Romance is the key that finally unlocked the world of reading for Amelia Lord after she had avoided it throughout her life.
Love was all over her TikTok feed in the form of BookTok – the app’s literary subcommunity – just as she was searching for a new hobby to take up after moving from her home in Newport to Gloucester.
The 28-year-old social media and events coordinator did not read at all before she was 21.
Although “intrigued”, a dyslexia diagnosis made her think she couldn’t do it.
“I kept seeing BookToks on my TikTok,” she said. “I was seeing loads about it and it piqued my interest.”
She made her first ever New Year’s resolution, to read just one book, Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, which was released as a film starring Blake Lively in 2024.
“I didn’t want to set the boundary too high,” she laughs.
“I’m a dyslexic girl and I’ve always thought, can I do it? Then I read it and I was hooked straight away.
“I went into town two days later and started buying loads of romance books.”
Amelia, now living in Cardiff with her partner and young daughter, has used books to build a very local community.
She said: “When I came back [to Wales] I didn’t really have many friends around me anymore.
“And then I became a mum and hobbies which I had before I wasn’t interested in or didn’t have the time for anymore. So I feel like books were the only thing that was still a part of before I had my little girl.”
She established Booked Up Book Club after her boss gave her space at the play café where she works in the suburb of Whitchurch.
