'Wuthering Heights' is hot

The hottest book for young women is . . . Wuthering Heights?

Emerald Fennell's movie version of Emily Brontë’s classic novel will arrive in theaters just before Valentine's' Day, reports Callie Holtermann in the New York Times. "In preparation, thousands of people have picked up its source material, a Gothic tale of obsession and resentment published in 1847."

Sales of the book more than doubled in 2025 compared with the previous year, juiced by a trailer "featuring the movie’s stars, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, looking windswept and broody," she writes.  "Contemporary romance" has "exploded in popularity in recent years. Wuthering Heights isn't contemporary, but it is romantic.

Vogue selected Wuthering Heights as the first pick for its new book club, and the singer Charli XCX announced a companion album to the film.

"During a period of hand-wringing about young people’s reluctance to read books, readers seem to be approaching Wuthering Heights as a collective undertaking," writes Holtermann. "They are dissecting the novel in book clubs and group chats," and sharing testimonials to Brontë-maxxing on social media.

“74 pages into wuthering heights and why did nobody tell me that reading this is like eavesdropping on the most unhinged gossip you’ve ever heard,” went a TikTok summary posted by Toini Ilonummi, 30, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. “I’m obsessed.”

At a Manhattan book store, the online book club Belletrist and the romance publisher 831 Stories hosted a three-hour “read-in” of the book. Some participants had read the book in high school, and were rediscovering it.

In Austin, a young women said she'd just realized that Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is "toxic." No kidding.

Heathcliff is the classic tall, dark and handsome bad boy, but he's really quite bad, I decided when I read it in high school. And, even as a teenage girl, I thought Cathy was an annoying hysteric. Grow up, already.

I saw the 1939 Hollywood version, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon on TV. I'd seen Olivier play Othello on screen, and even though his decision to do it in blackface was controversial, I got it in my head that he was a black man. (He's a great actor. I was sold.) I thought: Heathcliff is supposed to look like he's maybe a gypsy. He's not supposed to be black. How will they handle this? When Olivier appeared on screen -- a white man with dark hair -- I felt like an idiot.

The Olivier-Oberon movie ends about halfway through the book, before Heathcliff turns very ultra-toxic. They get a happy ending, apparently spending eternity together.

The 2026 version seems to be stressing sex, writes Holtermann. The trailer "includes gasping, licking and the suggestive kneading of dough."

There's a mini-controversy over the casting of Jacob Elordi, an Aussie with Spanish heritage, as Heathcliff. People now think that "dark" means African. Not in 1847.