A Love Letter to Being a Reader: Dragons, Dark Romance, Smut, and Finding My Way Back to Books

I was a reader long before BookTok, romantasy, morally grey men, or Morally Grey Margins existed. Before anyone was filming dramatic edits of fictional men glaring across candlelit rooms, I was the first grader who loved books so much that I memorized them.

My first-grade teacher, Mr. High, was the one who figured it out. I apparently looked like I was reading along normally until he realized I had learned the books by heart and was using the pages and pictures to keep my place. He told my parents that I was memorizing them, which feels like a very early warning that stories were always going to take up an unreasonable amount of room in my brain.

My first complete series obsession was Pony Pals. I also loved the original My Friend Flicka, which was probably inevitable considering how completely horses and stories became tangled together in my life. As a teenager, I read in my horse Dixie’s stall, stretched across her back, and sitting out in the pasture on days when I did not feel like riding. Sometimes I went to the barn to work. Sometimes I went there to disappear into a book while Dixie quietly tolerated me using her as furniture.

Reading was not an activity I had to force into my life. It followed me into the barn, the pasture, and every quiet place I could find. Then, somewhere around 2015, that part of me went silent.

Nearly a decade later, my husband handed me Fourth Wing for Valentine’s Day, and the reader I thought I had lost came back with dragons, emotional damage, questionable taste in fictional men, and a TBR long enough to become a structural concern.

I Was a Reader Before I Knew It Was an Identity

When I think about being a reader as a child, I do not remember carefully planned challenges or anyone convincing me that books were educational and therefore good for me. I remember wanting the story. I wanted to know what happened next, and if I loved something enough, I returned to it until I knew exactly what was waiting on every page.

Mr. High telling my parents that I was memorizing books is one of those small details that now feels much larger when I look back. I was not trying to cheat at reading or impress anyone. I simply loved the books enough to learn them. Stories had already become familiar places I wanted to revisit, even before I understood what it meant to identify as a reader.

Pony Pals was the first series that completely had me. I wanted every book, every horse, every problem, and every new adventure. The fact that the stories centered on girls and horses made them feel especially mine. They were not simply books I enjoyed; they became one of my first experiences of waiting for another installment and wanting to stay with the same characters for as long as possible.

The original My Friend Flicka hit another part of that same love. Horses in books were never abstract to me. I knew what they smelled like, how warm their backs felt beneath you, how quiet a barn became when everyone else had gone, and how easily a horse could become both an animal and an entire emotional world.

Books Followed Me Into the Barn

By the time I was a teenager, reading and horses had become part of the same landscape. I would take a book into Dixie’s stall and sit with her while I read. Sometimes I would lay across her back with my book open, trusting her to stand there while I disappeared into another story.

I even read in the pasture when I did not feel like riding. That probably sounds strange to people who assume every trip to the barn had to involve training, grooming, or accomplishing something useful. Sometimes I simply wanted to be near my horse without asking anything from her. I could sit in the grass, read, and let Dixie graze nearby.

Those memories matter because they remind me that reading was never only about finishing books. It was part of how I made quiet for myself. The barn already felt separate from the rest of the world, and adding a story created another layer of escape inside it.

There is something almost ridiculous about realizing how little the core of me has changed. As a teenager, I was hiding in a horse stall with a book. Now I am building a business around fictional worlds and becoming emotionally unstable over dragons, raven shifters, and men who would be a public-safety concern in real life.

The details changed. The need for the story did not.

Then Books Went Quiet

I wish I had a dramatic explanation for why I stopped reading regularly, but I do not. There was no final book I closed before deciding I was finished forever. Life changed, priorities shifted, and books gradually moved away from the center of my days.

Around 2015 is the last period I remember reading with any real consistency. After that, I could still love stories and remember what reading once meant to me without actually settling down to finish a book. Wanting to read and having the attention, energy, or emotional space to do it are not always the same thing.

The longer the break lasted, the easier it became to assume that perhaps I simply was not a reader anymore. When years pass, an old part of your identity can begin to feel like something that belonged to a previous version of you.

I do not view those years as a failure now. I did not betray books or lose my imagination. I was living through another chapter, and reading was not occupying the same space it once had.

The reader in me was not dead. She was quiet. There is a difference, although I did not understand it until one extremely overhyped dragon book kicked the door back open.

My Husband Gave Me the Book That Reopened Everything

My husband gave me Fourth Wing for Valentine’s Day in February 2025. By that point, TikTok had already been irritating me with it for months. Dragons, Basgiath, Violet, Xaden, dramatic quotes, and thousands of people insisting the book had permanently changed their lives kept appearing on my screen.

Nothing makes me resist a book faster than being repeatedly told that I have to read it. The more enthusiastic everyone became, the more convinced I was that the hype had grown larger than the actual story. I expected to open it, read a few chapters, and wonder why the hell everyone online had become emotionally dependent on a fictional dragon rider.

Instead, I remembered what it felt like to need one more chapter.

I wanted to know who survived, which dragon chose whom, what Xaden was hiding, and why the academy operated as though student death was a perfectly acceptable teaching method. I became attached to the characters, the danger, the bonds, and the world itself. Reading stopped feeling like something I was attempting to restart and became something I genuinely wanted to return to.

Fourth Wing did not simply entertain me. It reopened the part of my brain that knew how to disappear into a story. Once that door was open, I had no intention of closing it again.

TikTok Irritated Me Into Becoming Obsessed

I would love to say I rediscovered reading during a quiet moment of personal reflection while standing thoughtfully inside a beautiful independent bookstore. The truth is less elegant: TikTok would not shut up about Fourth Wing, ACOTAR, dragons, and fictional men, so I finally read one to find out what everyone was screaming about.

I hate admitting that the hype was right, but it was. Not about every book, obviously. BookTok has lied to me before and will absolutely lie to me again. A dramatic quote and a man covered in shadows can sell a story that becomes significantly less impressive once I am responsible for reading the other five hundred pages.

Still, the constant noise placed the right book in front of me at the right time. Once Fourth Wing pulled me back, I began following the trail. One series led to another. I read ACOTAR after being equally annoyed by its online presence, devoured the available books, and became one more person with strong opinions about Nesta, Cassian, Azriel, and Elain’s romantic future.

The irony is not lost on me. I went from judging people for becoming emotionally unstable over fantasy characters to building an entire section of my life around them. Apparently I was never above the obsession. I simply had not met the right fictional disasters yet.

Dragons Were Only the Beginning

Romantasy gave me an easy path back into reading because it combined everything my brain apparently needed: fantasy worlds, danger, romance, magical bonds, political secrets, and characters I could become deeply attached to. The emotional stakes kept me moving while the fantasy gave me somewhere larger than real life to explore.

I did not remain in that one corner for long. Once I began reading again, curiosity pushed me toward darker stories. I read Manacled, knowing it had a reputation for emotional devastation, and discovered that fanfiction could carry just as much weight, brutality, and meaning as traditionally published work.

From there, I moved into dark romance, morally black characters, high-trigger-warning stories, raven shifters, painful duets, dangerous bargains, and books that explored control, grief, survival, obsession, and healing in ways polite stories often avoid.

The progression was not organized. I did not finish one genre and neatly graduate into another. One book simply made me curious about something darker, stranger, or more intense. I moved from an academy romantasy like Unbound into Liv Zander’s Court of Ravens duet, which is a hell of a tonal jump if you expect your shelves to maintain one respectable identity.

Mine do not. I can love tender romance, sadistic characters, dragon bonds, brutal fantasy, absurd humor, devastating fanfiction, and a magical school filled with emotionally incompetent people. None of those interests cancel the others out.

Apparently I Never Stopped Loving Shifters

My current love of supernatural romance did not appear out of nowhere. Before the long pause in my reading life, Rachel Vincent’s Shifters series had already done considerable damage to my standards. Werecats, dangerous relationships, supernatural politics, territorial conflict, and characters balancing human emotion with animal instinct were already very much my thing.

Looking back, the jump from Pony Pals and My Friend Flicka to werecats, raven shifters, and dragons is not actually as strange as it sounds. Animals—real, magical, or somewhere in between—have always been part of the stories that hold me most tightly.

Returning to shifter books years later felt less like discovering a new interest and more like recognizing an older version of myself. The form changed, the darkness increased, and my tolerance for morally questionable behavior became considerably more flexible in fiction, but the original fascination remained.

Shifter stories appeal to me because they allow emotion and instinct to exist at full volume. Loyalty becomes physical. Desire becomes dangerous. Power, territory, bonds, and identity are no longer abstract ideas. The supernatural element exaggerates parts of human relationships until they become impossible to ignore.

That does not mean I want every dynamic translated into real life. I can love a possessive raven-shifter king on the page without wanting a real man appearing at my house to claim my soul and threaten everyone I have ever spoken to. Fiction gives those extremes somewhere safe to exist.

Books Let Me Explore the Dark and Morally Questionable

Reading dark fiction does not mean endorsing everything that happens inside it. This should be obvious, yet readers—especially women—are still expected to defend their interest in stories containing damaged characters, unhealthy relationships, violence, obsession, power imbalances, or behavior we would never accept from an actual partner.

I can understand that a relationship is toxic and still find it compelling to read. I can become fascinated by a morally black character without believing he would make a reasonable husband, neighbor, or member of society. Fiction allows me to examine fear, desire, control, pain, revenge, survival, and healing without inviting those circumstances into my real life.

Sometimes darker stories affect me because they refuse to make pain clean. Characters survive badly. They lash out, make selfish choices, love people they should not, and carry damage that does not disappear after one heartfelt conversation. Those stories can be uncomfortable, but discomfort is not the same as harm.

Readers are allowed to know the difference between fantasy and personal standards. I do not need every fictional relationship to model healthy communication any more than I need every fantasy kingdom to demonstrate responsible local government.

Sometimes I want healing. Sometimes I want chaos. Sometimes I want to watch two deeply damaged people make the worst possible choices and then see whether the author can make me care anyway.

And Yes, I Love Smut

I love smut. My friends love smut. We are adults, and I am not going to hide that behind vague references to “spicy scenes” as though the fictional characters were adding cinnamon to a recipe.

Sexuality is a valid part of adult fiction. It can reveal power, vulnerability, trust, fear, confidence, tenderness, obsession, or the complete lack of good judgment between two characters. Sometimes it deepens the relationship and matters to the larger story. Sometimes the scene is there because it is hot. Both are allowed.

Books also provide a safe place for adults to explore fantasies, kinks, power exchange, dominance, submission, and relationship dynamics they may be curious about. Reading something does not mean wanting every part of it in reality. Enjoying a fictional kidnapping fantasy does not mean I want to be kidnapped. Reading about a possessive Fae male does not mean I want some random man making decisions about my actual life.

It does mean fiction can start conversations. A book may reveal a dynamic that sounds interesting, inspire a question, or give consenting adults a new idea worth discussing within an existing relationship. Sometimes books give me emotional healing. Sometimes they give me dragons. Sometimes they give my husband advance warning that I have discovered a new fictional scenario worth discussing.

There is nothing shameful about that. Consenting adults are allowed to enjoy their sexuality, their imagination, and the stories that make either one feel more alive. “Do not yuck someone else’s yum” applies to fiction and to adult relationships that are safe, informed, and consensual.

Reading Gave My Creativity Back to Me

Books did more than give me somewhere to escape after a difficult day. They brought my imagination back into active use. I started thinking about worlds, symbols, colors, characters, settings, and the physical experience of reading again. I noticed the rituals surrounding books: decorating a Kindle, choosing a grip, marking a page, writing down a reaction, and creating a space that made reading feel personal.

Morally Grey Margins grew from that renewed obsession. It did not begin because I identified a convenient trend and decided readers were a useful audience. It came from wanting to carry the atmosphere of the books I loved beyond the page. A Kindle insert could hold the feeling of a dark romance, dragon academy, celestial kingdom, cursed manor, or witchy library without copying the book itself.

The business also gave me somewhere to combine the parts of myself that reading had reawakened. Art, design, stationery, storytelling, dark humor, reader rituals, and my tendency to become far too emotionally invested in fictional worlds could all exist in one place.

In some ways, it feels connected to the teenager reading in Dixie’s stall. I was always creating a private world around books. Now I am creating physical pieces that help other readers do the same.

Books give me a world waiting after difficult days, but they also help me return feeling more like myself. Escape is not always avoidance. Sometimes stepping away for a while is exactly what allows you to come back with more imagination, patience, or energy than you had before.

You Are Still a Reader After a Ten-Year Silence

If you loved books once and have not finished one in months or years, you are not disqualified from calling yourself a reader. There is no expiration date on that part of you, and you do not need to complete a yearly challenge before you are allowed to claim it again.

Reading slumps can last a week, a season, or nearly a decade. Life can move books out of the center without erasing what stories once meant to you. Sometimes the right book appears quietly. Sometimes your husband hands it to you for Valentine’s Day after TikTok has already irritated you half to death with it.

You also do not have to return through a book anyone considers important, educational, respectable, or literary. Read dragons. Read romance. Read fanfiction. Read dark stories, ridiculous stories, smutty stories, graphic novels, audiobooks, or a six-hundred-page fantasy about adults with wings making terrible romantic decisions.

Reading for pleasure still counts. Reading for escape counts. Reading because the villain is attractive counts. Reading because you need to cry, laugh, feel desire, or disappear into a magical world for a few hours all count.

Your taste is allowed to change. You may return to books and discover that the genres you loved years ago no longer fit, while something you once dismissed becomes exactly what you need. That does not mean you lost the reader you used to be. She simply grew up, lived a life, and came back carrying different interests.

I did not become a reader in 2026. I found my way back to the girl who memorized books for Mr. High, became obsessed with Pony Pals, loved My Friend Flicka, and read across Dixie’s back in the pasture.

She just returned with dragons, morally grey men, a dangerously long TBR, and absolutely no shame about the smut.

Morally Grey Margins is not affiliated with any books, authors, publishers, retailers, or platforms discussed in this article. All opinions and personal experiences are my own.