u/Forsaken_Ganache_718

Ok so I'm generally not a dark romance gal. But, I want to see if I'd like it more if it was sapphic - unnecessary tangent but I had always ranted about not liking dark romance because I couldn't get my head around the premise (I'm autistic and asexual so being attracted to shitty behaviour made no sense to me), then a voice in my head popped up saying "what if you imagine the villain as Meryl Streep? Does that help?"

And frankly, yes it does.

I realised then that I'd only tried it with a heterosexual pairing which really isn't my preference anyway, so, time to test the theory.

I'm 50 pages in to Collateral Damage and dear lord it's so cringey. The dialogue is something from tween fanfiction. I doubt I'll be able to get much further.

Any other sapphic dark romance recs, particularly for a new reader of the genre?

TLDR please give me dark romance recs that aren't Collateral Damage

I'm new to this sub, so: Hi all!

I hope I don't get hate for being basic with this...

I love all kinds of sapphic romance but there is one particular, specific scenario/set of tropes that I could read 1000 times over if I could find it.

My ideal sapphic novel would have all of the following - an age gap romance, ice queen (the older character) and sunshine (younger character), the older character is comphet and doesn't know she's gay and possibly dealing with some internalised homophobia, she's externally icy but eventually softer. The younger character is confident in their sexuality and figuratively knocks her off her feet. Must be a slow burn with lots of yearning and sexual tension before they finally get together. Preferably, but not essentially, with spice - with the older, ice queen bottoming and, honestly, extra points for them also having a praise kink - but fine without it as long as there's a good build up of tension and a satisfying emotional payoff.

If anyone knows of a novel with all of those things then you may have my house.

If you have any recs that mostly fit the bill then I'd love to know

Thanks!