Jul 10, 2026 · 48 min · 10 segments
In this State of the Field episode, Amy and Sarah discuss and rank the MMCs from the books they've reviewed to date. Could you actually date Ilya Rozanov in real life, or is he just a one-night…
Before we get into that, Sarah did kind of mention a little bit that like book boyfriends is a term that you've probably heard on social media and things like that.
I mean, what would you describe, like if you were trying to define what a book boyfriend is to say like a middle-aged like dad type who's, you know, teen daughter is reading a lot and he's like, what does this mean? What's a book boyfriend? How would you explain that to that type of person? Yeah.
So a book boyfriend is typically a male character, a male main character of a romance or fantasy book.
But it doesn't have to be male.
Obviously, we love our queer romances.
A book boyfriend really does encompass kind of any main character.
It doesn't even have to be a main character, let's be real.
It can be any character.
People ship
the side characters.
Yeah, the side characters.
Let's not forget our gay king, Charlie.
Exactly.
Any kind of character that as a reader you go oh my goodness this person would be lovely to date in real life or like I wish that was kind of the person like I wish that person exists in real life but we don't have to wish for that because they do exist they're not real but they They do exist.
Romance isn't dead, everybody.
Basically, it's...
Look, personally, I find the idea of book boyfriends a little bit confusing and maybe that's because I'm on the ace spectrum and I actually don't really understand how this works.
But, like, I hear about it.
So it's funny that you're asking me...
I'm aware of the discourse.
I'm aware.
I don't personally have any book boyfriends because the way I see it, like, people will talk about their...
Like, often... female readers will talk about reading a romance novel and picturing themselves as the fmc interesting they're the one in the story dating that mmc i can't do that i don't do that and even when i'm like oh my goodness this person's really cool like okay let's take reese in akita for example i love reese he's like one of the ultimate book boyfriends he is mentioned very often as one of the book boyfriends on tiktok and instagram and all that kind of stuff Very popular one.
But I just personally cannot ever picture him with me because I'm like, you're so good with Feyre.
Like if
Before we get into that, Sarah did kind of mention a little bit that like book boyfriends is a term that you've probably heard on social media and things like that.
I mean, what would you describe, like if you were trying to define what a book boyfriend is to say like a middle-aged like dad type who's, you know, teen daughter is reading a lot and he's like, what does this mean? What's a book boyfriend? How would you explain that to that type of person? Yeah.
So a book boyfriend is typically a male character, a male main character of a romance or fantasy book.
But it doesn't have to be male.
Obviously, we love our queer romances.
A book boyfriend really does encompass kind of any main character.
It doesn't even have to be a main character, let's be real.
It can be any character.
People ship
the side characters.
Yeah, the side characters.
Let's not forget our gay king, Charlie.
Exactly.
Any kind of character that as a reader you go oh my goodness this person would be lovely to date in real life or like I wish that was kind of the person like I wish that person exists in real life but we don't have to wish for that because they do exist they're not real but they They do exist.
Romance isn't dead, everybody.
Basically, it's...
Look, personally, I find the idea of book boyfriends a little bit confusing and maybe that's because I'm on the ace spectrum and I actually don't really understand how this works.
But, like, I hear about it.
So it's funny that you're asking me...
I'm aware of the discourse.
I'm aware.
I don't personally have any book boyfriends because the way I see it, like, people will talk about their...
Like, often... female readers will talk about reading a romance novel and picturing themselves as the fmc interesting they're the one in the story dating that mmc i can't do that i don't do that and even when i'm like oh my goodness this person's really cool like okay let's take reese in akita for example i love reese he's like one of the ultimate book boyfriends he is mentioned very often as one of the book boyfriends on tiktok and instagram and all that kind of stuff Very popular one.
But I just personally cannot ever picture him with me because I'm like, you're so good with Feyre.
Like if
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