Ice Queen and Fake Dating Are Sapphic Readers' Favourite Tropes. So Why Are They So Rare?

Ask sapphic readers which tropes they love most and two answers come up again and again: the ice queen and fake dating. Both sit at the top of author Jae's long-running sapphic reader polls. Readers keep asking for them.

So we checked how often they actually get written. Lesbian Romance Reads coded 517 sapphic romances for 35 tropes, and the answer is: not often.

Bar chart comparing sapphic readers' favourite tropes with how often they appear: ice queen 8.1% of books, fake relationship 4.4%, enemies to lovers 18.8%, age gap 28.4%, slow burn 33.8%, medical romance 0.8%.

The numbers

  • Ice queen is readers' #1 trope. It appears in 8.1% of books. It also has the highest reliable Goodreads average of any trope in the dataset, 4.18.
  • Fake dating is readers' #2 trope. It appears in only 4.4% of books.
  • Medical romance is readers' #6 trope. It appears in 0.8% of books.
  • Meanwhile, slow burn (33.8%), found family (32.7%) and age gap (28.4%) are everywhere.

Why the gap?

One explanation is that sapphic publishing follows the wider romance market rather than its own readers. In a 2025 ThriftBooks survey of 2,000 general romance readers, fake dating was among the three most disliked tropes. Sapphic readers feel very differently about it, but the books haven't caught up.

The ice queen gap is a different story. Almost half of the ice queen books we found (19 of 42) are also workplace romances. That pairing appears 4.25 times more often than chance would predict. The trope works best with a very specific setup, and fewer authors attempt it.

What it means

For readers, it means the books you like best are the hardest to find. For authors, it means there is clear demand here and relatively little competition.

The full study covers much more: which tropes pair up and which never do, heat levels, how self-published and traditionally published sapphic romance differ, and where representation still falls short. It is free to read and to cite:

Sapphic Romance Trope Statistics 2026: The Sapphic Trope Index

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