The Lily and the Crown puts Ari Geiker among her plants on her father’s imperial space station and then hands her a captive: a nameless woman, watchful and unnervingly well informed about star charts, tactics and the dread pirate queen Mir. The inversion is the whole book. The sheltered young botanist is the one who technically owns the dangerous older woman, and neither of them is fooled by that for a second. It holds 4.30 on Goodreads across more than 4,400 ratings, and we rated the heat 4 out of 5.
Sapphic science fiction with heat in it barely exists. The acclaimed titles — A Memory Called Empire, Some Desperate Glory, The Space Between Worlds — sit at 1 or 2 out of 5, closed door or nearly. The 4 and 5 out of 5 power-exchange books are fantasy or contemporary. Sinclair’s book is unusual because it is both a space station and a 4 out of 5, and that combination is why this list has to reach across three shelves to fill twelve slots.
In almost every read-alike the power runs the other way. The captor-and-captive shelf is built on a powerful woman holding a helpless one. The Lily and the Crown does the opposite, and only two books here complicate it in the same direction: In the Vanisher’s Palace, where a scholar is sold to a dragon and the dragon is the one who cannot manage it, and The Unbroken, where a princess holds a conscript’s life and keeps pretending it is a partnership.
This shelf splits hard on consent, so every entry says where it lands. Sinclair writes a power exchange between two women who keep choosing it. Captive in the Underworld has on-page rape. The Fae Queen’s Captive is dubious consent by design. The Wicked and the Willing is about a woman with no economic ability to refuse. Those are not the same book and it is not useful to pretend they are.
Three of these have no Bookshop.org paperback and four have no audiobook. Princess of Dorsa has neither, and Pirates of Aletharia’s only Bookshop listing is a CD-audio edition, so we left the print button off. We check the format field on every product page before adding a button.
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 The Lily and the Crown, and see Books Like The X Ingredient for Roslyn Sinclair’s contemporary side.
All 11 Books at a Glance
| Book | Shelf | Who holds whom | Consent | Heat | Goodreads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Lily and the Crown — Roslyn Sinclair | Science fiction | The younger woman holds the older | Negotiated | 4/5 | 4.30 |
| In the Vanisher’s Palace — Aliette de Bodard | Fantasy | Sold to settle a debt | Negotiated | 3/5 | 3.64 |
| The Wicked and the Willing — Lianyu Tan | Gothic horror | Employer and maidservant | Economically coerced | High | 3.63 |
| Captive in the Underworld — Lianyu Tan | Myth retelling | Abductor and abducted | Non-con, on the page | 5/5 | 3.52 |
| The Unbroken — C.L. Clark | Military fantasy | Princess and conscript | Coerced by empire | 2/5 | 3.80 |
| Pirates of Aletharia — Britney Jackson | High fantasy | Tricked aboard her ship | Mutual | 4/5 | 4.36 |
| Capturing Tess — Anna Stone | Contemporary | Billionaire and captive | Protective framing | 4/5 | 3.88 |
| The Fae Queen’s Captive — Sierra Simone | Dark fae fantasy | Ruler and bargain-bound mortal | Dubious by design | 5/5 | 3.65 |
| Princess of Dorsa — Eliza Andrews | Epic fantasy | Heir and bodyguard | Mutual | 4/5 | 4.25 |
| A Memory Called Empire — Arkady Martine | Science fiction | Empire and ambassador | Mutual | 2/5 | 4.10 |
| Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh | Science fiction | Station and soldier | Mutual | 1/5 | 4.05 |
| The X Ingredient — Roslyn Sinclair | Contemporary | Employer and assistant | Mutual | 4.5/5 | 3.97 |
1. In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard
In a world the departed colonisers left poisoned, a failed village scholar named Yên is sold to settle her village’s debts and taken to a shifting palace by Vu Côn, a rồng, to tutor the dragon’s two children. Yên belongs to Vu Côn now. Neither of them is comfortable with what that means.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: This is the closest structural match on the list and the only other book that treats ownership as a problem to be negotiated rather than a thrill to be enjoyed. Like Ari, Yên is a quiet, bookish woman handed a person she did not ask for; like Sinclair, de Bodard writes the tension as restraint rather than escalation. It sits at 3.64 on both Goodreads and StoryGraph, an unusual agreement between two crowds that normally diverge.
How it differs: The direction of ownership is reversed: here the powerful non-human woman holds the scholar, where Ari technically holds her captive. It is also a novella, so the slow accumulation you get across a full novel is compressed, and readers consistently report disorientation in the first third. Heat is 3 out of 5.
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2. The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan
Singapore, 1927. Verity Edevane is a vampire who wants more than blood — she wants desire and fealty together, which is rare in the colony she rules. Gean Choo is a destitute maidservant who needs money. Mrs Edevane makes her an offer she cannot really refuse.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: A woman legally and economically owned by another, an older predator who is not remotely in control of what she feels, and a book that keeps asking whether any of it can be consented to. It is the gothic historical answer to the same question The Lily and the Crown asks in space.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. This is gothic horror with toxic, abusive devotion at its centre, and it has two mutually exclusive endings rather than one. There is no rescue and no clean HEA. The heat is high but entangled with the horror rather than separable from it, and the 3.63 Goodreads average across roughly 1,100 ratings undersells the craft while accurately signalling the difficulty.
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3. Captive in the Underworld by Lianyu Tan
A sapphic retelling of the abduction myth that retells the abduction rather than the softened modern version where Persephone chooses the dark. Amazon files it under fantasy and myth rather than romance, which is a more honest signal than the pomegranate on the cover.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: The furthest end of the shelf you are standing on. If what held you in The Lily and the Crown was the charge of one woman having total power over another, this is that with nothing sanded off, at a full 5 out of 5.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. There is on-page rape. The romance arc is built on kidnapping and captivity, and StoryGraph readers tag it dark at 97 per cent. Sinclair’s book is a power exchange between two people who both keep choosing it; this is not that. The 3.52 Goodreads average across 3,346 ratings carries most of its one-star weight from readers who did not expect what they got, and there is a sagging middle even for readers who did.
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4. The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
Touraine is a conscripted soldier, taken as a child from a colonised country and raised to fight for the empire that took her. Her only real allegiance is to the other conscripts she grew up beside. Princess Luca needs her, and can decide what happens to her.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: The best-written version of the thing The Lily and the Crown is actually about: a woman whose life is legally someone else’s property, and the woman who holds that power trying to pretend it is a partnership. The empire is not background here, it is the argument.
How it differs: Heat is 2 out of 5 and there is no clean resolution — this is the first book of a trilogy and it ends unresolved on purpose. Where Sinclair gives you a garden and a slow thaw, Clark gives you a colonial rebellion and two women who repeatedly betray each other. The 3.80 Goodreads average across 14,538 ratings has 34 per cent at three stars or below.
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5. Pirates of Aletharia by Britney Jackson
Emilia Drakon is the last of the dragon sorcerers after a betrayal by the woman she loved, and she sets out for vengeance. She ends up tricked aboard the ship of Captain Maria Welles, who is every bit as bloodthirsty as the stories say.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: For the pirate half of The Lily and the Crown. Ari’s captive turns out to be tangled up with a pirate queen; this is the book where the pirate is on the page from the first chapter, with a woman aboard her ship who did not choose to be there. At 4.36 across 3,367 Goodreads ratings it is the best-rated book on this list.
How it differs: It is high fantasy first and romance second — 534 pages, dragons, a revenge plot — and an editing complaint recurs often enough in the reviews to be worth knowing about. There is no ownership and no captivity in the legal sense, and the heat, at 4 out of 5, arrives much later than the adventure does.
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6. Capturing Tess by Anna Stone
A billionaire has a woman taken to a private island. The kidnapping is framed from the outset as protection rather than menace, and the island is a gilded one. What develops is a femdom dynamic on top of a captivity neither of them can quite name.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: The contemporary version, and the one closest in register: like Sinclair, Stone writes captivity in its softer key, where the threat is implied and the actual content is a slow negotiation of power. Same 4 out of 5 heat, same isolated setting, same older-and-dangerous against younger-and-sheltered pairing.
How it differs: The protective framing removes most of the moral tension. There is no empire, no intrigue and nothing at stake beyond the two of them, and the 3.88 Goodreads average across 1,648 ratings has a three-star band as large as the four-star one — readers found it pleasant rather than gripping. If the politics were half your reason for liking The Lily and the Crown, this will feel thin.
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7. The Fae Queen’s Captive by Sierra Simone
A mortal woman is taken into a fae court she does not understand, bound by a bargain whose terms she cannot fully read, and attached to a ruler who is beautiful, cruel and not as remote as she pretends.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: A bargain rather than a cage, which is the same mechanism Sinclair uses: the captive has technically agreed to something, and the agreement is what makes the power exchange work. It is also a full 5 out of 5, the hottest book here besides Captive in the Underworld.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. There is dubious consent, body horror and a group scene. The whole thing runs over about three days, so the slow accumulation you came for is not on offer — the 3.65 Goodreads average has a 29 per cent three-star bulge, and 41 per cent of readers say no to strong chemistry. Exceptional prose, undercooked romance.
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8. Princess of Dorsa by Eliza Andrews
Tasia survives an assassination attempt, becomes an unprecedented female heir, and is assigned a bodyguard from the empire’s elite. Joslyn’s loyalty starts as a job and does not stay one.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: A woman whose duty is to another woman’s body, in a court where the wrong feeling is a political weapon. The intrigue-to-romance ratio is very close to The Lily and the Crown’s, and at 4.25 across 2,907 Goodreads ratings it is one of the few sapphic epic fantasies where the romance is genuinely load-bearing.
How it differs: The gap is service rather than ownership, and the book is epic fantasy first: Amazon files it under metaphysical and historical fantasy ahead of lesbian romance, and that ordering is honest. The romance occupies a minority of the page count and the ending gives it less than readers wanted. No Bookshop paperback and no audiobook exist.
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9. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Mahit Dzmare arrives at the heart of a devouring empire as ambassador from a tiny mining station, carrying her murdered predecessor’s memories in her head. Three Seagrass is the cultural liaison assigned to manage her, and the woman she cannot stop looking at.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: If what you loved was the station, the intrigue and the sense of an empire pressing on two people, this is the best-executed version of that in the genre — a Hugo winner at 4.10 across 76,852 Goodreads ratings, with a queernorm setting and poetry used as flirtation.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. Heat is 2 out of 5 and behind closed doors. There is no captivity, no ownership and no power exchange — the asymmetry is cultural and institutional. This is science fiction that happens to have a slow-burn romance in it, not a romance in a science fiction setting.
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10. Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Kyr has been raised on a station dedicated to avenging a destroyed Earth. She is the best, she knows it, and she has never questioned a single thing she was told. Then the thing she was raised for arrives and does not go as promised.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: The other end of the isolated-heroine idea: a young woman who has only ever known one station, one set of rules and one version of the truth, and the slow, painful business of finding out what she was for. Ari’s sheltering is gentle; Kyr’s is a weapon.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. Heat is 1 out of 5. This is a deprogramming novel with a deliberately unlikeable protagonist and a first half a lot of readers cannot get through — the 4.05 average across 21,846 ratings hides that split. There is no captor, no captive and very little romance.
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11. The X Ingredient by Roslyn Sinclair
Diana Parker is Atlanta’s most formidable attorney, brilliant, demanding and stuck in a quietly failing marriage. Laurie Holcombe is broke, Southern and takes the assistant job because she has no better option.
Why a The Lily and the Crown reader wants it: Sinclair’s other great power-exchange book and the one most of her readers arrive from. Same author, same interest in what one woman can ask of another when the arrangement between them is unequal, at a higher 4.5 out of 5 on heat.
How it differs: There is no speculative element at all — this is an Atlanta law firm, not a space station — and the asymmetry is a paycheque rather than a legal claim on a person. The Goodreads average is 3.97 across more than 6,000 ratings. We have a full guide to its read-alikes if the office is where you want to go next.
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If You Only Read One
For the same book in a different mythology: In the Vanisher’s Palace. A woman sold to a dragon, ownership treated as a problem, and the same quiet restraint.
For the empire and the intrigue: The Unbroken. The best-written version of one woman holding another’s life. Two out of five on heat, and no clean ending.
For the heat: The Fae Queen’s Captive or Captive in the Underworld. Both are a full 5 out of 5, and both need their content warnings read first.
For more Roslyn Sinclair: The X Ingredient. The same charged asymmetry with a desk instead of a garden.
Frequently Asked Questions
What else has Roslyn Sinclair written?
Her other titles are The X Ingredient, Truth and Measure and its sequel Above All Things, and The Woman from the Waves. They are separate stories rather than continuations of The Lily and the Crown. Most readers move to The X Ingredient next, and we have a full guide to its read-alikes.
Which of these books have non-consent content?
Captive in the Underworld has on-page rape and should not be picked up casually. The Fae Queen’s Captive is dubious consent by design, with body horror and a group scene. The Wicked and the Willing turns on a woman with no economic ability to refuse, and has two mutually exclusive endings. The consent column in the table above says where each book lands.
Why is there so little sapphic science fiction on this list?
Because there is very little sapphic science fiction with heat in it. The acclaimed titles sit at one or two out of five and are closed door or nearly. A Memory Called Empire and Some Desperate Glory are both here and both worth reading, but neither will scratch the same itch. The Lily and the Crown is unusual for being a space-station book at four out of five.
Which is the closest match overall?
In the Vanisher’s Palace. It is the only other book that treats ownership as something to be negotiated rather than enjoyed, and de Bodard writes the tension as restraint rather than escalation, which is exactly what Sinclair does.
Why do some entries have no paperback or audiobook button?
Because the edition does not exist or is the wrong format. Princess of Dorsa has neither a Bookshop.org paperback nor a Libro.fm audiobook. Pirates of Aletharia’s only Bookshop listing is a CD-audio edition, and Capturing Tess and The Fae Queen’s Captive have no audiobook. We open every product page and check the format field before adding a button.
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 we have published.
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.