r/Romantasy

I am a little tired of the exact moment of attraction being someone walking into a ballroom in a perfect dress, taking their shirt off after training, or appearing dramatically covered in blood.

Give me the opposite.

Let him look at her after she's been awake for 30 hours translating ancient documents, hair barely holding together, ink on her face, eating bread over a stack of maps, and suddenly think: oh. That's a problem.

Or let her realize the terrifying commander is attractive while he's soaked from the rain, carrying three broken saddles and arguing with a horse.

There's something much more convincing to me about attraction sneaking up during a completely unglamorous moment. Especially when the person being admired has absolutely no idea they're doing anything attractive.

Maybe it's because it feels less like the author announcing "LOOK, HOT PERSON" and more like one character's brain quietly changing its opinion.

Please give me more accidental hotness.

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I need a romance that is PAINFULLY slow burn. Like, I want a whole series where the MCs start developing feelings for each other, realize they want each other really badly, but for whatever reason, they can’t act on it. And then I want to suffer. 😭

Give me:

- LOTS of sexual tension — lingering glances, charged silences, almost-touching, whispered conversations, etc.

- Forced proximity where they have to be physically close and it absolutely kills them because they want to touch each other for real.

- Accidental touches that feel more intimate than an actual kiss.

- That whole “we’re standing way too close and neither of us is moving away” thing.

- Mutual pining. I want BOTH of them wanting each other.

- The kind of tension where a hand brushing against someone’s waist has me kicking my feet and staring at the ceiling.

- No insta-love and preferably no insta-lust. I want the attraction and feelings to build gradually.

- Book 1 should have NO spice. Honestly, I want a kiss at most. I need the restraint and suffering.

- Ideally, the romance progresses throughout the series, so when they finally get together, it feels EARNED.

Basically, I want the kind of slow burn where they barely touch and I'm already blushing.

I want toe-curling, kick-my-feet, scream-into-my-pillow levels of tension. Please give me your best recommendations. 🫠

Hi all, I have seen so many people recommend this book that I finally broke down and decided to try it. There have been sweet elements that I enjoy but overall it’s not gripping me. I’m about 75% in. Is the last 25% going to make me fall in love?

Edit: To say thank you everyone! That helped 😊

UGH. I struggling to find a good book! Please send me your recommendations that got you out of a slump, at this point I am open to anything. Just as long as I’m still interested in the book even when the FMC & MMC get together! All the distractions needed until Oct 27th 🤪

Title: A Deal with the Shadow King, Curse of the Fae Book 1
Author: Anya J. Cosgrove

It’s not very often that I feel compelled to write a review about a book because let’s face it- the books are becoming repetitive and lack in substance. But this one excited me enough to write about it. This is a critique as well as a gush rave. (Who am I kidding it’s mostly gush) In my title, I recommend it to both of the fans and the enemies of ACOTAR. And I say enemies, because eesh that book had some issues. If you loved the book ACOTAR, then that means you are easy to please, here for a fun time and, you’re just down for the ride- and with that I say buckle up because this is a fun one. If you did not like ACOTAR for reasons that include, but are not limited to: the female lead being insufferable, the incessant dumb decisions, a cheesy love story that reads like a high schooler wrote it and, last but not least, extremely predictable plot. Then I would say this book has only half those problems! Jk but yea I won’t say it’s perfect, she literally gets the pet name “kitten” (discord relationship much). But it grew on me so now I’m cheesy too. It’s not the same story by any means, but there are enough similarities that you can’t read it without thinking of the other, and where ACOTAR flopped, I would say this book soared.

GENRE

It is fantasy based, but I would say this book is more romance than anything. Critique moment!There’s no adventure storyline and little world building beyond the kingdom and its subjects so if that’s not your thing, then I will say it is ok to pass on this book. There’s not much action/fighting in this book. It’s sort of all builds up for the end I haven’t read the second book yet so I’m not sure if that changes in the series but I wanted to write the review for the first book before I put a new information in my brain. But I would say for the Romance category it hits those requirements beautifully.

STORYLINE

It’s set in a Multiverse, where there is a Faerie World and the human world is split between the New World that we know and an Old World. The female main lead is a princess in the Old World, so she’s born into all the misogyny, and strict rules of the past. Her dad the King makes a deal with the Shadow king of the Fae world to save his wife’s life and in exchange, his unborn child has to spend half of the year in Faerie starting their 18th Birthday. The exact terms of the deal on how you win or lose are unclear to Penelope but she wants to win the deal so that she can return back home save her kingdom from being taken over by the Shadow King and marry her childhood sweetheart. The Shadow King wants to win the deal so that he can take over the Old World and defeat an enemy who plans to take over and destroy his kingdom.

FEMALE LEAD

I would say that she is a refreshing female lead because she doesn’t start off strong by any means, but she has an inner drive, and a curiosity that has been originally stifled in the environment she grew up in but now, in a land where those rules don’t apply she’s able to come into herself and explore her magic and being allowed to train with weapons. Critique moment! There’s not much training that actually happens and that’s a fault of this mainly being a romance. Penelope is also a bit of a prude but that’s because she grew up in a hyper religious cult society. There’s another woman from the modern day and she wears leggings and sports bras etc and Penelope starts to shed her limiting world view and start to question where her own morals lie. The author doesn’t rely on cheap tactics to make the female lead strong like having to rebuke her feminine side to be respected. I will say she’s modest but as she comes into her confidence she starts to explore in more ways than one.

PLOT TWIST

I love a story with a good unexpected twist, and this book has two. One of them starts getting hinted that pretty early in the book. And if you’re good at foreshadowing, then you’ll be able to solve at least a piece of the mystery in the beginning to midway through. I found that to be extremely fun to try to figure it out before the story tells you and even after I figured out a piece of it, I still didn’t get the whole situation until it was finally dropped. And I had to place the book down because I was like. Oh! my! gosh! and my brain spiders out to connect all the missing pieces to make a clear picture. And when I tell you, the second plot twist, I had no idea it wasn’t even on my radar, because I was trying so hard to figure out the first one, and when that came to light, I had chills. I won’t give any more hints or clues. The fact that I said that there were two plot twists is more of a spoiler than I would like to give, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

SPICE LEVEL

I will say, if you thought ACOTAR was spicy then you might need to mentally prepare before you get here because this book has actual detailed scenes. I could be wrong but I remembered reading ACOTAR and being like y’all thought that was spicy?? I feel like reading this I was like OH! so we’re doin that! alright! If you’re against spice, I will say there’s only two instances of something happening with the main character, and then her eavesdropping on a situation that happens with a different character. But the two of the scenes that happen are not vanilla so be prepared to test your limits. (no BDSM or abuse in this book though) so you won’t have to worry about that. Please try to push through I thought it was a great time.

MALE LEAD

I know you’re all wondering about the male lead because I didn’t describe him yet but that’s because there’s multiple. But no one is a cliche shadow daddy because we’re all exhausted from that trope. If you hate love triangles, and normally avoid books like that I would say read this anyway it’s imperative that you do and if you do enjoy the uncertainty of who wins in the end then this book is perfect for you.

FINAL NOTES

I really didn’t want to give too much because I don’t like when the entire story gets told in a review and then it feels pointless to read it so if you’re still left questioning, to that I say READ IT!!

I keep falling in love with incomplete series. Books i’ve LOVED:

- Souls in Ruin
-Dagger Mouth
- The Wolf King
-Blood and Ash (before dragged out)
- Fourth Wing
- Every SJM
- The Poison Daughter
- Mate
- Powerless
- Divine Rivals
- Manacled
- Quicksilver
- One Dark Window

Hey everyone!
I’m desperately trying to find some amazing books to get me out of a reading slump! I’ve been stuck in one for the past few months and, no matter how much I want to read, I just haven’t been able to commit to a book for very long. 😭
I’m especially looking for those “I couldn’t put it down,” “stayed up way too late reading,” “I’m still thinking about it” kind of books.
So please, give me your best recommendations! I’m open to anything with great romance, drama, fantasy, morally grey characters, angst, addictive plots… honestly, if you think it’ll pull me straight out of this slump, I NEED IT. Bonus points for books that had you completely obsessed! Thank you in advance — I can’t wait to add approximately 500 books to my TBR and pretend I’ll actually get through them all. 😂❤️

Here are some of the books/series I’ve read and absolutely LOVED:
LOG Series — Rina Kent
Shatter Me Series
Once Upon a Broken Heart Series
Crossfire Series — Sylvia Day
Brutal Hearts Series — Lilith Vincent
In Her Shadows — Lilah Raine
Empire of Royals — Emilia Rossi
Maple Hills Series — Hannah Grace
The Folk of the Air — Holly Black
Red Queen — Victoria Aveyard
Lancaster Prep — Monica Murphy
Obsession — Harley Beck
Dark Verse — RuNyx
Notice — K. Webster
The Book of Azrael
Knockemout Series — Lucy Score
Chestnut Springs — Elsie Silver
Miles High / The Right Move — Liz Tomforde
Belladonna Series
And a few books by Emily Henry, Ali Hazelwood & Ana Huang

So I am flying through Crown of Midnight and don’t have The Assassin’s Blade ready at the library (but HoF is there). I am on a super tight schedule and trying to fit as much reading in before the semester starts as humanly possible. I’m so tempted to dive into HoF once I’m done with this book. I know the sequence for the prequel is widely contentious but I was hoping for some feedback on reading it after HoF.

I’’ about 20% into Doctor D’Arco and wondering when it starts to pick up. I know the slow pacing is part of the writing style, and I typically don’t mind slower books - I liked Kushiel’s Dart, Alchemised, and Reign & Ruin - but this one is moving a little slower than I’m used to.

For those who loved it, was there a point where it really clicked for you? Should I keep pushing?

I’m sorry but I CANT get behind the Crescent City hype:( I really enjoyed CC1 but CC2 was so dang long and boring for me. I’ve put off reading CC3 for 3 weeks now and just tried to read it and i literally can’t do it. This is absolutely heartbreaking because the series looks so good on my shelf and I really wanted to love it. I enjoyed TOG and was absolutely obsessed with ACOTAR so this is a real disappointment.

One romantasy reaction I would love to see more often is a character realizing, very clearly, "Oh. I'm in love with this person."

And then just... accepting that information.

No spending the next 200 pages insisting they're definitely not in love. No suddenly avoiding the other person because feelings are terrifying. No dramatic internal speech about how this changes EVERYTHING.

I'd love someone who recognizes it almost calmly. Maybe they're even a little amused that it happened.

The tension can come afterward. Do they think the feeling is mutual? Should they say anything? Is acting on it a terrible idea because of everything else happening? Can they keep doing their job while being painfully aware that this person now matters way too much?

To me that's actually more interesting than denial sometimes. A character knowing exactly what they feel doesn't mean they know what to do with it.

Give me someone thinking, "Well, that's inconvenient," and then continuing to fight monsters while quietly being completely gone for them.

I have been between the two series soooo please settle it for me. If I do read acotar should I skip the first book I hear a lot of back lash on it.

Hello lovely people, pls help

I recently finished the second Bridge Kingdom book {The Traitor Queen by Danielle L Jenson} and I cannot stress this enough: I DEVOURED IT. Finished it in a day and now I’m sad.

I think a massive part of the appeal was how fast paced and action packed it was. Something pretty intense was always happening and I never got that “okay but when does the plot actually start?” feeling.

I also LOVED that the characters felt like actual functioning adults. They were competent, complicated, flawed, made mistakes and questionable decisions for understandable reasons etc. Most importantly the FMC had knowledge of what a 🍆 was and therefore did not completely lose all brain function because a big sexy turned on the charm

And the enemies-to-lovers??? Actual enemies. Not “he mildly inconvenienced me once and now I don’t like him”

So please gimme all the recs

I’m looking for:

* Fast paced / hard to put down
* Plenty of action and actual plot
* Really good world building
* Complex, competent characters
*Ideally proper enemies-to-lovers. I don’t want the entire fantasy plot to disappear the second the MMC takes his shirt off

Basically I would like to become so immersed in a fictional world that my family needs to fend for themselves at dinner time

Thank you in advance 🖤

I love epic fantasy books and I love romance, but I can rarely find a crossover that does both aspects justice.

I'm sick of seeing sloppy romantasy books with poor prose, weak worldbuilding, underdeveloped characters, and cliche plots that just reuse tropes. On the other hand, I also have a hard time finding a well-written, high-stakes epic fantasy that features a central love story unfolding beautifully. Alchemised by SenLinYu is a perfect example of what I'm looking for. I now need a book to scratch the same itch.

It doesn't need to be strictly fantasy. Scifi, dystopian, etc. recs are all great too.

I also love a good tearjerker. Thanks in advance!

I've been in a slump for a while and I'm desperate to find a book that hits some of the tropes I love. Help me scratch this itch 😭

Some tropes I love:

• enemies to lovers
• forced marriage/marriage of convenience
• love triangle (especially if it ends in why choose)
• fake dating

Tropes I dislike:

• trials
• pregnancy
• third act breakup/kidnapping

Examples of books I enjoyed:

• Heir of Illusion
• Warrior Princess Assassin
• Heartless Hunter
• A Vow in Vengeance

I definitely prefer darker books as opposed to cozy books. Any spice level. Any and all recs welcome!