The most popular book of the moment? A romance between humans and blue aliens

Enthusiastic book reviewers at #BookTok have recently fallen in love with Ruby Dixon's 'Ice Planet Barbarians' saga. Photo: AFP

Summer vacation is coming, a favourite time for readers to indulge in their favourite activity. This year, many of them will be slipping Ice Planet Barbarians, a romantic saga featuring blue aliens, into their suitcase.

Here's what you need to know about the fiction phenomenon... if you don't know who Ruby Dixon is, you probably don't spend enough time on TikTok. And more specifically on #BookTok, the posts where the social network's young users are reinventing literary criticism as we know it. In the last few months, these bibliophiles have taken a liking to Ruby Dixon and her hit sci-fi romance saga Ice Planet Barbarians.