The new adult romance genre emerged in the late 2000s with the release of E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. The subgenre tends to focus on characters between the ages of 18 and 25 as they negotiate the challenges of college life or of finding new career paths. While the genre uses many of the same narrative tropes as young adult or teen romances, new adult romance is marketed toward adult readers and often features sexually explicit scenes with an emphasis on female pleasure. Like James’s best-selling novel, new adult romance is heavily influenced by fan fiction and sometimes begins as self-published online erotica.

New adult romance combines two genres that were very popular in the 20th century: "chick lit" and the Harlequin romance. The term "chick lit" has fallen out of favor and been replaced with equivalents, including women's popular fiction and romantic comedy, but at the time it was used, it indicated a distinct separation from the more traditional romance genre. Chick-lit novels, like Bridget Jones' Diary and

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