Everything You Should Know About Romance IO

One of my favorite reading tools I’ve discovered in the past few years is Romance IO.

If you don’t like to jump into a new book without knowing about the spice level (i.e. how much sexual content there is in a book), Romance IO is for you!

The best part? It’s free!

All you have to do is pull Romance IO up on your phone or computer, plug in the name of the book you’re looking for, and it’ll give you a spice level between 1 and 5.

Here’s what the breakdown for spice levels are (which Romance IO has listed as flames)

1 Flame: Glimpses and kisses. Meaningful glances and perhaps a kiss, but no sex on and off page.

2 Flames: Behind closed doors At least one intimate scene occurs, but without the reader present.

3 Flames: Open door At least one intimate scene with the reader present, euphemistic language for act and body parts

4 Flames: Explicit open door At least two intimate scenes, explicit language with a variety of sexual acts

5 Flames: Explicit and plentiful Several explicit scenes, a variety of adventurous acts, dotted throughout the book

Here’s what that looks on the Romance IO site (and you can click the question mark after the flame rating if you need a reminder of what the scale looks like!).

One other thing I like about the flame scale on Romance IO is that on the scale, you can click to see more books at that flame level, so if you’re only comfortable with 1 flame rating books, you can easily find more of those (and the same for any other flame rating).

Of course, it’s not a perfect system – not every book is included on Romance IO (although I’ve been happily surprised by how robust the site is!) and they don’t take language into consideration which is a big factor for some readers.

But Romance IO is definitely a great place to quickly check the spice level of a book when you’re browsing at the library or bookstore or online or ready to open a new book but don’t want to be caught off guard by steamy content 150 pages in!

Have you used Romance IO? I’d love to hear what you think about it!

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