About Us

Why I Started Theo Reads

I didn’t grow up dreaming about my wedding day.

No prince charming, no pretty dress, no happily ever after waiting for me at the end of some imagined story. My dream, growing up in India, was simpler and more urgent than that: I wanted to be financially independent. I wanted to take care of my mother. That’s it, that was the dream.

Back then, and perhaps still, nobody talked to us about sex, at home or at school. Desire, pleasure, physical intimacy, what it means to feel wanted, all of it was shrouded in this thick, unspoken mystery. I learned about kisses, orgasms, and yes, aftercare from romance novels. I learned, quietly and reading by flashlight, that my body was capable of feeling things from books, because there was nowhere else.

At the same time, I was growing up with an absent father. And the message from the extended family, delivered in the particular way extended families deliver messages, casually, repeatedly, was that I should never depend on men for anything. Never. Not financially, not emotionally. I had to be strong.

It wasn’t until my mother was passing under my care, and I had no choice but to feel everything, that I understood how fractured I’d become.

We are meant to feel the full spectrum of emotion. We are meant to feel romantic love. We are meant to feel erotic desire. It’s what makes us human. And when we lock those parts of ourselves away, which so many of us do, for reasons that make complete sense given the lives we’ve lived, we don’t become safer or stronger. We become lonely.

The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health epidemic in 2023, and I wasn’t surprised. We stopped feeling and called it strength.

The Opportunity

I started Theo Reads because I’m an opportunist and I live in opportunistic times.

I’m not embarrassed to say that. Romance is the bestselling fiction genre in America, and it has never been harder to find a good story. Readers average 32 stories a year, nearly three times the national reading average, and this is probably an underestimation. The discovery infrastructure is broken. I saw a real business here.

But that’s not the only reason, or even the main one.

I started it because I recognized myself in the problem. As I was building Theo Reads, and taking care of my dying mother, and talking to hundreds of readers and writers, looking at all this data about what people are actually looking for when they open a romance novel at the end of a long day, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who’d locked herself away.

Romance novels are not a substitute for real human connection. But they are a safe place where you are allowed to feel the full range of what it means to be human. Where desire is not shameful. Love is not weakness. Where you are guaranteed, after 400 pages of longing and tension and heartbreak, that it is going to be okay.

That’s something.

What I Want Theo Reads to Be

I hope that Theo Reads will normalize this: love is not a liability. Desire is not something to be embarrassed about. Your body is yours, and what it wants is not shameful.

Together with our authors, we’re building a sanctuary for you: capable, resilient, tender, sensuous, loving, emotional.

BTW, in case you’re wondering, somehow, it worked out for me. I found my person (or he found me), and we’ve built a life together, and it is a good one.

So if you’re not sure if you’ll find happiness, it can happen. I promise you. I’m living proof.

And in the meantime, while you’re waiting, or healing, or figuring it out, or just needing somewhere to feel something real for an hour before bed, we’re here to help you feel the full range of love and desire that we human beings are meant to feel.

Life is beautiful. Welcome home.