At this new San Francisco shop, 'happily ever after is guaranteed'

May 24-At San Francisco's newest bookshop, colorful book covers featuring couples stare out from the walls. Signs like "Grumpy Sunshine" and "Forced Proximity" beckon to the curious. Customers line up for tea or pastries in the back, offering an opportunity to mingle. There's even a small sofa for a customer - or two - to sink into.

Welcome to the Love Potion Library, the one place in San Francisco where you're certain to find happily ever after. Located at 284 Noe St. in the Castro neighborhood, the new bookstore, which is also a tearoom and wine bar, is dedicated exclusively to romance novels.

Inside the bright and airy space, previously home to Jeffrey's Natural Pet Foods, books are organized by genres like contemporary, historicals or romantasy, and then tropes like "Enemies to Lovers," where characters spar as they fall in love, or "Fated Mates," where characters are destined for each other. The tropes are meant to help readers find exactly what they want, according to Veena Patel, the bookstore's owner.

"It's nice to have them broken out that way, so if you're in a mood for something specific, you can go straight to that section," she said.

Patel wasn't always a small business owner. She used to be a product manager working in climate tech. She said that she found herself "feeling very lonely in tech" after she started a remote job during the pandemic. "Many people were in person, and so they made friends with each other," she said, "but because I was remote, I always felt a little on the outside."

Romance novels helped with the loneliness, she said, especially since she had grown up reading the genre, with her mother reading classic ones like those published by Mills & Boon. "I used to find myself reading a lot, just as a form of escapism," she explained. "I have a lot of anxiety, and it helps with that, just getting myself out of my head and into a place where I know that happily ever after is guaranteed."

Patel ended up leaving her job. Using savings, she then opened the bookstore with her husband's full support.

Patel was inspired after she read about the opening of another romance bookstore in Brooklyn. "That was the first time I'd ever heard of a romance-only bookstore, and it blew my mind, as like, what the hell? Why don't we have one? I really want one," Patel said.

Bookstores like the Love Potion Library are part of a growing movement, starting with the opening of the Ripped Bodice in Culver City in 2016. The success of that store inspired others; stores with whimsical names, such as Beauty and the Book in Anchorage, Alaska, or Friends to Lovers in Alexandria, Virginia, have sprung up across the United States. There are now at least 189 romance bookstores in the country, according to Romancing the Data, with California alone having 14. (The Bay Area also has another romance bookstore pop-up in Los Altos: A Novel Affair.) And the trend isn't limited to the United States, either: Globally, there are 272 romance bookstores as of the end of April 2026. There's even a Bookstore Romance Day dedicated to celebrating romance in independent bookstores.

The rise of bookstores dedicated to the genre is reflected in its growing popularity, attracting a new audience in Gen Z. Despite a reputation of bodice rippers featuring shirtless men like Fabio, romance has long been one of publishing's bestselling genres. Sales soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as readers sought comfort reads, and they kept selling even after lockdowns eased.

"A total of 51 million units have been sold in the past 12 months," Publishers Lunch reported in 2025, "nearly doubling sales from four years ago." Romantasy - a genre that blends romance and fantasy - has become wildly popular; romance and romantasy novels even helped lift up print sales as a whole in 2024.

Devotees of the genre and the romance-curious are already beginning to discover the Love Potion Library, with folks coming in from the Noe Street corridor in the Castro after it opened on April 25, Independent Bookstore Day. Patel thought that the audience for the bookstore would mostly be women, as women make up the majority of romance readers, but Patel said that "it's been almost everyone, of any age group or identity that you could think of."

"I'm pretty grateful for that because I looked really hard when I was picking the books to find a diverse range of authors and stories that they're telling," Patel said. She estimates that about 30% of the books she carries are LGBTQ stories and that 40% feature people of color.

"It speaks to me because I'm a person of color ... I understand the want to see yourself in a book that you're reading," she said.

Patel also hopes that the bookstore becomes a community space. To that end, the Love Potion Library hosts events like author signings, "Heated Rivalry" trivia nights and board game nights. The events have proven popular, selling out and resulting in wait lists for the 50-person space.

Romantasy reader Maggie Swanson, at the bookstore for a recent book swap, said she liked seeing tropes like forced proximity along the shelves. "It's cool to see a bookstore focused on just romance stuff," she said.

Olivia Lacourciere, who described herself as an "avid" romance reader, was also there for the swap. It was her second time at the Love Potion Library. "I absolutely love it," she said of the bookstore. "I love romance. I love how cheesy it is."

"I'm not a big fan of Barnes and Noble. I'm a big fan of this concept, which I see popping up around," said Mark Black, a literary fiction writer. "... I support everything about this."

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