Updated on October 8, 2026
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Verdict: A vampire-and-witch urban fantasy with a genuinely good city behind it and more plot than its 260 pages can hold — readers keep saying the same thing, that it had every ingredient and needed room to use them.
Best for: Readers who want dark urban fantasy with a survival premise rather than a chosen-one one, who like worldbuilding, and who will forgive subplots that get introduced and then quietly dropped.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”; the cover subtitle promises dark and steamy)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5 — a 3.98 Goodreads average across 1,174 ratings, marked down because every three-star review identifies the same structural problem)
Tropes: Vampire and witch, urban fantasy, newly turned, abusive ex, survival and desperation, blood bond, morally grey city, forbidden magic, series opener, dark paranormal romance.
Twisted Sorcery is the first book in Kira Adler’s paranormal Midnight City series, published in September 2023, and it opens with a woman two months into being a vampire she did not choose to become, broke and starving, walking into a club where the wealthy buy their darkest fantasies because she has run out of other options.
The numbers are solid: 3.98 on Goodreads across 1,174 ratings with 104 written reviews, and 4.29 on romance.io. What makes this book worth a careful read of the discourse is how uniform the criticism is — the three-star reviews are not disagreeing with each other, they are all describing one thing.
What Is Twisted Sorcery About?
This is urban fantasy where being supernatural has made the protagonist’s life materially worse, which is a better starting position than the genre usually chooses. Deni is not powerful and secretly special; she is two months into an involuntary transformation, unemployed, hungry in a way that is both literal and dangerous, and closer to the street than to any destiny. Midnight City is written as a place with an economy and a hierarchy rather than as atmosphere.
Deni is introduced through what has been taken from her — including by the ex who turned her, and the book is direct that the relationship was abusive. Celeste is introduced through power and appetite: a witch whose blood is described as honey-sweet, which in a book about a starving vampire is not a compliment so much as a hazard. Elysium, where the wealthy pay to have their fantasies met, is where the two of them collide, and the transaction underneath that meeting is what the romance has to work its way out of.
What Makes This Dark Sapphic Paranormal Romance Work
- The city: Worldbuilding is the most consistently praised element — even critical reviewers open with it before getting to their complaints.
- A survival premise, not a destiny one: Deni’s desperation is economic as well as supernatural, which gives the opening real stakes.
- The dynamic between the leads: A vampire who needs blood and a witch whose blood is unusually desirable is a clean, charged engine, and readers say they were intrigued by it immediately.
- It does not soften the ex: The abusive relationship that produced Deni’s condition is treated as damage rather than as backstory colour.
- Ambition: This book is trying to do a great deal — multiple subplots, a whole city, a magical economy — and the reviews that criticise it do so from a position of wanting more of it, not less.
Book Synopsis
Two months ago Deni was a person with a life. Then the woman she was with turned her, and Midnight City has spent every week since taking the rest. She has no money, no work she can safely do, and a hunger that is not a metaphor. The gap between where she is and being on the street is narrow enough to measure in days.
Elysium is where the wealthy go to have their darkest appetites met, professionally and for a price. It is not a place Deni would have chosen; it is the place her situation has produced. What she is looking for there is a way to keep existing, and she is not in a position to be careful about the terms.
Celeste is a witch with real power and blood that Deni can smell across a room — honey-sweet, the description goes, which for a starving vampire is closer to a threat than a temptation. She is also, potentially, the thing that changes Deni’s trajectory. What forms between them starts as need on one side and interest on the other, in a city where both of those are currencies, and neither woman is in a position to pretend the transaction is not part of it.
My Review
The world is the best thing here and readers are unanimous about it. Midnight City has an economy, a class structure and a magical underworld with rules, and Elysium is a genuinely good invention — a place where supernatural appetite has been commodified, which gives the book somewhere real to put its premise. A critical Amazon reviewer opens with very good world building before saying anything else, which is the clearest signal available that this part works.
The premise is also well chosen. Making the vampire poor is the move: Deni is not powerful, she is precarious, and the hunger is entangled with rent and food and having nowhere to go. A supernatural romance where the supernatural element has made someone’s life materially worse has stakes that a chosen-one story cannot manufacture.
The problem is arithmetic, and every three-star review states it in slightly different words. One says the story was convoluted, with subplots distracting from the main thread. Another says the book had all the ingredients to be truly awesome but needed more fleshing out, and that the interesting subplots get lost in the shortness of it. A third says she was intrigued at first and stopped being invested somewhere in the middle. At 260 pages, this novel is carrying a city, a magical system, an abusive-ex plot, an economy of appetite and a romance, and something has to give. What gives is the connective tissue.
Two more specific charges from Amazon’s critical reviews. One reader found the romance itself rushed and out of nowhere — that she could admire the world but never fell in love with the couple. Another objects to the resolution: that a betrayal is dismissed too easily and the answer to every conflict is wrapped in a bow of true love, which she calls sad and flat. The same reviewer reports a lot of typos and says the book needed more editing. Those are distinct problems, but they share a cause — a book moving faster than its own material.
Content deserves a flag the publisher does not give. A reader-compiled warning list for this book names consent issues, drug addiction and an attempted sexual assault on the page. None of that is in the product description, which promises dark and steamy and leaves it there.
My honest note: A very good world in a book that is a hundred pages too short to live in it. Read it for Midnight City and Elysium; do not expect the romance or the subplots to be finished.
| Element | In Twisted Sorcery |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Deni & Celeste — a newly turned vampire two months into destitution, and a powerful witch whose blood she can smell across a room |
| Core tropes | Vampire and witch, urban fantasy, newly turned, abusive ex, survival, transactional meeting, magical underworld |
| Setting | Midnight City and the Elysium clubs, where the wealthy pay to have their darkest fantasies met |
| Heat level | 4/5 — explicit open door, with the cover promising dark and steamy |
| Series | Midnight City book 1; readers report loose ends but say it reads as a standalone |
| Content notes | Compiled by a reader, not the publisher: consent issues, drug addiction, an attempted sexual assault on the page, an abusive past relationship, explicit sexual content |
How Dark and Spicy Is Twisted Sorcery?
Four out of five on heat. romance.io bands it “Explicit open door” across 14 ratings, and the book’s own subtitle sells it as dark and steamy. The explicit content is present and consistent with that band; nobody in the reviews disputes it in either direction.
Darkness is where the publisher does less than it should. The listing offers the word dark and no detail. A reader-compiled warning list names consent issues, drug addiction and an attempted sexual assault written on the page, alongside an abusive past relationship that is central to the premise. That is a meaningful gap between what a buyer is told and what is in the book — the same pattern we found in Vibe, though this book is considerably less extreme. For comparable heat on the site, She Came from the Swamp is 4/5 in a shorter paranormal frame, and Precious Red Pearls is the 5/5 vampire pick.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read urban fantasy for the world as much as the couple, you want a supernatural protagonist whose condition has ruined rather than elevated her, and you are happy to start a series knowing threads are left open.
You may want to skip it if: you need subplots resolved, you want the romance to be the centre rather than one element among several, typos pull you out of a book, or an attempted assault on the page is something you need warned about in advance.
In short: an excellent city and an unfinished book inside it.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)
This is a healthy series opener: 1,174 Goodreads ratings against 104 written reviews, and 14 ratings on romance.io. There is no trade coverage, no StoryGraph community data visible, and no audiobook edition on Libro.fm. The striking feature of the discourse is its consistency — the positive reviews praise the same thing and the critical reviews criticise the same thing, with very little scatter in either direction.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The worldbuilding, first and by a distance, named even inside negative reviews. Second, the premise: a broke, starving, newly turned vampire is a starting position readers respond to. Third, the dynamic — a vampire and a witch whose blood is a temptation is a clean engine and reviewers say they were intrigued from the first meeting. Fourth, the darkness itself, which readers who wanted a dark paranormal report getting. And fifth, the pairing of a bisexual witch and a lesbian vampire, which more than one reviewer notes with pleasure.
What readers argue about and complain about: Length against ambition, and almost nothing else. One reviewer calls the story convoluted, with subplots distracting from the main thread. Another says it had all the ingredients to be truly awesome but needed fleshing out, and that the subplots get lost in the shortness of the book. A third lost investment in the middle and found the writing bland from there. On Amazon, one reader admired the world but says the romance felt rushed and out of nowhere, and another objects that a betrayal is dismissed too easily with everything resolved by true love — and reports a lot of typos. It is a rare case where the criticism is essentially a single note played by five people.
The series question worth asking first: This opens Midnight City. Readers report loose ends at the close but say it can be read as a standalone, which is a fair description of a book that introduces more than it finishes. If unresolved threads irritate you, that is the thing to weigh — not a cliffhanger, but a deliberate leaving-open that a longer book would not have needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Twisted Sorcery end on a cliffhanger?
Not a cliffhanger, but readers report loose ends. It opens the Midnight City series and reviewers say it can be read as a standalone with threads left open.
What are the content warnings for Twisted Sorcery?
The publisher gives none beyond the word dark. A reader-compiled list names consent issues, drug addiction, an attempted sexual assault on the page, and an abusive past relationship.
How explicit is Twisted Sorcery?
A 4/5. romance.io bands it “Explicit open door” and the subtitle sells it as dark and steamy.
Is the romance the main plot?
Not entirely, and that is the most common criticism. The book carries several subplots alongside the romance, and readers say the connective tissue suffers at 260 pages.
Is there an audiobook?
Not on Libro.fm, and we found no audio edition listed.
Is it on Kindle Unlimited?
Yes, verified on the Amazon product page. Kindle Unlimited availability changes without notice, so check the listing before you rely on it.
If You Loved Twisted Sorcery, Read These Next
Precious Red Pearls is the vampire pick at 5/5 heat, played straight and at novella length. She Came from the Swamp shares the same short-form paranormal problem — a good idea with no room. And Her Spell That Binds Me is where to go for witches at full novel length with the atmosphere this book keeps reaching for. More in our paranormal Kindle Unlimited list and across all our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
Twisted Sorcery sets out to build a supernatural city where being a vampire has made someone poor rather than powerful, and the city is genuinely good — Midnight City and Elysium are the parts readers name first, including the readers who did not enjoy the book. What it does not have is room. Five separate reviewers describe the same failure in different words: subplots introduced and lost, a romance that arrives too fast, a betrayal dismissed too easily, an ending tied off with true love. This is a novel that needed to be four hundred pages and is two hundred and sixty. Check Twisted Sorcery on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Twisted Sorcery ranks as an over-packed urban fantasy romance with a first-rate setting — inventive and genuinely dark about what its premise costs, held back by carrying more plot than its page count can finish, and best approached for Midnight City rather than for the love story inside it.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ 3.98 average across 1,174 Goodreads ratings
- ✓
- ✓ Worldbuilding praised in every register
- ✓ Five reviewers describe one structural fault
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Vampire-and-witch dynamic is a clean engine
- ✓ Transactional meeting gives it real friction
- ✓ Readers intrigued from the first scene
- ✓ Called rushed and out of nowhere by critics
Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ Deni’s precarity is concrete and specific
- ✓ Abusive ex treated as damage, not colour
- ✓ Bi witch and lesbian vampire pairing noted warmly
- ✓ Supporting cast lost among subplots
Writing ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Midnight City rendered with real texture
- ✓ Elysium a genuinely good invention
- ✓ Dark register sustained throughout
- ✓ Typos and editing gaps reported
Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Hunger written as poverty, not power
- ✓ Survival stakes land early
- ✓ Attempted assault handled seriously
- ✓ Investment fades in the middle for several readers
Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io: “Explicit open door”
- ✓ Cover promises dark and steamy, and delivers
- ✓ Blood and appetite used as charge
- ✓ Content warnings left entirely to readers
Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ No cliffhanger reported
- ✓ Readable as a standalone
- ✓ Series continues in Midnight City
- ✓ Betrayal dismissed too easily, per critics
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ World rewards a second visit
- ✓ Short enough to revisit easily
- ✓ Series opener with threads to follow
- ✓ No audio edition; subplots unresolved
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Next read: find another witch romance between women, filtered by heat, mood and ending.
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