A Viral Kansas Bookstore Expands to Dallas — Blush Is A Romance Reader’s Sanctuary in Bishop Arts

Kansas’ romance-only bookshop Blush Bookstore is a Pinterest board come to life. It’s pink, it’s feminine, and it embraces cottage-core aesthetics. Inspired by the books that line the shelves and the literal cottage it occupies, it’s a romance reader’s dream. So much so, that the viral bookstore has attracted tourism to the cozy Wichita location — complete with a stone-clad fireplace and upstairs reading nook. Over the last year, Blush has become a must-visit for book lovers who fuel the booming romance novel industry. And now, it’s expanding to Dallas. 

Blush Bookstore’s second location opens on Saturday, October 5 at 432 West Eighth Street (a former home) in Bishop Arts. It will be the city’s first romance-only bookstore. Owners Jaclyn Wooten and her husband Aaron Biggs are already cozying up to the neighborhood.  

“We really got to know the area, and kind of fell in love with it, we knew we would fit into an area that was small businesses and walkable the way that Bishop Arts is,” Wooten tells PaperCity. “It’s very collaborative. It is a really beautiful little ecosystem that they have down here and that’s how we’ve always done business.” 

How Blush Bookstore Started

Blush Bookstore is a natural next step from Wooten and Biggs’ first business, a bookish online merch store called House of Jupiter. The online store is stocked with merchandise inspired by best-selling novels like Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and The New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry. Wooten found a market gap through their House of Jupiter.

“After the pandemic, there was just this huge push for the community of readers to find spaces to meet up and share a love of reading,” Wooten says. 

Blush launched in the spring of 2023 as part of a Wichita retail incubator program called The Garages. The bookstore quickly outgrew the retail space and expanded into its iconic cottage.

A Romance Reader’s Sanctuary

Pandemic-induced isolation sprouted a literary explosion online. Booktok, a subcommunity of TikTok where readers share book recommendations and reviews, boomed. 

#Booktok garnered over 200 billion views on TikTok by the end of 2023. Romance, along with young adult fiction and young adult fantasy, lead those views. However, there wasn’t a space for those readers to come together and bond over their love of flirty tropes. (Wooten’s favorite is enemies to lovers.) 

Blush Bookstore is a romance reader’s sanctuary in Kansas. Readers feel a sense of community when they enter the cottage.

“If you see people come into a romance bookstore, there’s just this instant feeling of ‘I can talk to that stranger next to me,’ ‘ I can ask them if they read that book,’  or ‘What book do they love’, and instant connections are made in these kinds of spaces,” Wooten says. 

Blush Dallas

While the Kansas store is heavily inspired by the cottage it calls home, the Dallas location will build on the girly and cozy aesthetic with touches of blue, inspired by the exterior of the Eighth Street bungalow.

Romance lovers can look forward to finding bestsellers and indie romance novels in store along with annotation pens, Kindle cases, House of Jupiter merchandise, candles, cardigans, and all the cute bookish things Wooten would buy herself.

Blush Dallas is celebrating its grand opening weekend with several pop-ups. On October 5 and 6, Café de Miele will sell Blush-themed coffee drinks — Saturday from 11 am to 1 pm, and Sunday from noon to 2 pm. Allora Mae Vintage Bar will provide free mocktails with purchase on October 5 from 2 pm to 4 pm. Shoppers can purchase stems to build a flower bouquet with Sand + Soil on October 6 from 2 pm to 4 pm. This is just the beginning of many bookish events to come.

“A big part of our brand is events,” Wooten says. “The great thing about Dallas is we do have a lot more opportunities for venues and vendors to work with for those events. We have a lot of opportunity here.”

“I was glad that what we had in mind when we created Blush actually came to fruition,” she continues. “We’re really excited to see that continue here, because the fact that Dallas doesn’t have [a romance-only bookshop] yet, we just couldn’t believe it.”