Verdict: A 3.78 average across 123,392 ratings driven by prose complaints, not squeamishness — and a publisher warning list that says dubious consent where readers log rape.
Best for: Readers who want a serial-killer hero played morally black rather than morally grey, and who can tolerate sentences that a large share of the audience cannot.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io’s “Steamy” band)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — a strong premise and a genuinely committed villain protagonist, in prose that is the main driver of its three-star ratings)
Darkness type: Violence · Where the darkness sits: Power imbalance and edges of dubious consent
Tropes: Serial killer hero · Obsession · Stalking · Age gap · Artist hero · Suspense
Kindle Unlimited: Verified in KU on 21 August 2026, checked on the Amazon product page.
There Are No Saints sits at 3.78 across 123,392 Goodreads ratings, and any review that treats that number as readers finding it too dark will be wrong. The split here is craft against content: readers who like the premise still down-rate the sentences. Prose quality is the loudest recurring complaint on this book, described as wooden and choppy and compared to unedited serial fiction, and it is what produces the three-star mass.
The second thing to know is a warning gap. The Bloom Books copy lists dubious consent and sexual assault. StoryGraph readers log rape 25 at the graphic tier, 4 moderate and 7 minor, and sexual violence 73 at the graphic tier. The distance between dubious consent as marketing language and what more than a hundred readers actually logged is the most defensible disclosure finding we made in this group of books.
Two further tags deserve front-loading because almost no promotional copy leads with them: child abuse at 57 graphic, 44 moderate and 16 minor, and self-harm at 47, 44 and 28.
Verified in Kindle Unlimited on 21 August 2026 on the individual Amazon product page. Amazon shows 4.2 across roughly 33,532 ratings. Roughly 378 pages. This is Sophie Lark’s novel, not any of the other books sharing the title.
What Is There Are No Saints About?
Cole Blackwell is a celebrated San Francisco sculptor and a functioning serial killer. His rival in both art and murder is Alastor Shaw, and the two have never hunted the same person — until they both notice Mara Eldritch.
Mara is a broke, overworked art student making work nobody sees. Shaw wants to use her as a piece in a game against Cole. Cole becomes fixated for a different reason: she is the first person who makes him feel anything, and he cannot decide whether to protect her or destroy her before she compromises him.
It is Sinners Duet book 1 of 2; book 2 is There Is No Devil. The duet follows the same couple, so this is where you start, and readers describe it as continuing rather than resolving. It is a starting point, not a complete arc.
Edition note: originally self-published in 2021 — the ASIN we verified — then reissued by Bloom Books in October 2023, with a separate illustrated edition. Whether the text differs between editions we could not determine and will not assert.
What There Are No Saints Does Differently
It does not soften its hero. Readers keep saying the same thing: this is not morally grey, it is morally black. The comparisons they reach for are Dexter and You, with several arguing it improves on the latter because the hero’s feelings are actually real rather than a delusion the text exposes.
The rating split is unusually informative. Twenty-seven per cent five-star and thirty-six per cent four-star against only two per cent one-star is not the profile of a book people found repellent. It is the profile of a book people found under-written.
Class contempt is its own separate objection, and that is genuinely unusual. A meaningful number of readers who had no problem with the murders objected to Cole’s derision toward Mara’s service jobs. When an audience will forgive homicide but not snobbery, the book has found a real nerve.
It embeds music links mid-scene. Readers argue about it — cinematic to some, immersion-breaking to others. It is a structural experiment worth knowing about before you open it.
Content Warnings
Publisher-supplied list, from the 2023 Bloom Books edition: serial killers, blood, dubious consent, graphic murder, graphic violence, mentions of child abuse, kidnapping, stalking, emotional abuse, self harm, sexual assault, alcoholism, torture. We could not confirm this as an author-written front-matter note, and whether the original 2021 edition carried any list at all is unverified — Amazon was unreachable to our research tools.
The gap. The list says dubious consent and sexual assault. It does not say rape. StoryGraph readers log rape 25 graphic, 4 moderate and 7 minor, and sexual violence 73 at the graphic tier. That is the distance between the marketing vocabulary and the reader vocabulary, and readers deciding whether to borrow should use the second one.
Specific conduct readers flag. The hero stalks the heroine before any relationship exists, watches her sleep, takes her belongings, later watches non-consensual intimate recordings of her and rationalises it as learning her preferences, and tattoos her while she is restrained. The objection is that the narrative frames these as romantic rather than predatory.
Heaviest reader-flagged content, StoryGraph graphic tier: murder 212, stalking 153, sexual content 146, violence 126, kidnapping 113, death 100, blood 95, sexual violence 73, torture 67, injury detail 62, physical abuse 59, gore 58, toxic relationship 58, child abuse 57, sexual assault 53, self harm 47, body horror 45.
Under-led content: child abuse 57 graphic, 44 moderate, 16 minor; self-harm 47, 44, 28. Both are heavily logged across all three severities and almost no promotional copy mentions either.
romance.io warning tags: abuse (16), past abuse (13), death and grief (8), dubious consent (8).
A separate community warning database lists a much shorter set — child abuse, self-harm, murder, torture, kidnapping, stalking — and does not name the sexual-violence cluster at all. Crowd sources are not interchangeable.
StoryGraph stores separate records per edition. Every count above is a floor drawn from one record, not a cross-edition total.
My Review
The reason to write about There Are No Saints carefully is that its rating is almost always misread. A dark romance sitting at 3.78 invites the assumption that readers found it too much. They did not. Two per cent rated it one star. What they found was that the sentences were not good enough to carry the idea.
And the idea is good. A sculptor who kills, a rival who kills, and a woman they both notice for opposite reasons is a genuinely strong setup, and Sophie Lark commits to it further than most authors would — Cole is not redeemed into acceptability and the book does not pretend he is dangerous only to people who deserve it. The Dexter and You comparisons readers reach for are earned, and the argument that this improves on the latter because the hero’s feelings are real rather than self-deception is a fair reading.
The craft objection is the one we would repeat. Reviewers describe the prose as wooden and choppy and say the book needs a rewrite, and they say it in reviews that are otherwise positive about the concept. That is a specific and unusual pattern and it is the honest headline for this book.
The character objections are more mixed. The whiplash complaint has teeth: the hero steps over the heroine’s injured body early and becomes obsessed shortly after, with nothing in between to earn the shift. Mara’s agency is the other recurring problem — critics say she accepts stalking, confinement and branding with minimal resistance and that her motivations are never established, which reads oddly against an author who has stated an intent to write intelligent women.
On consent, we think the readers flagging this book have a stronger case than they usually do on this shelf. Watching non-consensual recordings and rationalising it as research is not a genre convention; it is a specific act the narrative treats as devotion. That is the same objection readers raise about The Darkest Temptation, and it is legitimate in both places.
Where we would defend the book: the class-contempt complaint tells you something good about it. A novel that gets its readers angrier about a rich man sneering at a service job than about the bodies is a novel that has made its social observation land.
We rate it 3. A strong premise and a properly committed villain, in prose that a large share of a 123,000-reader audience found insufficient.
How Spicy Is There Are No Saints?
romance.io places it at band 4 of 5, its “Steamy” tier, across 259 ratings. StoryGraph readers flag sexual content 146 times at the graphic tier.
Readers describe it as very steamy and the sex as creative and unconventional, including custom-built devices. They disagree on execution — some call it strange but memorable, others call it bland despite the novelty.
The dominant vocabulary in this corpus is not heat vocabulary. Readers reach for darkness comparisons and for consent objections far more often than for descriptions of the scenes themselves.
We do not assign our own chili count where the author and publisher have not. The band above is romance.io’s crowd measure and is reproduced as theirs.
Who Should Read This Book?
Read it if you want a hero the book refuses to redeem, you are interested in a serial-killer romance that plays it black rather than grey, or you can read past prose problems for a strong premise.
Skip it if sentence-level craft matters to you, non-consensual recording framed as devotion is a line, or you need a heroine whose motivations the book establishes.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
Goodreads: 3.78 average across 123,392 ratings and 13,248 written reviews — roughly 27 per cent five-star, 36 per cent four, 25 per cent three, and only 2 per cent one. Amazon: 4.2 across roughly 33,532. romance.io: 3.76 across 259.
Prose quality is the loudest recurring complaint and it is unusual for a book this popular. Reviewers describe the writing as wooden and choppy and compare it to unedited serial fiction. It is the main driver of three-star ratings.
Consent objections go past normal dark-romance tolerance. Readers flag stalking before any relationship exists, watching her sleep, taking her belongings, watching non-consensual recordings and rationalising it, and tattooing her while restrained.
Character-arc whiplash recurs: the hero steps over her injured body early and is obsessed shortly after, with nothing in between.
Critics say the heroine accepts stalking, confinement and branding with minimal resistance and that her motivations are never established.
Class contempt is a distinct objection from the violence. The hero’s derision toward the heroine’s service jobs landed badly with readers who had no problem with the murders.
Readers split on defence: one camp argues discomfort means the book is not for that reader; the other argues the ethical problems exceed genre convention.
Research note: Reddit was unreachable from our research environment and TikTok blocks automated access, so neither is cited here. StoryGraph publishes reader content-warning counts but renders its average rating and did-not-finish rate client-side, so those are marked unavailable rather than guessed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is There Are No Saints in Kindle Unlimited?
Yes. We verified it on the individual Amazon product page on 21 August 2026. Kindle Unlimited catalogues change without notice, so confirm the KU badge on the product page before borrowing.
Is There Are No Saints a standalone?
No. It is Sinners Duet book 1 of 2, followed by There Is No Devil. The duet follows the same couple and readers describe this book as continuing rather than resolving. It is a starting point, not a complete arc.
Why is There Are No Saints rated only 3.78?
Because of the prose, not the content. Only about 2 per cent of ratings are one star. The recurring complaint in three-star reviews is sentence-level craft — readers who like the premise still describe the writing as wooden and in need of a rewrite.
What are the content warnings for There Are No Saints?
The Bloom Books edition lists serial killers, blood, dubious consent, graphic murder, graphic violence, mentions of child abuse, kidnapping, stalking, emotional abuse, self harm, sexual assault, alcoholism and torture. StoryGraph readers additionally log rape 25 and sexual violence 73 at the graphic tier, and flag child abuse 57 and self-harm 47 — all heavily logged and rarely mentioned in promotional copy.
Is there an audiobook?
An audiobook exists, narrated by Lee Daniels and Jeffrey Holz. Audiobook availability is separate from Kindle Unlimited ebook access, and we make no claim that the audio is included with a KU borrow.
If You Loved There Are No Saints, Read These Next
All verified in Kindle Unlimited on 21 August 2026.
- The Risk by S.T. Abby — the other serial-killer romance on this page, with the roles reversed.
- Nocticadia by Keri Lake — band 4 with far stronger prose and the most thorough warning list here.
- The Predator by RuNyx — band 4 with a dangerous hero and a comparatively consensual central relationship.
- Twisted Love by Ana Huang — band 4, cold hero, and a much gentler consent profile.
The Bottom Line
There Are No Saints has a better idea than it has sentences, and its 3.78 average is a verdict on the second thing rather than the first. Sophie Lark commits to a serial-killer hero further than most authors dare, refuses to redeem him, and gets her readers angrier about his class snobbery than about his body count — which is a real achievement. Around that is prose a large share of a 123,000-reader audience found insufficient, a heroine whose motivations never arrive, and a publisher warning list that says dubious consent where readers say rape. Borrow it for the premise. Do not expect the writing to match it.
The Eikna Overall Ranking
Ranked in the lower-middle band of our Dark Romance Kindle Unlimited selection. It gains on a properly committed villain protagonist and on a social observation that lands harder than its violence. It ranks low on prose that is the single most common complaint in a 13,248-review corpus, and on a warning list whose central term understates what readers report.
The Evidence Scorecard
These scores are derived from named public evidence — rating distributions, crowd tag counts, author-published content warnings and signed reviews — rather than from a full LRR reading of this title. Dimensions the evidence will not carry are marked “not established” instead of guessed.
Heat and spice ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io band 4 of 5, “Steamy” tier, across 259 ratings
- ✓ StoryGraph sexual content flagged 146 times at graphic tier
- ✓ Readers describe the sex as creative and unconventional
- ✓ Disagreement on execution: memorable to some, bland to others
Darkness ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io dark-romance tag applied by 19 taggers
- ✓ Murder 212 and stalking 153 are the two largest graphic tags
- ✓ Torture 67, gore 58 and body horror 45 also flagged graphic
- ✓ Readers describe the hero as morally black rather than morally grey
Consent framing ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ Publisher list says dubious consent; readers log rape 25 graphic
- ✓ Sexual violence flagged 73 times at graphic tier
- ✓ Non-consensual recording framed by the narrative as devotion
- ✓ Tattooing while restrained cited repeatedly by critical reviewers
Romance development ★★☆☆☆ 2/5
- ✓ Hero steps over the injured heroine early, then becomes obsessed
- ✓ Nothing between those beats earns the shift, per reviewers
- ✓ Heroine’s motivations described as never established
- ✓ Class contempt objection raised by readers who accepted the murders
Prose quality ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ Loudest recurring complaint on this title by a clear margin
- ✓ Described as wooden and choppy, compared to unedited serial fiction
- ✓ Main driver of three-star ratings across a 13,248-review corpus
- ✓ Raised inside otherwise positive reviews of the premise
Cross-platform reception ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Goodreads 3.78 across 123,392 ratings
- ✓ Amazon 4.2 across roughly 33,532 ratings
- ✓ romance.io 3.76 across 259 ratings
- ✓ Only 2 per cent one-star — a craft split, not a content split
Content warning transparency ★★☆☆☆ 2/5
- ✓ Publisher list carries thirteen items on the 2023 edition
- ✓ Original 2021 edition’s list is unverified
- ✓ Uses dubious consent where readers log rape and sexual violence
- ✓ Child abuse and self-harm heavily logged and absent from promotion
Standalone readability ★★☆☆☆ 2/5
- ✓ Sinners Duet book 1 of 2
- ✓ Same couple continues into There Is No Devil
- ✓ Readers describe it as continuing rather than resolving
- ✓ A starting point rather than a complete arc
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