Behind the Green Curtain hires Caton as a live-in personal assistant to Amelia Halston — the wife of Caton’s own boss, Jack — and then lets proximity, secrecy and a marriage that is already failing do exactly what those three things always do. Riley LaShea first published it in 2013 and reissued it in paperback in 2021. It holds 4.03 on Goodreads across roughly 2,212 ratings and 281 written reviews, and we rated the heat a full 5 out of 5.
Start with the split, because it is real. StoryGraph’s readers put the same book at 3.79, and the gap is not noise. There is a named minority who object specifically to the power imbalance and the affair — not to the writing. If you loved it, you loved a book that does not apologise for either of those things, and that is the thing to match on.
The contemporary sapphic affair-with-a-married-woman romance barely exists. Across our whole review corpus, exactly two contemporary books put one at the centre: The X Ingredient, where the marriage is failing quietly in the background, and Big Swiss, which is literary fiction with no happy ending. Everything else drops the husband. That is the single biggest reason this list looks the way it does.
Half of this list is not romance, and the two closest matches are novels about murder trials. The Confessions of Frannie Langton and The Companion are the exact structural twins of LaShea’s book — a woman employed in a house, the mistress of that house, a secret the household cannot survive — and both end at a gallows rather than an HEA. The historical and literary shelf takes this premise seriously; the romance shelf mostly does not.
Heat and the moral problem run in opposite directions here. The five books that treat the affair as a genuine ethical question average well under 3 out of 5 on heat. The five hottest books on the list have no marriage in them at all. Behind the Green Curtain is unusual precisely because it does both, and nothing on this page does both as well. Where a book gives you one and not the other, the entry says which.
This post contains affiliate links to Amazon, Bookshop.org and Libro.fm. If you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Start with our full review of Behind the Green Curtain, and see Books Like The X Ingredient for the boss-and-assistant version of this shelf.
All 12 Books at a Glance
| Book | Her position in the house | A marriage in the way | Heat | Shelf and ending | Goodreads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Behind the Green Curtain — Riley LaShea | Live-in PA | Yes, a husband | 5/5 | Dark romance, HEA | 4.03 |
| The X Ingredient — Roslyn Sinclair | Assistant | Yes, failing | 4.5/5 | Romance, HEA | 3.97 |
| The Confessions of Frannie Langton — Sara Collins | Maid, then companion | Yes, her employer | 2.5/5 | Gothic literary, no HEA | 3.56 |
| The Companion — Kim Taylor Blakemore | Maid, then companion | No, but a household | 1.5/5 | Suspense, no HEA | 3.66 |
| Big Swiss — Jen Beagin | No | Yes, on the page | High | Literary, no HEA | 3.68 |
| The Paying Guests — Sarah Waters | Lodger | Yes, downstairs | 3/5 | Literary, bittersweet | 3.46 |
| At Her Service — Anna Stone | Live-in staff | No | 5/5 | Romance, HEA | 4.20 |
| The Runway Affair — C.L. Smoke | Live-in nanny | Widowed | 5/5 | Romance, HEA | 4.08 |
| Mistakes Were Made — Meryl Wilsner | No | Divorced | 4.5/5 | Romance, HEA | 3.91 |
| The Safekeep — Yael van der Wouden | House guest | Her brother’s partner | 4.5/5 | Literary, HEA | 4.05 |
| Fingersmith — Sarah Waters | Lady’s maid | No | 3/5 | Literary, HEA | 4.02 |
| Assistant to the CEO — Emily Hayes | Assistant | No | 5/5 | Erotic romance, HEA | 4.09 |
| Boss of Her — Anna Stone | Employee | No | 4/5 | Erotic romance, HEA | 4.14 |
1. The X Ingredient by Roslyn Sinclair
Diana Parker is Atlanta’s most formidable attorney, brilliant, demanding and stuck in a marriage that is quietly failing. Laurie Holcombe is broke, Southern, has a pink streak in her hair and takes the assistant job because she has no better option. Neither of them can rule the attraction into submission.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: This is the contemporary version of the same problem: a woman with a wedding ring and an employee who cannot afford to lose the job. The marriage is not a technicality Sinclair disposes of in a chapter — it carries real moral weight, exactly the way Amelia’s does. It is also the closest match on heat at 4.5 out of 5, with a lot of readers shelving it as erotica.
How it differs: Laurie goes home at the end of the day. The whole engine of Behind the Green Curtain is that Caton does not, and the constant proximity is what makes LaShea’s book feel dangerous rather than tense. Sinclair is also slower and less morally grey; the Goodreads average is 3.97 across more than 6,000 ratings, held down by readers who wanted the affair addressed sooner.
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2. The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
Frannie is born on a Jamaican plantation, raised in the house, taught to read, and then made to assist in her master’s experiments. Brought to London and given away like furniture, she enters the Benham household — George Benham, a scientist with a reputation to protect, and his wife Marguerite, a laudanum-dependent society hostess. Frannie becomes a maid, then a companion, then something the house has no word for.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: Structurally this is the same book. An employee living in the house, the wife of the man who owns her labour, secrecy that only ever runs one direction, and a power imbalance the novel refuses to resolve in anyone’s favour. It is the version of Behind the Green Curtain written as literature and taken all the way to a murder trial.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. This is Gothic literary fiction, not romance. The heat is 2.5 out of 5, charged rather than graphic, and there is no happy ending on offer. The plantation material is genuinely disturbing and the book does not summarise it politely. It holds 3.56 on Goodreads across 19,500 ratings, held down by structure rather than prose.
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3. The Companion by Kim Taylor Blakemore
Lucy Blunt narrates from a New Hampshire cell in 1855, in the days before she is due to hang for two murders in the household where she worked. She arrived at Burton Farm as a kitchen maid and rose to companion to Eugenie Burton, who is blind. You are never given a neutral account of anything.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: The other exact structural twin: a woman employed in a house, the mistress of that house, a relationship nobody can know about, and a household that cannot survive the discovery. Blakemore is interested in the same question LaShea is — who can afford the consequences — and answers it much less kindly.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. Heat is 1.5 out of 5 and implied throughout rather than shown. This is historical suspense with an unreliable narrator and no HEA, and at 3.66 across only 1,300 Goodreads ratings it is the smallest and least romance-shaped book here. If the 5/5 heat was the point, skip it.
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4. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Greta transcribes therapy sessions for a sex coach in Hudson, New York, and becomes quietly obsessed with one client — a guarded, repressed married woman she privately nicknames Big Swiss. Then she recognises the voice in town, and the two of them fall headlong into an affair. Big Swiss has no idea Greta has already heard her most intimate confessions.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: The contemporary affair-with-a-married-woman novel, and the only one on this list that matches LaShea on explicitness and moral murk at the same time. The secret here is worse than an affair — it is an information asymmetry the other woman does not know exists — and Beagin lets it be as ugly as it is.
How it differs: It is queer literary fiction with a dark comic register, not a dark romance. There is no HEA, the obsession is not romanticised, and the 3.68 Goodreads average across roughly 162,000 ratings reflects how many readers arrived expecting a love story. Nobody here is anyone’s employee, either — the power runs on knowledge rather than a paycheque.
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5. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
In a shabby-genteel Camberwell villa in 1922, Frances Wray and her widowed mother let two rooms to a young married couple because the war has left them with a house they cannot afford. Lilian is the wife. What starts between them is conducted in a house with thin walls and a husband downstairs.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: One house, one married woman, and an affair everyone in the building would notice. Waters writes the logistics of secrecy — the listening, the timing, the lying — better than anyone, and the second half turns the affair into a legal problem in a way LaShea’s readers will recognise.
How it differs: The heat is 3 out of 5, sensual and sustained rather than graphic, and the book is literary historical fiction with a bleak stretch in the middle. The Goodreads average is 3.46 across roughly 84,000 ratings, dragged down by a second half that a lot of readers did not want. Nobody works for anybody here; the imbalance is class and property, not employment.
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6. At Her Service by Anna Stone
Valerie employs Abby, houses her, is considerably older and considerably wealthier, and there is a child in the arrangement whose wellbeing gives every decision a third stake. The D/s dynamic that develops sits on top of an employment relationship that was already asymmetrical.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: For the live-in part specifically. This is the closest anyone gets to LaShea’s central move — putting the employee inside the employer’s house so that no boundary can hold — and it matches on heat at a full 5 out of 5.
How it differs: There is no marriage and no infidelity. Valerie is single, so the secret costs less and the moral question is narrower. The child changes the temperature too: where LaShea escalates, Stone keeps checking in. It is also the second book in a series and reads better after the first.
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7. The Runway Affair by C.L. Smoke
A broke nanny takes a job with the widowed fashion designer who once walked away from her. There are children in the house, a decade of unfinished argument, and a small-town religious past neither of them has dealt with.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: Live-in employment, an employer with a dead spouse rather than a living one, and a full 5 out of 5 on heat with real angst attached. If what you wanted was the domestic claustrophobia and the spice without leaving contemporary romance, this is the nearest thing.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. It runs 508 pages and seven of its fifteen written reviewers use the word repetitive. There is also a stalker-and-murder plot in a book sold as a romance. The Goodreads average is 4.08 from only 98 ratings, which is a very small sample to lean on.
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8. Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner
Cassie Klein sleeps with a woman at a bar during parents’ weekend and finds out the next morning that she is her best friend’s mother. Erin Bennett is poised, divorced and just as unable to talk herself out of it. They keep going anyway.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: For the secrecy rather than the marriage. The thing being hidden here is not a husband but a daughter, and Wilsner writes the same escalating cost of concealment — every scene is one bad moment away from ending several relationships at once. Heat is 4.5 out of 5, the closest match on this list after The X Ingredient.
How it differs: Nobody is married and nobody is anyone’s employee, so the power imbalance is age and social position rather than money. It is also a much warmer book: the 3.91 Goodreads average across more than 53,000 ratings splits between readers who love the mess and readers who side-eye the premise, but the tone is never as dark as LaShea’s. We have a full guide to its read-alikes if that is the axis you want.
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9. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Isabel keeps her dead mother’s house in the Dutch countryside exactly as it was, counting the spoons, until her brother deposits his girlfriend Eva there for the summer. Isabel starts keeping a list of what goes missing. What develops between them is not friendly.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: One house, two women who should not want each other, and a heat level of 4.5 out of 5 that is explicit, extended and central rather than incidental. It also shares the thing LaShea is best at — an attraction that is obviously a bad idea and gets pursued anyway.
How it differs: Eva belongs to Isabel’s brother, not her husband, and the property question replaces the employment one. It is literary historical fiction — the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, 4.05 across roughly 156,000 Goodreads ratings — with a buried historical argument underneath the romance that a dark-romance reader may not have signed up for.
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10. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Sue Trinder is a thief, raised by Mrs Sucksby, and is placed as a lady’s maid to Maud Lilly in order to help swindle her. Maud has been made into a copyist by an uncle who uses her. Both women are lying, and only one of them knows how much.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: The servant planted inside a house, the mistress she is supposed to be handling, and a secret that is load-bearing for the whole plot. If the appeal of Behind the Green Curtain was the deception more than the sex, this is the best-plotted sapphic novel there is — 4.02 across 123,307 Goodreads ratings.
How it differs: Heat is 3 out of 5 and the book is 600 pages of Victorian plot before it is anything else. There is no marriage to betray and no contemporary comfort; the emotional payoff arrives very late and a recurring structural complaint is that the middle section repeats what you already know. We have a guide to its read-alikes too.
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11. Assistant to the CEO by Emily Hayes
Zoe is a CEO. Mollie becomes her executive assistant. What the two of them had already started anonymously simply carries on inside a building where one of them signs the other’s pay cheques.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: Pure heat. A 5 out of 5 open-door office romance where the power gap is the erotic content rather than an obstacle to it — which is the register LaShea writes in, minus the guilt.
How it differs: There is no marriage, no household, no secret with real teeth, and very little interiority. Sinclair and LaShea both spend chapters on what the relationship costs; this book is not asking. At 4.09 across only 490 Goodreads ratings it is also a much smaller title than its neighbours here.
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12. Boss of Her by Anna Stone
Simone signs Jade’s paycheque, which means every escalation between them carries a cost Jade cannot fully absorb. The club they both belong to gives them the vocabulary for a power dynamic the office had already handed them.
Why a Behind the Green Curtain reader wants it: The professional cost of every step is written rather than assumed, which is the thing that makes Behind the Green Curtain work. Ice queen, age gap, rich woman and poor woman, 4 out of 5 heat, and an author who takes the imbalance seriously.
How it differs: It is explicitly femdom and BDSM, and readers who arrive for the club report the office scenes as slow. Simone is single and Jade goes home; the secrecy is professional rather than marital, and nothing here is dark in LaShea’s sense. Goodreads has it at 4.14 across 2,401 ratings.
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If You Only Read One
For the same book in a different city: The X Ingredient. A married employer, an assistant who cannot afford to lose the job, and 4.5 out of 5 on heat.
For the structure taken all the way: The Confessions of Frannie Langton. The employee, the wife, the house, and a murder trial at the end of it. Go in knowing it is not a romance.
For the heat with no guilt attached: At Her Service or Assistant to the CEO. Both are a full 5 out of 5 and neither has a husband anywhere in it.
For the secret that costs the most: Big Swiss. An affair with a married woman who does not know what her lover already heard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Behind the Green Curtain a cheating romance?
Yes, and it does not soften it. Caton is a live-in personal assistant to Amelia, the wife of Caton’s own boss, and the infidelity happens on the page. The book does not resolve it by making the husband a villain. That is exactly what the named minority in its reviews object to, and it is why StoryGraph readers rate it 3.79 against Goodreads’ 4.03.
Are there other contemporary sapphic romances about an affair with a married woman?
Almost none. Across our review corpus only two contemporary books put one at the centre: The X Ingredient, where the marriage is failing in the background, and Big Swiss, which is literary fiction with no happy ending. The subgenre that handles this premise properly is historical and literary rather than romance.
Which books here have no happy ending?
The Confessions of Frannie Langton, The Companion, Big Swiss and The Paying Guests. Frannie Langton and The Companion both end at a trial. The Paying Guests is bittersweet rather than tragic. The Safekeep and Fingersmith are literary but do land their couples.
Which of these is the hottest?
Four books sit at a full 5 out of 5: At Her Service, The Runway Affair, Assistant to the CEO and Behind the Green Curtain itself. Mistakes Were Made and The Safekeep are 4.5. Everything on the historical half of the list is 3 out of 5 or lower.
Why does The Runway Affair have no paperback or audiobook button?
Because neither edition exists. It is a Kindle-only indie title with no Bookshop.org listing and no Libro.fm edition, which is common for self-published sapphic romance. Assistant to the CEO has no Bookshop paperback either — its only Bookshop listing is a CD-audio edition, so we left the button off rather than send you to the wrong format.
Where do I find the rest of these guides?
The full directory is at Books Like…, with a search box that matches a book you have already read to the closest guide. Books Like The X Ingredient covers the boss-and-assistant shelf and Books Like Fingersmith covers the historical deception shelf.
Looking for read-alikes for a different book? Browse the full Books Like directory — search any sapphic title and we will point you at the closest match we have.