Book discovery & genres
Romantasy vs Fantasy Romance: Where the Line Sits
Two communities, two names, much the same shelf. The difference is not in the book, it is in which question the reader arrives with and how each community discusses it.
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For years these were two separate lists of books. They now overlap heavily, which is sometimes called genre convergence and is more often a labelling problem.
Fantasy romance: the romance is the story
The Romance Writers of America definition of a romance is structural rather than thematic: a central love story with a conventionally satisfying ending. Apply that test to a fantasy novel and you get fantasy romance, a secondary world in service of a central romance. The romance plot beats are the load-bearing structure and the fantasy is the setting and the complication.
Romantasy: the world is the story
Romantasy describes fantasy written with romance elements, where the world, the magic system and the political structure carry the plot and the romance is one thread among several. Read the word in order, romance then fantasy, and it describes the same books as fantasy romance read the other way round.
What this means for a reader choosing
Almost nothing about the reading experience. It matters for two practical reasons.
First, expectations. If you arrive expecting the genre structure and get the world structure instead, a good book reads as a disappointment. Both are legitimate; they are not interchangeable.
Second, reviews. The two communities evaluate books by different criteria. A romance reviewer is assessing whether the central relationship lands. A fantasy reviewer is assessing whether the magic system holds up under load. The same book can top one list and sit mid-table on the other without either review being wrong.
Reading both communities is the better position
If you read both, you have two independent judgements of the same book, which is worth more than two reviews sharing one set of criteria. Romance readers catch pacing and emotional logic that fantasy readers skip past; fantasy readers catch worldbuilding strain that romance readers accept. Between them they are reviewing different properties of the same object.
Which community to read
If the romantic resolution is the part you will remember, read the romance community. If the world is the part you will remember, read the fantasy one. If you want both to work, read both and notice which complaints recur. The recurring one is the book's actual defect.