I Read the 3 Most Popular Romance Books on Tik Tok and I Have Things to Say!

Have any books recently come to your attention thanks to TikTok? I’ve seen some books appear over and over and decided to do a little experiment where I’d read and review some of the most popular titles. To narrow the selection, I opted for three romance books.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry was removed from the selection as I do not like Henry’s writing. I did try, I promise, but it’s just not for me.

So, I came up with the following three titles:

1. You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle
2. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
3. The Spanish Love Deception: A Novel by Elena Armas

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You Deserve Each Other

The story of Naomi and Nicholas, an unlikely engaged couple. We follow Naomi’s perspective, I almost wish it was dual perspective as I found Nicholas to be the more interesting character of the two and we barely got to know him. Naomi is annoying, doesn’t quite know what she wants, she keeps wanting things to end between them but doesn’t end them herself. Nicholas’s motivations are not very clear for a good chunk of the book, but he does seem to have genuine feelings for her.

Overall, it’s a quick read that will help you reach your Goodreads goal (if you’re behind schedule that is), but it’s not the best romance I’ve ever read.

You can read my full review here.

The Spanish Love Deception

When the weather is starting to get chilly and you’re looking to cozy up with a romantic comedy, this would be a good choice. Catalina and Aaron fake date and attend the wedding of Lina’s sibling in Spain. I’m sure you can guess things escalate quickly.

Among the things I liked about this book were the love for Spain, food, women in important positions in the workplace, the brief glimpses of NYC. The cover is stunning as well.

The writing may not be the best, but I’m not raising a fuss as it’s a debut novel of someone I follow on Instagram and I want to support them as a creator/ writer.

You can read my full review here.

The Love Hypothesis

For a while there, it looked like this book followed me around, The Love Hypothesis was everywhere I looked. Booktok, Bookstagram, Booktube, Book Blogs, Goodreads. Now, I try to not fall into the popular books ‘trap’ but I was curious about this one. Plus, I was in a romance mood and wanted to experiment so here we go.

The book plays on the enemies to lovers + fake dating tropes. The academic setting is an interesting backdrop, but the story itself is not very believable (at least to me). The romance seemed to develop slowly at first, then went from 0 to 100 so fast.

The writing is not the greatest and I don’t quite understand why this blew up all over social media. I just don’t get it.

You can read my full review here.

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In conclusion, these books didn’t live up to hype. That will of course not stop me from reading popular books, but I do plan on being a tad more selective in the new year. Whilst there’s good parts to each of these, overall, none of these titles are too memorable. The Spanish Love Deception is the only one that stands out, but I may be slightly biased as I love all things Spain.

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this.

Have you read any of these books? Do you read popular books? What do you think of TikTok’s book recommendations?