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. Chick-lit novels, like Bridget Jones' Diary and Confessions of a Shopaholic, often feature a single career woman with an active dating life whose career plans and independence are disrupted when she unexpectedly falls in love with a man. The Harlequin romance, typified by paperbacks published by Harlequin/Mills & Boon and Avon, is a subgenre that evolved from Gothic literature and tends to feature a virginal, submissive heroine who encounters a brutish, dominant man who both frightens and excites her.