This ‘steamy’ bookstore featuring diverse authors is opening in Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale is already hot. Now it’s about to get steamy.

Steamy Lit, the first bookstore in Florida dedicated to romance, is relocating from its original Deerfield Beach location to Fort Lauderdale in the up-and-coming THRIVE Art District. The store, which celebrates authors of color, diverse characters and sexy stories, is celebrating its grand opening Saturday.

The move to Fort Lauderdale made sense as the store grew in popularity, with many customers driving from Fort Lauderdale and Miami to visit the Deerfield store, said Melissa Saavedra, the Steamy Lit founder and owner. She was drawn to the THRIVE Art District, a hub of small businesses and art studios on Northwest Fifth Street, where she’s neighbors with a new gym, matcha cafe and brewery.

“Fort Lauderdale is really building this community feel,” Saavedra said. “People want to gather. People want to do things. People want to do the markets. People want to do the book clubs. I don’t think we were getting that where we were.”

Steamy Lit’s rapid growth and expansion comes as the romance genre is in the midst of renaissance. Thanks to the pandemic and social media, a wave of new fans discovered the genre, which has long been stereotyped as a “guilty pleasure.” At Steamy Lit, Saavedra said, customers don’t have to feel guilty about pleasure.

Selections at Steamy Lit include, but are not limited to: Love triangles; forbidden love; regency romance; LGBTQ stories; friends to lovers; enemies to lovers; meet-cutes; hockey players; vampires; vampires on road trips; vampires battling zombies. (Seriously, the book is called “Zomromcom” by Olivia Dade.)

Saavedra said Steamy Lit staff can give customers book recommendations on practically anything, regardless of how mild or spicy their taste is. And things do get spicy. (Much of the store’s content is meant for adults, not minors.)

“We have people who come in and ask for very specific things. You’re not walking into Target and getting that same experience,” Saavedra said. “You can get so specific with us, and there’s no shame in talking about it.”

Even the store’s non-book merchandise reflect Steamy Lit’s sex-positive values and flirty sense of humor. Customers can pick up a hat that reads “Tóxica, pero bien amorosa” (which means “Toxic, but affectionate”), a candle scented as “reader tears,” and a margarita sticker that declares “I like my books like I like my drinks. Spicy.”

Customers describe the store as a safe space where they feel welcomed, not judged.

“Mel’s great,” said customer and Broward resident Brooke Lavelle. “What Mel’s doing with the store, and what independent bookstores do in all communities, is create a community in and of itself.”

Starting a ‘steamy’ empire

Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Miami, Saavedra grew up loving books. She loved reading so much, she read competitively at school, trying to earn more Accelerated Reading points than other bookworm students. Romance books were no exception. Her mom would find her crying while reading Lurlene McDaniel’s heartbreaking young adult books.

“I’ve never been an athlete, but when I was reading, that was my championship,” Saavedra, now 34, said.

Saavedra left Miami to go to the University of Florida and later joined the U.S. Navy. She was living in California when the pandemic started and found herself with little to do but read and post book reviews on Instagram. Romance was her genre of choice.

“If the story had any kind of romance in it, I was living for it,” she said. “I could read a mystery if I knew that, by the end, the two people were going to be holding hands and kissing.”

But as a Latina, Saavedra rarely saw characters like herself in the books she read, both as a child and as an adult. As the romance genre became more mainstream in the wake of “50 Shades of Grey” and the “Bridgerton” series, romance fans and authors have grappled with the genre’s racism and lack of diversity in recent years.

Though reading romance books gave Saavedra a sense of escapism during the social and political upheaval of 2020, she became “a lot more intentional” about what —and who— she was reading, she said.

“I realized how much romance, especially for women of color, can be an act of resistance,” she said. “Our stories can be about joy and love and romance, not just trauma.”

Saavedra started The Steam Box, a sexy subscription service that pairs romance books written by authors from underrepresented identities with vibrators. Saavedra then founded Steamy Lit Con, a romance book convention in California.

It wasn’t until she moved back to South Florida in late 2022 that she realized how few independent bookstores there were in the area. While selling books at the Steamy Lit booth at the Miami Book Fair, readers asked her where her store was located. By then, it was time to turn the online bookstore into a physical one.

The first Steamy Lit brick-and-mortar store opened in Deerfield in 2023. Then, she opened a second location in Tampa. And by the end of this year, a new location will open in Miami Springs.

“It’s very natural for people to crave love and crave affection and crave friendship and crave connection and community,” she said. “People who read romance can really find all of that.”

‘This is a space for us’

At the height of the pandemic, Lavelle finally caved. She started reading romance and got hooked.

“It’s the happily-ever-after. You know it’s going to be OK at the end,” Lavelle, 44, said. “It pulls you out of the stress of the every day. Covid was so stressful, to have a distraction like a good book that was entertaining with themes I really enjoyed was nice.”

So when Steamy Lit announced it was opening a store in Deerfield Beach, just minutes away from where she lived, Lavelle couldn’t believe it. She was one of the first people to walk into the store when it opened. Since then, she went to as many events at the store as she could, often decorating her golf cart for the occasion. Steamy Lit hosts author signings, book clubs, craft nights and other events every month.

“There’s customers from Orlando and Tampa that come to the events also, and I see them there and know them,” she said. “Independent bookstores create communities around like minded people, and that’s really important to find.”

Miami Beach-based author Shelly Cruz found that sense of community at Steamy Lit Con in 2023. The convention was her first book signing as an author, but it was special for another reason, she said. Usually, at book conventions, there’s only a handful of authors of color or Latina authors. At Steamy Lit Con, she said, every community was represented.

“There was this overwhelming sense of emotion. I cried, not because of anything bad,” Cruz said. “I cried because I was like, ‘Wow, this is a space for us. It was like nothing that I had experienced.”

Originally from Boston of Argentine and Puerto Rican descent, Cruz moved to Miami Beach in the early 2000s, attracted by the warm weather, Latino community and her now-husband. A lawyer by trade, Cruz started writing romance novels during the pandemic. Her books are inspired by real life, her culture and her husband’s story as a Cuban refugee, like her second novel “Amor in the 305.” Now, she’s collaborating with three other Latino authors on a reggaeton romance series called “Ficha Mundial Latin Entertainment” that will be published this fall.

“People think about romance novels, and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s all fake and fantasy.’ And it’s not,” Cruz said. “There’s romance and there’s love and in our everyday lives, amongst all of the trauma and the hurt.”

Cruz has been following Saavedra for years and said she admires her work to promote diversity in the literary world. When she went to Steamy Lit’s first store opening in Deerfield Beach, Cruz felt the same wave of emotions she did at the convention.

“She saw the need for the support for diversity in romance,” Cruz said. “A lot of people saw it, but she saw it and did something about it.”

If you go: Steamy Lit grand opening

When: Oct. 4. Store opens at 10 a.m. Author book signing with Jordan Stephanie Gray from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Where: 701 NW 5 Avenue, Unit 1061. Fort Lauderdale

Info: Tickets for Oct. 4 book signing available here. All events, books and merchandise listed online at steamylit.com