🦁 Why Everyone on BookTok Is Suddenly Obsessed With Emma M. Lion

Hello, lovely reader —

Every so often, a book takes over BookTok so completely that even people who don't read historical fiction start seeing it everywhere. Right now, that book is The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. If your For You page has been full of witty journal entries, Victorian houses, and slow-burn glances lately, this is why.

📔 Who Is Emma M. Lion?

The series comes from author Beth Brower, who self-published the first volume back in 2019 to a quiet debut — one Instagram post, a handful of likes. Told entirely through the journal entries of Emma, a sharp-witted, independent young woman living in 1883 at her family's crumbling Lapis Lazuli House, the story unfolds in the fictional English neighborhood of St. Crispian's. There are now eight volumes, with a ninth on the way, and each one covers roughly a "season" of Emma's life, the way a TV show might.

🌱 From Book Clubs to BookTok

What makes this one interesting is how it got popular. Long before TikTok caught on, Emma M. Lion was spreading through church book clubs and Facebook groups, particularly around Brower's home state of Utah. Word of mouth did what marketing budgets usually have to do. Then, earlier this year, Brower announced the series would be republished by Bloomsbury — and that's when BookTok and Bookstagram truly took hold, turning a seven-year-old self-published series into one of the first viral historical fiction sensations the platform has seen.

🍵 Why It's Resonating

Part of the appeal is the format itself — a journal feels personal in a way straight prose doesn't, like you've been handed someone's actual diary. Part of it is Emma herself: funny, stubborn, a little too honest for her own good. And part of it is the balance the series strikes — enough wit and romantic tension to satisfy readers hoping for a slow-burn payoff, without tipping into anything explicit, plus a gentle thoughtfulness under all the humor that keeps it from feeling lightweight.

More than one reader has described the feeling as "Jane Austen meets Gilmore Girls" — the manners and social maneuvering of a Regency drawing room, narrated with the rapid-fire charm of a best friend telling you everything that happened at dinner. It's not hard to see why Austen readers in particular have adopted Emma as one of their own. The wit, the class commentary, the will-they-won't-they simmering under a very proper surface — anyone who's reread Pride and Prejudice more times than they'd like to admit will recognize the DNA immediately.

If that's you, our Pride and Prejudice-inspired pieces might be worth a look — not an official collaboration, just a little corner of the shop made for readers who love that particular blend of wit and yearning.

Have you read Emma M. Lion yet, or is this the nudge you needed to finally start Volume 1?

With love, The Bean Workshop 🫘