weirdly sex positive.

“We’re like a very female-forward anti-shame space that celebrates all things romance,” she said. 

Ivy gets every type of person in her store, but noticed the central demographic: strong, career-driven women in caregiver roles, such as nurses and teachers and other high-stress working environments. She herself opened Spicy Librarian after becoming burned out from teaching kindergarten.

“Coming from being a teacher, reading romance was my escape. It’s how I survived. It was how I was able to get out of my head for a little bit.”

Romance books were always popular, she said. Publishers stayed in business by selling your grandma that old paperback at the grocery store. But now we have the ability to talk about it and bring it into light. 

The appeal: the promised happily-ever-after.

It’s not just fairy smut or dragons having sex, said Ivy. It’s strong, powerful women overthrowing corrupt governments and saving worlds while the man is a supporting character cheering her on. 

“I have never read a romance book where the man is like, you should quit your job and become a mom. That doesn’t exist,” said Ivy.  “I have lots of people that come into my store that are like, I’ve never read a romance book, but I want to make sure it has a strong woman. And I usually go, that’s all of them.”

There’s comfort in seeing so many different representations of how you can find your happily ever after, she said. It’s about escaping our crazy world and being absorbed into a love story where two creatures end up together despite all odds.

“It’s being able to go to a completely different world and forget about all the crap that’s happening right now. The absurd stuff is just so fun. No one’s taking it too seriously, and that’s what I think draws people in. I hate heartfelt romances. Don’t give me the Lifetime movie. I don’t want that. I want something fun. I want the banter. I want the flirting. And sometimes I want the absolute obscure ridiculousness,” said Ivy.

The purpose is not to analyze the societal ramifications of this novel, she said. It’s to laugh with friends from all walks of life that voraciously love the same thing.

“It’s truly just giggling girls having the time of their life.”

Denver’s smutty book clubs take something once shameful and hidden behind closed doors to something celebrated in front of a beer. It’s not just a horny little book club. Well… maybe a little. 

At Fiction’s meeting, the conversation eventually shifted away from July’s book: “Wet Hot Allosaurus Summer” by Lola Faust. (We recommend popcorn reading it with your friends, accents and all, for the most enjoyable experience).

“Would you rather fuck seven mythical unicorns to save the world or seven men?”

“Are they shifter men?”

“I realized how vanilla I was. There’s a genre for alien fucking.”

“TikTok found out I like all the hot priests books. And now my feed keeps showing me hot priests.”

“There’s a thing as a sauce kink?”

“Yeah… ketchup.”

“We don’t really have a filter here.”