We asked readers to take a short survey about what they read, what they want, and how they use All About Romance. Sixty people responded. The goal was simple: to gather concrete, specific feedback from people who actually use the site. This summary presents the results. All numbers below are drawn directly from the data, and all quotes are taken verbatim from your responses—with only light edits for punctuation or clarity.

More than half of respondents (32 people) visit AAR daily. Another 20 check the site a few times a week. Only eight said they visit weekly or occasionally. When asked what content they read, the vast majority selected multiple answers. Blogs (54), book reviews (53), and comments (51) were the most frequently read categories. Twenty-nine people said they also use Steals and Deals. One person said they don’t read much of anything on the site.

When asked whether AAR reviews the kinds of books they care about, 13 people said yes, absolutely. Thirty-two said mostly, but they’d like more variety. Twelve said not really. Three people didn’t have a strong opinion. On whether our reviews are helpful, 28 said yes, 29 said it depends on the reviewer, 2 weren’t sure, and 1 said not really.

Half of all respondents (30) said they occasionally use AAR’s affiliate links to buy books. Fourteen said they donate. Sixteen said they don’t contribute financially. When asked whether their point of view is reflected in AAR’s content, 29 said yes, 29 said somewhat, and 1 said no.

Respondents were also asked which subgenres they read most or would like to see more of. The five most frequently mentioned were: historical romance (48), contemporary romance (45), romantic suspense (34), mysteries (25), and fantasy romance (25). Responses to open-ended questions focused on gaps in current coverage, frustration with blog changes, and reactions to the site’s tone, genre balance, and book selection.

Next week, I’ll follow up on what I got out of the survey and what feedback I think is useful to us. Please remember that this survey is not a reflection of what the AAR staff believes, what I believe, or what all of our readers believe. It’s just the words of the 60 readers who took the survey!

Here are all the free form comments, very loosely organized:

Things you’d like to see more of

• Romantic Suspense
• I feel, but this may be just feeling, that you are reviewing less contemporary romance, and less historical romance, focusing more on romantic suspense, or thrillers. Also, there seem to be a lot of fantasies out there, such as monster romance, orcs and stuff. Finally, good smut, or however, you would call it today, funny, erotic, a bit dirty.
• I would love to see more science fiction and fantasy reviews. Fantasy romance, in particular, has become super popular lately, and it is very hard to weed out the bad books and find the good ones.
• lately many reviews (roughly 25%) are focused on male/male romance. I’d like to see more variety
• Romantic Suspense, Mainstream Thrillers, Historical Romance,
• I would love to see more of books that don’t wallow in tropes. Do those exist any more?
• More Blogs please.
• I’d love to see more career retrospective posts about long time authors. “Best of” discussions are a great source for books I missed the first time around.
• I like blogs that discuss romance history, how it is evolving, subgenres, a while back there were posts with lists of titles for different themes/settings that were fun. Lists of recommended books for people who like a certain trope, setting, style…
• I like the discussions about specific aspects of romance reading, writing, etc on the blogs.
• I’d like more reviews of romantic suspense. And I love your Top 100 lists. I understand that is very difficult to do it without attracting street teams of certain authors, but I’d like to see a new one.
• More Reviews of historical romances; contemporary romances; perhaps also other fiction which include romances – I am thinking of historical mysteries/fiction or contemporary crime series with an ongoing romance at its heart.
• I love the columns and reading people’s responses, especially by Dabney. I wish they changed more often than once a week or so.
• More reviews, more variety, more blogs, more lists
• More variety. Your reviews help sort out the bad quality stuff, so your reviews help me identify authors who bring a minimum of quality to their books.
• I really miss your previous more detailed blogs on books that are coming soon.
• Blogs/commentaries – see above response
• More historical romance or historical fiction.
• less m/m romance, more historical romance
• Lists of books by trope/subgenre (like listopia on goodreads) and more reviews of different subgenres. It seems the majority of reviews these days are of MM romance or women’s fiction (billed as contemp romance but it isn’t really). Anyway, I rarely even read the reviews anymore because I’m not interested in 99% of the books reviewed. I get most of my reviews these days from goodreads.
• A decade ago, I frequently found reviews of books that appealed to me but that is now rarely the case. New books by many authors I discovered on AAR are not reviewed or even mentioned here now.

  I think this is partly due to the reduced number of reviews and reviewers and partly due to a switch in interests of some reviewers. For example, romantic suspense reviews seem to have been replaced by psychological suspense reviews. Also, the focus on mm romance seems to have come at the expense of mf romance reviews. I support the increase in reviews of mm romances but I wish the number and variety of mf romances had been maintained.

• In answer to your next question, I would happily use your links to buy books, but they don’t work with Amazon Australia.

• I like the reviews, but I also really like the blogs and commentaries. I read a lot of romance, but I don’t have many friends who also read romance. This is my place to think about the books and read thoughtful discussions!
• A recent review shows a not uncommon error of misspelling an author’s name, which slows down my process of recording the rating and possible tags, and possibly hinders finding the review here a year from now, but I’m not sure about that part. For example, Left of Forever by Tara DeWitt the first name is Tarah.
• I would not mind more reviews on books that aren’t only romance oriented. Perhaps once a week or a specific weekly blog post or monthly.

Things you’d like to see less of

• more mainstream romance, more contemporary romance, less queer romance, less self-published romance
• Less queer romance reviews and more of the other categories.
• Next month books looking forward to – I do not like newer format – there is really no description – just the book covers and sometimes the title does not best reflect the theme of the book – unless I know the author and some are new for me – it is not easy to navigate – too much researching to find what the book is about. It would be great to know – why a reviewer is looking forward to these books – sometimes the comments are a guide – otherwise – I have to click thru each book cover. I suppose this might be a new trend that you are following just like some of the book cover art trends…oh well…
  Also – the newer blog format is more difficult to follow – down the side of my screen? Not sure why you redesigned your website like that.
• I would like to see reviewers look at books more critically. I feel there is grade inflation on AAR. Too many books get high grades.  Too often I’ve read a book rated an A, but I wouldn’t give it a B.
• I see too much attention placed on woke novels. I’m no Trump fan, believe me, but I read romance for escapism, not for lessons in the future direction of our culture. Save that for non-fiction.

Things you don’t enjoy

• I’d like to see more information about traditional, historical romances that might appeal to older readers (guess who??) Contemporaries are too focused on the actual sex acts in explicit detail. I’m not a prude or a bible-thumping Christian, but I don’t need all that emphasis on sex.  I just bypassed the latest Ali Hazelwood, Not in Love, because the FIRST chapter, told in the first person voice of the heroine, rattles on about her preference for kinky sex.  And I love Ali H.
• I hate the ads
• Warn me about heroines whining about “the patriarchy”. I’m thoroughly sick and tired of people blaming others or blaming “the system” or blaming some -ology or -ism.
• Fun stuff: polls on what to read next in <insert subgenre here>, games of “choose a book for me”, author presentations (including a list of the best books to start with), blog posts about popular books (you seem to avoid them and I’d really like an honest opinion – it would’ve saved me time I wasted books everybody was crazy about on goodreads).
• I avoid any blogs or comments that discusses politics or social issues, since the rest of the Internet already relentlessly yells about such things.

  I said that I rarely read your reviews, but that’s not your fault. The majority of currently published books don’t appeal to me. It doesn’t help that I have zero interest in m/m fiction, which many of your readers seem to really enjoy. I do often read your older reviews to get author suggestions. I’ve been avoiding books published after about 2015, due to bad writing, over reliance on tropes at the expense of character building, and heavy handed moralizing. So that’s a me problem, not a site problem.

• I love your steals and deals and check it every day.

• There appears to be more queer romance reviews than other categories. I don’t read it and so many of the reviews don’t help me. I don’t have a problem with the reviews being there its just I don’t read it.  I have tried it but it just isn’t my thing.
• I have stopped participating in the blogs, after repeated flareups, which I am sure you remember, where you repeatedly took the position that very insulting comments were covered by free speech, while those who complained about it were out of line. I still remember vividly how you were not willing to call someone out for saying that anyone who likes content warning lists is a weak person (They said worse). And criticized anyone who did. This is just the last example, a few of them before were similar. That was the point where I decided to stop putting myself out there.
  A small detail: I missed your announcement that you would now start all these banners and blinking publicities on the site. I was willing to support AAR until that time, but the annoyance of this blinking, and of ads hiding the text on smaller devices, forcing you to scroll around them, make me less willing to come to the site and less willing to support it.
  It is a small vicious circle, silencing some people, annoying ads, I hope I am one of the few to whom this applies, and I hope that new people come and reinvigorate the site, I have become a friendly lurker. I wish you well, just with a bit more distance.

Things you do enjoy

• I rarely read anything other than historical and mystery, so I’m probably not a good person to ask about this. But I appreciate the variety.
• historical romance combined with mysteries. I love marriage of convenience and enemies to lovers tropes.
• I love the reviews and wish there were more than one a day…
• Maybe it might be possible to add a guide to categories of books (old-fashioned, the erotic level of the plot, funny and playful, appealing more to traditional readers, etc.)
• Honestly? Funny bad reviews where the reviewer just lets loose. They’re the most enjoyable. Although I don’t really wish you did more of them, I imagine they can be tough on the reviewer, I just wanted to let y’all know how much I enjoyed that part of the site.
• Perhaps more blog posts on more things book related than only asking for opinions. For instance, lists of “books similar to… read x”, or books set in a cabin, or books with characters who are lawyers,etc. Things that would be fun to check out without having to only do a search -which I know one can do.
• Your reviews are thoughtful and detailed. I appreciate the quality of the writing and particularly enjoy the humour in many of the reviews (often the more negative ones). I’ve laughed out loud more than once.  Also, I have found many of the questions Dabney poses in  the “ask” intriguing. There have been some very thought-provoking discussions following some of questions. I like the tone you have set and the fact that all views are welcomed.
• I don’t read queer romance (glad that you cover it for those that do) and I wish there was a way to eliminate that category from your search engine. It would save me some time.
• I really appreciate the book reviews. I find new books and authors because of your reviews.
• I like that there is variety among your reviewers. If all the reviewers and all the commenters agreed, it would be both boring and useless.
• You can’t help with my biggest problem, which is that not enough authors are writing the kind of meaty, historically accurate books that Jo Beverley, Miranda Neville, Madeline Hunter wrote. I sometimes feel like a dinosaur.
• I love All About Romance, especially the reviews and discussions about the dynamics of romances and the roles and agency of women in romances. I also found the 100 best romances very useful for finding new authors.
• Lately the books reviewed seem to be kind of niche and not the books that romance readers seem to be most excited about. I dont recognize many of the titles or authors – which is nice in some ways to discover new reads but its none of the books I am trying to get reviews of. Also, some of the reviews have seemed mean spirited at times – trying to take down or put down books w/o really analyzing the flaws. And some of the reviews contain errors in plot details etc. that make me wonder how well or closely the reviewer read the book. All this to say, I used to put a lot of stock in AAR’s reviews to help me choose books at the library or bookstore, but now I just enjoy reading the reviews of books that I have already read to see what others thought about something I enjoyed.
• Your site has found me so many authors I love and saved me from some bad impulse purchases at the bookstore. Thank you for all you do!!
• Overall, AAR does a great job, and I really appreciate everyone who contributes to making this a good resource.

Other comments

• Historical romance with, class difference, second chance, widows,more working class heroes.
• science fiction/space opera
• Historical romance, fantasy romance, fantasy with romantic elements, women’s fiction. More British books as well. Older books, not just new releases.
• Historicals, doing re-reads of older series, head-to-head reviews where two reviewers compare their thoughts
• I’m in my 50s and have been reading romance for a long time. I think it would be an interesting thing to revisit some books from when AAR first started (or even before) and see how they stand up in the 2020s.
• I think you have a good balance
• I’ve noticed you’ve reviewed some mysteries, but for me, I come here exclusively for romance books, so I fear this branching out into other good books. I want it to stay just for romances. I’d like to see reviews of romance movies from the past and the present.  
• Contemporary romance of women in their 40s and older.
• First of all, non-native English speaker here, so please excuse the weirdness. More sci-fi, paranormal, urban fantasy, mystery romance. It seems that most of what is reviewed here is contemporary romance, which I don’t read anymore in this phase of my life. The historical romance is ok, it will always be number one for me. But only because we have so many historical desert island keepers. I think that the quality of the historicals written nowadays is lacking.
• Science Fiction Romance
• historical romance; regency romance; historical mysteries
• Fantasy romance, back to historicals
• Maybe F/F? It’s not a subgenre I know a lot about.
• I always read the historical romance reviews, as this is my favorite romance genre. But I understand the reviewers are increasingly less interested in those reads.
• Regencies and historical romance, noting if it’s wallpaper historical. Know that not many of these are being published, but reviews might also help their sales. Thank you – love your site!
• historical romance
• More m/m. A lot of the same authors show up again and again. I know Caz carries a heavy load, so maybe shorter reviews from time to time?
• Contemporary fiction that is not cute/romcom or billionaires, sci-fi that doesn’t deal with blue aliens, fantasy that is not “monster romance.” Looking for the rarely written about: main character(s) who are struggling financially or otherwise, people who are not perfect, uncommon dynamics (for example, an older woman with younger man or person in an unusual field). Something different.
• I would read anything new you might want to include.
• dark romance, reverse harem, mafia romance
• Keep doing what you do so well.
• Happy with the current mix/offerings
• Deep-dive opinion blog posts on niche tropes, romance news and trends
• Interview authors about upcoming books
• events/chats
• I really enjoy when you have 2 reviewers discuss a book (especially when they have different opinions about the book).
• More frequent top 100 lists or best of the year lists.
• Historicals, whether romance, suspense, or mystery
• romance-adjacent books (women’s fiction, lit fic with happy ending)
• More discussion of books
• Lists and suggestions
• Historical and regencies, please! thank you!
• More audiobook reviews with attention to the narrators, not queer main characters
• Find more opportunities to share opinions (that don’t become flame wars). Have more m/m reviewers. Em from a few years back was stellar
• see above
• I wish the posts for books you’re excited for included covers
• Thank you AAR!
• I feel like a lot of thrillers get covered on the site and I’m not sure why. I get that there may be some overlap in those readers and romance readers but that’s not why I come to a site that’s focused on romance.
• Steals and deals don’t apply to me because I’m not in North America.
  I don’t read m/m romance and it’s seems like 50% of the reviews are this category. I realise this probably reflects the reviewers choice which I totally understand but a lot of it isn’t relevant to me.
• I detest your ads that blink, twirl, jump, and skitter to distract. I’ve never been on a site with more obnoxious ads. I suggest that you offer a subscription for those of us who would like to evade these ads to subsidize AAR.
• I donate to AAR and often buy books through the amazon links
• Regarding the list below: I don’t believe queer romance should be treated as a subgenre of romance. Classifying stories based on the identities of the protagonists‚Äîwhether queer, straight, or of any particular race, reinforces the idea that some books should be treated as exceptions. Why not a subgenre for people of color romance then? To me, KJ Charles’s books belong to my historical romance shelf, Gregory Ashe’s books to the mystery shelf.
• The AI stuff really needs to go.
• See above – most disappointed in upcoming next month book change – I know there were comments from others about this, too. The book covers and some author names are meaningless to me – unless I know the book content.
• More current and timely releases
• I particularly enjoy reading authors’ older reviews
• I don’t know how to submit a book for potential review! I understand completely if y’all keep that information under wraps so you’re not deluged by self-published authors, but at one point I thought Dabney wished for more chances to review self-published contemporaries?
• I am so grateful for this site, as I receive so many wonderful recommendations from your reviewers. It is clear this is not a money-maker for you, and I try to remember to link through your amazon portal, but I often don’t purchase from amazon.
• It would be great to have Agora be an easier forum to connect to
• I used to read more on AAR but now I do glancing visits where I scan the headlines or book title/tropes to see if there is anything that fits my interests. Most of the books reviewed are not of interest to me so I rarely read reviews anymore.
• When I look at the books on the romance shelves at B&N or my local independent bookstore, I’m not seeing the titles I see reviewed at AAR. There seems to be a disconnect between what AAR reviews and what bookstores are stocking. I’m sure that is because it is easier to obtain copies of self-published titles than printed titles but is there a solution?
• May I suggest better coverage of niches as well as popular authors?