4.46 avg rating — 1,153,445 ratings

"Like dark Harry Potter world with unique female main character and fantastic romance"

4.30 avg rating — 76,722 ratings

"A real enemy-to-lovers book"

4.08 avg rating — 234,281 ratings

"I love this series, follow 4 characters"

4.06 avg rating — 39,476 ratings

"A real enemy-to-lovers book"

4.15 avg rating — 80,834 ratings

"Sci-fi with one the most realistic romances and best plots I've read"

4.22 avg rating — 26,444 ratings

"Sci-fi, fantastic female main character"

3.85 avg rating — 8,351 ratings

"May be hit or miss but it's enjoyable. Female main character can kill with a touch"

4.02 avg rating — 214,207 ratings

"I also love her 6 Scorched Roses.Good romantasy with smart main character, cover doesn't do it justice. I've also heard The Serpent and the Wings of Night is great but haven't read it."

4.13 avg rating — 16,097 ratings

"Something different, dark fantasy, unique, morally grey characters- Nita, helps her mom capture and dissect other vaguely magic people in a world where everyone is aware that monsters are real. Magic and monsters are pretty low-key, nobody has life-changing cool powers, but consuming monsters/magical humans does temporarily provide benefit to the eaters.

Without spoiling too much, one day, Nita finds herself on the other side of this transaction. Now SHES the one on display to be sold and eaten piece by piece.

Think of this as an urban fantasy jailbreak story with morally grey heroes. Nita meets other monsters trapped in this black market of death and enlists their help. "

4.14 avg rating — 154,565 ratings

"Think Game of Thrones x 101 Arabian nights? Set in the streets of 18th century Cairo, our main character is a con woman of unsurpassed talent pretending to have magic. e,
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. Excellent enemies to lovers plot"

3.99 avg rating — 384,844 ratings

"I love this series and Strange the Dreamer. I think the prose is what elevates this b/c she has ones I think are stronger plot and romance wise like Lips-Touch. Karou is an orphaned human girl adopted by demon magicians, is currently an art student in Prague and occasionally "runs errands" for them.
Mysterious hand-shaped scorch marks begin to appear all over the world on doors. This poses a serious problem since Karou is only able to reach her demon foster parents, her only family, through those doors, and these scorch marks effectively "shut them down" so that they don't function as portals from point A to point B. For some time, however, Karou remains unaffected by this and continues to run her errands and visit her demon foster parents. The question of what teeth and wishes have in common hangs heavy in the air, especially when we find out that seraphim are the ones who are closing the doorways between worlds.
This is especially good for romance because the characters actually speak and LISTEN to each other. When Karou tells the male main character to stop; if he loves her then he'll stop doing this to her. Then, he actually listens and stops because, guess what, he truly does love her even if it hurts him in the long run; he's willing to put Karou above himself(gasp!)
"

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 31,978 ratings

"I LOVE HER but this is her best unique one. It covers things from found family, telepathy, time travel, alchemy, deconstruction of portal fantasies, ancient Greek ideas about math, music, and the nature of the universe, and also a spin on Frankenstein. I also love her fantasy romance series, the October Daye novels where "

3.80 avg rating — 123,289 ratings

"Unique-What happens to all those children in fantasy novels who come back from fantastic worlds — when Lucy emerged from the wardrobe, or Alice from the looking glass, or Max from the Land of the Wild Things? Surely that’s got to be a traumatic re-entry into mundane reality. Every Heart a Doorway takes that idea and runs with it, introducing us to Miss West’s Home for Wayward Children, where such young folk are given a safe place to recover and recuperate after their otherworldly experiences. Some of the children have been to lands of order, some to lands of chaos, some to dark, some to light. But all have been kicked out and forced to return home, and now they long to return to their fantasy realms. Miss West tries to console them, and convince them to accept the grim reality that they can never return. The home is part school, part orphanage, part addiction recovery center. Each child has been permanently marked and changed by their experiences. Our protagonist Nancy still yearns for her time in the realm of the dead, where everything seemed more peaceful, more ordered, more comfortable. She misses the silence and the shadows. She knows the lord and lady of death would welcome her back, if she could just find the way. Then, shortly after Nancy’s arrival, children at the school begin to be brutally murdered. Who is the killer, and why are these deaths happening? The story is poignant and sweet — a breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre, while also serving as a great mystery. TLDR:the children of portal fantasy end up in boarding school coping with being kicked out of their various worlds, then some of them start getting murdered. "

4.19 avg rating — 23,364 ratings

"o like, imagine if the Nazis won WW2, and imagine the absolute best protagonist explicitly recognized as Jewish using badass powers to carry out a plot assassinate Hitler that involves winning a motorcycle race. Plot twists galore. If you like this, also read Red Rising.
"

4.02 avg rating — 263,842 ratings

"This and Spinning Silver are fantastic."

4.17 avg rating — 278,765 ratings

"If you like this, you'll like A Winter's Promise. "

3.94 avg rating — 114,610 ratings

"This cover is such a waste. This is amazing and such a great romance. Imagine the French revolution but from Marie Antonette's perspective, and with an Athens VS Sparta greater world culture. Kestrel is a war general's daughter in a recently civilized warrior society that has enslaved their conquered nations. She lives a comfortable, complicit lifestyle of opulence. One day, she impulsively buys a slave at auction, and her whole life changes.

Arin is a blacksmith slave with a lot of well kept secrets. When Kestrel buys him, he does not expect to slowly fall for her as he exacts his own plans for revenge and revolution.

So yeah, a lot going on here. The themes of this book are much more mature than your typical YA, with issues of you know, our "good guys" literally owning people and all. Admirably, one of the weirder parts of the book was a tone problem with this, because it's approached pretty casually for what it is. I was constantly rooting for Kestrel's whole life to be cut out from under her despite liking her as a character.

However, Kestrel and her friends are a product of the society she lives in, and you don't become a revolutionary thinker overnight. The author's slow approach to character growth is so satisfying. Kestrel isn't a hero of the people- she's a rich lady that has benefitted from oppression and does not fully empathize with them. Arin is the real hero here, but they are both excellent characters, and their mindset is realistic and honest to their situation."

4.03 avg rating — 431,166 ratings

3.96 avg rating — 30,789 ratings

"Terrific ghost story about WW1. A Canadian nurse who was discharged goes back to the front to look for her lost brother. Meanwhile, her brother has joined forces with a German soldier to try to survive an apocalyptic post-push landscape in which ghosts of the dead are wandering, among them a strange fiddler who runs an oasis inn and requires stories in return for shelter. Fantastically atmospheric and horrifying with war detail, well-written, with some good speculations on the devil of the moment. There’s a magic mirror, too."

4.27 avg rating — 776,663 ratings

3.64 avg rating — 7,087 ratings

"A young man rejects his chosen-one upbringing and discovers a much stranger life in a city full of doors and powers. Through layered storytelling that is both fantastical and familiar, Chandrasekera re-mythologizes the boundless ways that people shape and reshape history and the world. Our MC ends up in a rural town to kill his father, who is a kind of messianic warlord. His shadow was severed from him as a child, and he has odd powers… he can see “demons” and float. Fetter repudiates his destiny and moves to the city, which is a modern bureaucratic, caste-conscious metropolis. He falls in with revolutionaries who are all “unchosen,” folks with mysterious abilities who no longer follow their gods’ paths. He becomes a spy, and studies the strange “bright doors” that appear there, which have no back side and evidently go nowhere. His mother starts calling him on an unconnected phone, and myths start coming true. Fantastic genre blending, sometimes funny, with a horrifyingly Kafka-esque refugee prison camp bit"

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 63,371 ratings

"Fab read, well-written for adults. Magic books need ink blood, it seems. A family secret keeps Esther on the run every year, leaving her sister at home guarding the special books, resenting her absence. Strangers with their own books (specifically from a British estate’s “Library”) are coming for the collection. Fantastic magic mirrors in this"

4.19 avg rating — 22,627 ratings

"I wouldn't say this is the best book but it is so much fun if you loved the Labyrinth esp Bowie and loved survival-type games. In a few words, this is a story about Jenny, an ordinary good girl, and Julian, a "Dark Prince" who is in love with her. To lure Jenny in his world, Julian tricks her and 6 of her friends to play The Game, where all of them have to face their most horrific nightmares. If they win, they are free to go. If they lose, Jenny has to stay with Julian forever."

4.03 avg rating — 7,582 ratings

4.11 avg rating — 13,440 ratings

3.82 avg rating — 18,481 ratings

4.35 avg rating — 8,711 ratings

4.03 avg rating — 112,083 ratings

4.10 avg rating — 113,779 ratings

"Unique twist involving death races on Celtic water horses, great rivals-to-romance. Sean and Puck are preparing separately for the annual Scorpio Races (where the dangerous water horses of Thisby face off against each other with their riders and generally lots of bloodshed) until their lives eventually collide into each other. Sean is the typical Thisby teen boy who just so happens to compete every year in the races. Puck is a young girl having some family issues, in particular with her brother's desire to leave the family home and the island that they live on, and she thinks that competing in the Races will force her brother to stick around. But Puck decides to race her regular horse against the blood-thirsty water horses, which cause quite a stir and tons of problems since they don't usually allow girls.And that's just the beginning.

The Writing and World-Building

If there was one word to describe this book, it would definitely be "atmospheric." The descriptions were gorgeous, but the location for the book is more than a little mind boggling. It seems to be a created fantasy island located in Ireland? I think. The term they use for the water horses is a Gaelic term but it takes place on a fictional island, I guess? The specifics are never really laid out about where or what or when this "Thisby" is."

4.29 avg rating — 41,694 ratings

"Imagine a world wide empire with the same culture as essentially feudal Japan. A young woman from a ruling house gets thrust to the head of said house after the deaths of her father and brother...Has one of the smartest most cunning female characters I've read.Mara becomes ruler of a dying noble house at only 17 and has to outwit countless other nobles in “the game of the council” in order to restore honor, security and power to the Acoma. She plans clever social, political and economic plots within a complex cultural system in order to secure the future of her land and people. She is a very lovable character as she possesses great intelligence, courage and emotional depth.



"

4.29 avg rating — 71,134 ratings

4.09 avg rating — 40,873 ratings

"The first book is good, but the second onwards are GREAT! The main character is confident- and if not always calm-makes good decisions in the face of danger."

4.02 avg rating — 84,222 ratings

"Note that this might be weird as it is set in the POV of a courtesan who outlasts and outwits all her enemies. Crossroads Trilogy by Kate Elliott"

4.35 avg rating — 13,053 ratings

4.22 avg rating — 1,349,281 ratings

4.17 avg rating — 46,197 ratings

4.06 avg rating — 79,806 ratings

"Will make you go WTF did I just read. The story follows a woman named Carolyn. She had a normal childhood, up until the moment a man she calls Father took her in. Father took her and a bunch of other orphaned children to his ancient Library, where he taught them different branches of his god-like powers. The problem is, Father just went missing and his Library is up for grabs. There’s a war coming, and whoever controls its power will basically become the new God"

4.17 avg rating — 267,106 ratings

4.34 avg rating — 125,954 ratings

4.26 avg rating — 651,407 ratings

3.80 avg rating — 12,936 ratings

4.04 avg rating — 129,409 ratings

4.05 avg rating — 190,124 ratings

"Outlander but with fairies"

3.92 avg rating — 1,924 ratings

"If you liked Outlander, you'll like this."

3.92 avg rating — 180,810 ratings

4.10 avg rating — 63,523 ratings

"I personally liked this and found it interesting-imagine a secret society of X-Men types is undermined when the protagonist loses her memory and has to find out which of her colleagues turned traitor and did it. Like our MC awakes surrounded by bodies with no recollection of who she is or what she's doing there. All she has is a letter in her pocket; a letter that begins with "The body you are wearing used to be mine." She soon finds herself caught up in this life she never asked for, trying to figure out how she lost her memory, who's out to get her, and how to manage the basics of Myfanwy's job at the secret agency known as the Checquy Group. It's very British humor, doesn't take itself seriously and it's fun to see her try to figure out what is going on without getting caught."

3.71 avg rating — 208,743 ratings

3.92 avg rating — 5,424 ratings

3.74 avg rating — 135,221 ratings

"et in 16th-century Madrid, where a scullery maid conceals her Jewish heritage—and the magic spells she knows how to cast—as the Inquisition looms."

4.01 avg rating — 168,193 ratings

4.05 avg rating — 135,031 ratings

"I also like her Hidden Legacies series which has the worst cover I've seen and a terrible blurb."

3.88 avg rating — 944 ratings

4.12 avg rating — 1,076,989 ratings

4.31 avg rating — 271,616 ratings

"In addition to being my favorite time travel book, this is also the best novel I’ve read about slavery. Which makes it a hard book to read, but well worth it. The basic plot is that a Black woman from the 70s gets sent back in time to save and protect her ancestor. Only, problem…her ancestor is a White slaveowner rapist. It’s a story about how the past takes a piece out of us that we never get back. Anyway, Butler is an amazing writer, and you should probably read everything she ever wrote, but this book made an especially powerful impression on me. Also recommend Parable of the Sower. It’s about a future America that’s falling apart for no particular reason, and a girl who fights against despair and social disintegration by fixating on the idea of interstellar exploration. The defiant optimism in the face of calamity is definitely something the world could use right now. The saga of poor people trying to escape a dying Los Angeles is also among the more gripping plots I’ve read."

4.21 avg rating — 471,090 ratings

4.22 avg rating — 114,878 ratings

3.89 avg rating — 81,890 ratings

"Yeine Darr, a barbarian outcast (and daughter of an illicit mixed-race marriage) from the large ruling family of the city of Sky, is unexpectedly named as one of three heirs to the throne, which sends her unwillingly into a bloody civil war with two powerful cousins. We learn that Sky is essentially a city inhabited by one big, messed-up, hierarchical family, the Arameri. “Full Bloods” like Yeine intersect with a mysterious band of enslaved gods—many of whom have their own plans for Yeine—and the result is a sprawling book of political intrigue. If The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones met up and discussed the complicated dynamics of a racial caste system, they probably still wouldn’t come up with something as refreshingly inventive as this world."

3.91 avg rating — 3,765 ratings

"Heard good things. Imagine a world in which you are hunted for being a human and you either submit to being feeding / blood bank for Nightweavers or take to the seas as pirates to escape their clutches. That's what the Oberon family did. It has been 600 years since Nightweavers came, and since then the myths, legends, tales are so complex that fear is what keeps them returning to land. Until one day, her family's ship is attacked and her best friend and brother Owen is killed. She and her family are taken in chains aboard a Nightweaver ship, headed for land. The son of a wealthy family of Nightweavers purchases them, and so begins the story.
"

4.45 avg rating — 2,495 ratings

"Courtney, you mentioned not liking how they did female rage in When the Moon Hatched and I think this is the right way to do it. Added because it's ridiculous but somehow good and addicting? Imagine if the writers of Riverdale tried to write a Law & Order: SVU episode. Woman gets possessed, has a toddler and sucky husband. A priest pulls out the demon and puts it in a banana.Sandy’s relationship with the vengeance demon who possesses her (again) after she eats a haunted banana is screamingly hilarious as they find a working balance to their wants and needs – Sandy’s for justice and the demon’s for raw internal organs, despite Sandy’s vegetarianism.
"

3.62 avg rating — 28,777 ratings

4.09 avg rating — 176,008 ratings

3.93 avg rating — 71,775 ratings

4.30 avg rating — 189,351 ratings

3.98 avg rating — 1,171,230 ratings

4.10 avg rating — 198,794 ratings

"Angel apocalypse basically but engaging but what makes it a good book are the character, especially the practical, level-headed female main character. Set future world that has been torn apart by angels. The kind that are cold, cruel and merciless, and see humans as little more than ants. Penryn is a seventeen-year-old girl who must look after both her disabled sister and her mentally ill mother who talks to "demons". In one eventful day, Penryn rescues an angel who is being attacked by five others, which results in her sister getting captured by one of the five. With only the angel - an enemy - who can help, Penryn sets out to rescue her sister.

Now Penryn may actually be my new favourite heroine of all time. In every way. She kicks ass, but at the same time she is a normal teenage girl who just wants to keep her family safe. There's a hint, or perhaps I should say a suggestion of romance, but Penryn has much more important things to worry about and she knows where her priorities lie (thank you! thank you! thank you!). The dialogue between Penryn and Raffe (the angel) is fantastic. It's so witty, funny, and sometimes touching. "

4.06 avg rating — 54,656 ratings

3.85 avg rating — 48,390 ratings

4.01 avg rating — 8,729 ratings

4.25 avg rating — 13,006 ratings

3.56 avg rating — 3,078 ratings

"Some of the best fantasy starts from a place of metaphor made literal. A visitor to New Orleans in our reality may observe that music seems to be the city’s lifeblood; in Alex Jennings’s exceptional urban-fantasy debut, the magic of song is quite literally the engine that keeps the phantasmagorical city of Nola alive. But some of the songs that form its foundation have escaped from the piano of Doctor Professor, Nola’s “haint” musician emeritus, and it’s up to a plucky and powerful set of young characters to track them down before the city crumbles around them. J"

3.67 avg rating — 13,143 ratings

"In an alternate version of pre-Code Hollywood where aspiring actors often meet their end as fodder for the sinister ritual magic that powers the studio system, Luli Wei is determined to be a star. The odds, of course, are stacked against her as she’s a gay Chinese American woman, but driven by her ambition and willingness to play the studio heads’ dark game, she finds her breakout role: not as a heroine but a monster. Yet as she sinks further into the murk of the industry, risking her own soul in the process, Luli finds love — and a greater purpose if she can muster the strength to see it through. "

4.07 avg rating — 39,262 ratings

4.28 avg rating — 13,388 ratings

"One of my favorite slow-burn romances. Red Winter follows Emi who is a kamigakari - a human who hosts a kami’s spirit within their body - and she in a couple of months from the beginning of the book her mortal life will end and she will become the host of the Wind Amatsukami, Amaterasu. All her life she has prepared herself for this moment and she is ready for it, until she uncovers a truth she didn’t want to know. We also have, Shiro, a yokai, a spirit of earth, who is an enemy to the goddess Emi will soon host. But when Emi saves his life, their paths became more intertwined than either of them thought."

4.30 avg rating — 20,173 ratings

4.08 avg rating — 7,879 ratings

"No miscommunication.
Ignore the weird covers because the inside is amazing! It's a Tolkien-esque world with elves, human, trolls, guns and a tiny bit of steampunk.
It starts with a political wedding between a human princess and an elf prince to ease the tensions between their two kingdoms, and both people are willing to make the marriage work despite tense circumstances. The romance is well built-up, with lots of communication; the books out now feature two main couples, with a third on the way in an upcoming 5th book.

One major theme running through the series is mental health and how to treat trauma, war PTSD and reconstruct broken family relationships. A quote that hit me is:

"It is all right to cry. It is not weakness to ask for help nor is it strength to silently bear what truly should not be your burden to carry."
If you like this, you would like Red Rope by K.M Shea
"

3.68 avg rating — 50,919 ratings

4.04 avg rating — 227,900 ratings

"I just like this because it's one of the few arranged marriages (a trope I tend to dislike) books that works. It is a romantic fantasy and has interesting & clever world building, plot and fast pacing! The conflict / stake is real, as the main couple come from two opposite kingdoms. She was the princess that was sent to spy on him and his kingdom to destroy them. The romance was slow burn and central to the plot.
"

4.07 avg rating — 43,019 ratings

4.15 avg rating — 63,217 ratings

4.17 avg rating — 54,408 ratings

3.91 avg rating — 164,622 ratings

4.02 avg rating — 556,892 ratings

3.84 avg rating — 8,731 ratings

4.02 avg rating — 153,373 ratings

"Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with Lestat as the love interest. SUCH amazing worldbuilding, or MC is also a necromancer. Just don't read past the first 10 books b/c the author lost her mind and it essentially becomes her explicit fantasies."

4.14 avg rating — 218,565 ratings

4.13 avg rating — 131,301 ratings

4.30 avg rating — 341,393 ratings

"Just insanely good."

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1,098,928 ratings

3.79 avg rating — 13,920 ratings

3.70 avg rating — 51,553 ratings

4.16 avg rating — 10,751 ratings

4.06 avg rating — 662,819 ratings

4.15 avg rating — 207,106 ratings

3.88 avg rating — 3,182 ratings

3.50 avg rating — 34,620 ratings

"It's like Ocean's 11 x Vampires"

4.24 avg rating — 1,014 ratings

4.04 avg rating — 159,782 ratings

3.84 avg rating — 1,224,896 ratings

"Starts in prison with a female main character can kill with a touch. "

4.05 avg rating — 67,745 ratings

4.41 avg rating — 2,240 ratings