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Reese’s only foray into fantasy was a YA outlier
The absence of fantasy from Reese’s shelves grows more conspicuous in light of the current publishing market. Fantasy saw a dramatic rise during the pandemic, and by 2021, its sales had jumped 45% from the year before. Audiobook revenues told a similar story: the genre brought in $1.6 billion. The magic hasn’t worn off. As the Guardian reported, fantasy book sales continue to surge, with their value increasing by more than 41% between 2023 and 2024.
Helping to drive that surge is “romantasy” — the swooning, sword-wielding subgenre that has turned BookTok into an impressively effective sales funnel. A hybrid of romance and fantasy fiction, it pairs enchanted realms and perilous quests with slow-burning desire and magical relationships. Readers can’t stop buying fantasy series like Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” and Rebecca Yarros’ “Fourth Wing,” which have been dominating the NYT bestsellers list. But for all its fanfare, the genre has yet to be properly ushered through the gates of Reese’s closely guarded canon.
That said, there has been, if not a precedent, then at least a faint opening. In 2021, “Within These Wicked Walls” by Lauren Blackwood was chosen as the club’s YA book for fall. Marketed as a gothic reimagining of “Jane Eyre,” the novel trades the Yorkshire moors for an Ethiopian-inflected spiritual landscape, where Andromeda, a teenage exorcist, arrives at a decaying estate. Witherspoon said of the novel, “I was so drawn into this magical world and its mysterious characters as they risk it all to ban an evil spirit from an old castle.” It was a single spell cast, and none since.
