I have to admit that I am currently still thoroughly in my romantasy era. If you had asked me two years ago, I would’ve laughed you off, because I didn’t particularly enjoy reading romance at all. But now? I can no longer deny it. I’m definitely in love with the romantasy genre.
Which . . . I think is kind of the point of it? But never mind. The older I get, the more I like branching out and challenging my own assumptions about genres, and romantasy (and every now and then, contemporary romance) has been my newest target. Because why not challenge a few preconceived notions from time to time?
Romantasy has all the magic and drama and escapism of fantasy that originally had me fall in love with the genre, plus the undeniable charm of watching two squishable cinnamon rolls be adorable with each other. Or stab each other. Depends on your trope of choice.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is my ode to my new(ish) love for romantasy, in all its unique forms. If you haven’t had a chance to discover the genre yet, fall in love with one of these upcoming releases.
I know we’re always grumbling about our ever-growing TBRs, so I’m going to apologize in advance for any damage I may do to yours. Just know that these books are all already on my TBR, and I have to suffer . . . well, suffice it to say I don’t feel that bad about adding to your pile.
That being said, if there’s an upcoming romantasy that I absolutely need to know about, please share it with me in the comments! Because turnabout is fair play.
The Maiden and Her Monster
The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark.
As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the curse of the woods has plagued her village, but when the Ozmini Church comes to collect their tithes, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.
When she ventures into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only after Malka helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.
But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save—and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.
Starting out strong with one for my Gothic girlies and guys. This is a sapphire romance rooted in Jewish folklore and mythology, specifically focused on retelling the myth of the Golem, which is one I personally enjoy. (Although, if you aren’t familiar with the myth, it doesn’t seem like it’s necessary going in, so you should be fine!)
I’m a huge fan of falling in love with monsters (hey, monsters deserve love, too). When I say that, I’m generally not considering actual monsters, just figurative ones, so this is a nice change-up. I’ve also noticed that I don’t read a ton of sapphic romances, so I’m excited to give this one a try.
First lines:
Once the sun sank below the horizon, the villagers closed their doors and shuttered their windows. The dim, tinted orange glow of tallow candles became the only wash of light spilling onto the streets. Inside the houses lining the dirt roads, families gathered. They told stories in hushed tones, animated by hands making shadow figures in the candlelight.
What Fury Brings
There’s a shortage of men in the kingdom of Amarra. After a failed rebellion against the matriarchy, most noblemen in the country are dead. Now the women of Amarra must obtain their husbands (should they want one) by kidnapping them from other kingdoms.
Olerra, a warrior princess vying for the throne, is determined to prove her worth by kidnapping a husband. And not just any husband. To outmaneuver her treacherous cousin, she needs the best. Fortunately, the second-born prince of their greatest enemy is widely known for both his looks and his sweet, docile temperament. He’s the perfect choice to secure her claim to the throne.
Sanos, heir to the Kingdom of Brutus, has nothing but contempt for the idea of a society run by women. Trained from birth to fight, lead, and follow in his father’s overbearing footsteps, his path has always been set. Until he takes his younger brother’s place in a drunken prank and finds himself kidnapped, carted off to the Amarran Palace, and informed that he is to become the husband of Queen Potential Olerra. Sanos needs to escape before anyone learns his real identity, but the more he gets to know his captor, the less sure he is of what he truly wants.
I really enjoyed The Shadows Between Us, which is YA, so I’m very eager to see what Tricia Levenseller does with her adult debut! I am absolutely in love with the idea of Olerra being a warrior princess who needs to kidnap and train a husband. Can we make this normal mating behavior? My husband would totally be okay with me having to put all the effort and cunning into kidnapping him for the “honor” of marrying him. The fact that this is also enemies-to-lovers just promises a lot of drama, banter, and an extremely ill-advised romance (and honestly, aren’t they all?). I can’t wait to get started!
First lines:
This was the fourth time General Olerra Corasene had met King Atalius’s troops in half as many years. Always, the man would hide behind his fighters, shouting orders from the back, the coward.
Dating After the End of the World
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
Technically, this one is romance science fiction . . . but I think we can all agree romantion sounds more like a malady than a genre. However, for all you sci-fi lovers who feel left out, I see you! Just because the world is ending doesn’t mean there can’t be world-ending romance, too. Sometimes the sparks that are flying are figuratively, sometimes they’re literal, and sometimes they’re both!
I confess that zombies are not my thing, and I generally try to avoid them. I’m willing to make an exception for this enemies-to-lovers romance that shows that every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. (And now I hope you have Closing Time stuck in your head. You’re welcome.)
The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World
Courtney’s only goal in life is to have no goals. She’s content with her dead-end job and simple existence, and everything is perfect until her neighbor, Bryce, shatters her peace by inexplicably deciding Courtney is his arch-nemesis. To her annoyance, Courtney finds herself committing to a life goal after all: hating Bryce back.
Just after the pair decide to loathe each other for all eternity, they unwittingly step through a portal and hurtle into a fantasy world together, where they are met by a prophecy-obsessed mentor who claims one of them is the Chosen One, destined to defeat an unknown Evil One. But instead of saving the world, the two only unleash more chaos by accidentally freeing a dragon, summoning an undead army, and almost poisoning their mentor with peanut butter.
To return to their world, Bryce and Courtney need magic, which is unfortunately fueled by charisma—meaning the two incompetent, underachieving heroes somehow have to get people to like them. With time running out and the Evil One looming, the enemies must work together and become worthy heroes so they can charm the world (but hopefully not each other), harness magic, overthrow Evil, and get home. Otherwise, they’ll be stuck in a doomed universe without running water—and with each other—forever.
Being a reformed overachiever sounds amazing, because let me tell you, this nonsense is exhausting. So am I hoping to learn a thing or two or ten from Courtney’s mostly goal-free life? Absolutely. I am also definitely here for the enemies-to-lovers romcom pitched as The Hating Games meets Legends & Lattes. I’m not 100% sold on how we’re going to smoosh enemies-to-lovers together with cozy romantasy, but I am absolutely here for it! Whatever it looks like, I’m willing to bet it includes banter and snark, which are obviously my love languages!
Also, not gonna lie, this blurb sounds exactly like what would happen if you expected me to save the world. Oh, I’m sorry, was I not supposed to set the poor little dragon free and summon an undead army? You can’t change the rules in the middle of me saving the world, Susan! Parameters must be set before undertaking the mission! (Low key, though, I may not want to save a world without running water anyway, so I’m not sure they can be held responsible for dooming it in the first place.)
First Lines:
After The End, you’re left cleaning up carnage and wondering how you’re going to afford therapy. You don’t feel victorious; you feel tired, hungry, and grumpy.
No one talks about how unpleasant the aftermath of an epic adventure is. No one warns you that you’ll return home, after gallivanting around a magical universe, to find your car’s been towed. No one mentions the fact that you’ll probably look over at the person you’re supposed to be having your Happily Ever After with and wonder if a week-long adventure is long enough to truly get to know someone.
Witchlore
At Demdike College of Witchcraft, Orlando is an outcast. Not just for being the only shapeshifter in a college of witches. Not just for being a really bad shapeshifter, with no control over their magic or when their body switches between male and female forms. But because their girlfriend Elizabeth died – and it was Lando’s fault.
Then charming new boy Bastian arrives with a proposition: he knows a spell that can raise Elizabeth from the dead. It’s dangerous but Lando will try anything. But as Lando’s attraction to Bastian grows, questions start to arise. Who is Bastian? What does he really want? And who will survive the resurrection spell?
This book had me immediately at Holly Black meets Lex Croucher. With a combination like that, we’re surely promised some darkness, plenty of banter, and some pretty high stakes. Sign me up! This also has a whiff of necromancy. Spells to raise the dead? Yeah, because that never goes wrong, right? Pffft. Protagonists never learn. But I am here to explore this mistake with them, because I’m just generous like that.
A Curious Kind of Magic
Everyone in Ardmuir knows that Willow Stokes is a charlatan, including Willow herself. Her father’s shoppe hasn’t sold anything magical in decades, and it’s only hanging on by the skin of the fake dragon’s teeth Willow sells as charms, along with “enchanted” ostrich eggs, taxidermied chimeras, and talismans made of fools’ gold.
Until outlander Brianna Hargrave appears and turns Willow’s fakes into exactly what they’re purported to be. But try as Willow might to enlist Bri’s help, she wants nothing to do with Willow and her curiosities.
Because Brianna is harboring a secret of her own: everything she touches turns to magic, and the consequences have chased her all the way to Ardmuir. All she wants to do is find a particular missing grimoire, which contains a spell that can finally put an end to her curse.
Desperate to keep her father’s shoppe, Willow proposes a bargain that could save them both. Together with the frustratingly handsome printer’s assistant, the girls will uncover a plot that goes far deeper than either could have imagined. But when Willow is forced to participate in an ambitious collector’s quest for the rarest magical object in the world-a quest that risks almost-certain death-she learns that not all treasure is for sale, and that true magic is closer than she ever could have imagined.
This book is pitched as Howl’s Moving Castle meets Little Thieves, and if there’s a more perfect combination for a book, I don’t know of it. This sounds like whimsy and darkness all in one; cozy and romantic but with a less-than-healthy romance between strong characters. It sounds like everything I never knew I needed from romantasy!
First Lines:
Those words became something of a refrain in the weeks after the girl with the wild hair and strange accent entered my shoppe and spun everything arse over teakettle. It was the kind of advice a father should give his daughter, particularly one who operates a magical curiosity shoppe for a living. But that fateful September day, I’d been so excited by the mere prospect of an authentic magical artifact that I hadn’t listened to the wolpertinger’s words. And oh, I would pay for it dearly.
Witches of Dubious Origin
Zoe Ziakas enjoys a quiet life, working as a librarian in her quaint New England town. When a mysterious black book with an unbreakable latch is delivered to the library, Zoe has a strange feeling the tome is somehow calling to her. She decides to consult the Museum of Literature, home to volumes of indecipherable secrets, some possessing magic that must be guarded. The collection is known as the of Books of Dubious Origin.
Here, Zoe discovers that she is the last descendant of a family of witches and this little black book is their grimoire. Zoe knows she must decode the family’s spell book and solve the mystery of what happened to her mother and her grandmother. However, the book’s potential power draws all things magical to it, and Zoe finds herself under the constant watch of a pesky raven, while being chased by undead Vikings, ghost pirates, and assorted ghouls.
With assistance from the eccentric staff of the Books of Dubious Origin—including their annoyingly smart and handsome containment specialist, Jasper Griffin—Zoe must confront her past and the legacy of her family. But as their adventure unfolds, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to embrace her destiny.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am absolutely a sucker for fantasy books about librarians. My bias is definitely showing here. I’m also not-so-secretly hoping that I find a magical tome that awakens a hidden magical heritage . . . but then again, who isn’t?! I wouldn’t even complain if I were chased by undead Vikings and ghost pirates. (Actually, I might even prefer it over my normal day-to-day, if I’m honest.)
This addition is for all my Aces out there; I see you! This is a cozy fantasy with a minor romantic subplot, perfect for when you want romance, but you want it in the periphery, thank you very much. You absolutely can have your cake and eat it, too.
First Lines:
Bill shrugged at the confusion on my face. “I know, but it’s addressed to you and stamped Personal.”
My Roommate from Hell
Owen is not going to college to have fun. Nothing is going to stop him from achieving his goals: study hard, get a good job, and set himself up for the rest of his life. The last thing he needs is to have a loud, obnoxious, and infuriatingly hot roommate. Especially since said roommate just so happens to be the prince of hell.
Prince Zarmenus has come to Point University for the first-ever Earth/hell exchange program, and he’s determined to make the most of it. Which may or may not include wild parties, bringing in random boys to his and Owen’s room, and accidentally setting Owen’s furniture on fire. Sparks fly (literally) as Owen and Zar clash, but Zar’s actions threaten to not only ruin Owen’s peaceful college life, but demon-human relations as well. To clean up his image, he asks Owen to be his fake boyfriend and teach him how to be a better human in exchange for an internship that will secure Owen’s future. That, and Zar will consider being a better roommate.
A deal is struck, and the two start pretending to be in a relationship where they each have agendas of their own. Only Owen has a secret―dating his mortal enemy, even if it’s fake, is the most fun he’s ever had.
“Think just one bed, but that bed is in hell, surrounded by fire and brimstone.” Talk about a new take on an old trope! I’d never really given much thought to the sort of paranormal romance that includes demons and such until more recently (probably thanks to the beauty of a show that is Lucifer and Tom Ellis’ undeniable charisma). I’m very curious about this swoonworthy YA rom-com featuring the prince of hell, who is apparently every bit the nightmare roommate you might expect he would be.
Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
Guy Shadowfade is dead, and after a lifetime as the dark sorcerer’s right-hand, Violet Thistlewaite is determined to start over—not as the fearsome Thornwitch, but as someone kind. Someone better. Someone good.
The quaint town of Dragon’s Rest, Violet decides, will be her second chance—she’ll set down roots, open a flower shop, keep her sentient (mildly homicidal) houseplant in check, and prune dark magic from the twisted boughs of her life.
Violet’s vibrant bouquets and cheerful enchantments soon charm the welcoming townsfolk, though nothing seems to impress the prickly yet dashingly handsome Nathaniel Marsh, an alchemist sharing her greenhouse. With a struggling business and his own second chance seemingly out of reach, Nathaniel has no time for flowers or frippery—and certainly none for the intriguing witch next door.
When a mysterious blight threatens every living plant in Dragon’s Rest, Violet and Nathaniel must work together through their fears, pasts, and growing feelings for one another to save their community. But with a figure from her past knocking at her door and her secrets threatening to uproot everything she’s worked so hard to grow, Violet can’t help but wonder…does a former villain truly deserve a happily-ever-after?
While I’m not entirely sure I share Violet’s casual dismissal of villainy, I am 100% here for a sentient, mildly homicidal house plant. To be fair, I can’t hold it against it. Given the amount of house plants I have homicided . . . they may just need to be homicidal themselves to stand a chance in my house. I’d be willing to give it a try, at the very least!
This is another cozy romantasy which seems focused around the grumpy/sunshine trope, which is one I’m definitely growing attached to. Also, not gonna lie, that cover is stunning, and even if the blurb was a dud, I would probably give it a chance just based on that alone. I know, I know, don’t judge a book by its cover . . . except that is literally what the cover artist is hoping you’ll do! So, in a way, they’re welcome.
First Lines:
I’ll Find You Where the Timeline Ends
When you’re ready, come find me. I will keep you safe. -Hana
Descended from a Japanese dragon god, Yang Mina was born with the power to travel through time, and has spent her life training to take her place in the Descendants, a secret organization whose purpose is to protect the timeline. Then Mina’s world is uprooted when she moves to Seoul and finds a note from her sister–a sister who no one remembers, as if she had been erased. The only people who could have made her sister vanish so completely are part of the very agency that she’s been working so hard to join. So now Mina has a new mission, infiltrate the agency as quickly as possible to find her lost sister.
And, as if things weren’t complicated enough, a strikingly handsome rogue agent has determined that Mina is the only person who can help him put an end to the Descendants’ corruption. Placed in an impossible situation, Mina must decide how much she’s willing to risk to find the truth.
This one feels a bit like a mish-mash of everything, and I’m honestly not entirely sure how to feel about that. Time travel can be really hit or miss for me, but I’ve enjoyed the few little quotes from the book I’ve seen thus far, and I think I’ll really enjoy the author’s writing style. Also, the idea of a Japanese dragon god makes me think of Haku from Spirited Away, which makes me all the more eager to try this (setting aside, of course, my love for dragons in general). This doesn’t feel quite as cozy as many of the others on the list, but it strikes me as something that will be a really emotional read!
First lines:
This time, I was in Seoul on the last Tuesday in September. As I crossed the stepping stones over the Bulgwang stream, Kim Jihoon held my backpack in one hand and followed me unquestioningly across the water, looking at me like I actually mattered, like I was someone he would remember ten years from now, even though I knew he never would. I had already looked up how he died, and I wouldn’t be anywhere near him when it happened.
I love this list because its not your typical “romantasy” list😁 Roommate From Hell and Witchlore are really calling to me!
Good for you for branching out!
Witches of Dubious Origin is going on my tbr right now!
Love this list. Thanks for sharing these titles. I have so many books to add to my TBR now.
Romantasy has been pretty hit/miss for me but I wonder if that’s because I’m reading the more popular/”big hit” titles. I haven’t heard of almost all of these titles that you’ve mentioned but my curiosity has been piqued by many of them (and ngl, especially by the covers). Thanks for adding to my TBR, as usual 😆 I’m off to add many of these to my radar list and wishlist!
I’ve found that the super hyped titles tend to be misses for me. =/ Because clearly, I’m broken in a way that the majority of romantasy readers aren’t, I guess. When I first started reading the genre, I had to go through several duds before I got pretty good at telling which ones I was likely to enjoy vs. which just weren’t my cup of (very steamy) tea.