Inside Union Station’s Grand Hall, a collaborative indie bookstore pop-up between Hopeless Romantic Books and Little Ghosts Books is up and running, attracting romantic ghouls far and wide.
Little Ghosts opened its flagship location on Dundas St West in April 2022, providing an all-things-spooky shelf space. Hopeless Romantic opened its flagship store on Queen West in October 2025 with its pink everything, attracting romance readers city-wide.
Both bookstores have expressed the desire to provide a genre-based space for readers in their mission statements, and their commitment to spotlighting stories about queerness, sex, and sexuality. The Union Station pop-up is an expansion of both these curated genre spaces.
Opening day
Hopeless Romantic X Little Ghosts Books opened its doors on February 7 to a line that wrapped around the Grand Hall. Many book-shoppers — including myself — had arrived early to camp outside the shop before its official opening at 10:00 am.
The bookstores’ doors opened to reveal a split floor plan, the Hopeless Romantic side of the store in shades of pink and violet, and the Little Ghosts side in black and white. I could not help but think it looked like two siblings of opposite personalities being forced to share one room.
On the Hopeless Romantic side, there are shelves carrying romances such as Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry, Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation, a shelf of Carley Fortune and Ali Hazelwood, and an entire section on romantasies. Book-themed bookmarks, pouches, pens, pins, and prints for sale line the shelves right next to the selection of romances. My favourite bookish merch they have is their embroidered t-shirts and their baskets of stickers, which I highly recommend going through — there are many gems in there, including the ‘DW side-eye’ meme.
My favourite part of Hopeless Romantic was the “blind-date-with-a-book” shelf. All the books on the shelf are wrapped, and feature genre descriptions, key tropes, the “spice guide” (how smutty the writing gets is indicated by chili peppers), and the price.
On the Little Ghosts side of the pop-up, the shelves are stocked with curated horrors, thrillers, and all things monstrous. From Stephen King and Bram Stoker, to Grady Hendrix and Stephen Graham Jones, the shelves feature a broad expanse of authors, characters, and subgenres — including monster romances. Featured in its stock is Little Ghosts’ Press, which spotlights queer and trans authors and stories, with works such as Wet Screams: A Monsterfucker Anthology and Misplaced by Brittni Brinn.
The coffin-shelf section of the Little Ghosts side was my favourite part, purely for its aesthetic value. I personally would love a coffin-shelf for my little library. This section features horror pop-culture greeting cards — with characters like Ghostface, Dracula, and Pennywise — and Little Ghosts branded merch, featuring their storefront graphic on t-shirts, sweaters, and tote bags.
On behalf of The Varsity, I interviewed Chris Krawczyk — founder of Little Ghosts, and Shelly Zevlever — manager at Hopeless Romantic, about their experiences as booksellers and what their spaces mean both for them and their customers.
Krawczyk highlighted the importance of spotlighting overlooked genres and stories, saying “everything we do at Little Ghosts is to make indie, weird, sexy, and transgressive horror more visible and available to all readers.”
Krawczyk also highlights the importance of accessibility, saying that the publicity they have received “is huge for small press books and authors in a genre that has been traditionally marginalized and ignored by both major bookstores and publishers.”
This pop-up is not the first time Hopeless Romantic and Little Ghosts have collaborated; the launch party for the publication of Wet Screams was hosted by Hopeless Romantic. Zevlever said that one of the joys of this collaboration is “seeing readers who love both genres come together.”
Both Zevlever and Krawczyk discovered a newfound liking for horror and romance books, respectively. Zevlever added that they were “the world’s biggest scaredy cat,” but also that the pop-up had provided them with the opportunity to add new books to their To Be Read (TBR) — especially monster-romance.
Zevlever believes that this collaboration expands their mission to create sex-positive spaces “by showing people that romance is cool and fun.” They said that the ethos of Hopeless Romantic is “to make romance readers and authors feel unashamed [of] their interests.”
As a reader of both horror and romance, I asked both Zevlever and Krawczyk to provide me with their personal recommendations. Krawczyk is a lover of the Wet Screams anthology, and also spotlighted Cosmic Dyke Patrol by Lor Gislason, which he describes as a “queer dimension-hopping creature-feature of a novella with gay romance, body horror, and a ton of heart!” Zevlever recommended If Only You Knew by Ellie K. Wilde, Revolve by Bal Khabra, A Good Puck by Rochelle Wolf, and said they were looking forward to the release of Love Song by Elle Kennedy.
This collaboration is a great place for readers — familiar and unfamiliar with the genres — to find a new read for their commute or otherwise. The pop-up is open seven days a week, from now until May 31.
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