An Exclusive Game Review — Is It Worth Reading?

An Exclusive Game by Persephone Black book cover

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Verdict: A tight, atmospheric undercover-FBI-meets-mafia-heiress romance that does the cat-and-mouse setup very well and asks you to buy a second book for the happy ending — which the listing does not tell you.

Best for: Readers who want forbidden, high-tension sapphic mafia romance in a fast 226 pages, and who are content to read a duet as a duet.

Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”; I Heart SapphFic bands it “Hot & Steamy”; one three-star reviewer awards her three stars partly for the sex scenes)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.0/5 — a 4.29 Goodreads average across 806 ratings, marked down because the resolution is withheld for book two and two readers find the undercover agent implausibly incompetent)

Tropes: Mafia, undercover agent, enemies to lovers, cat and mouse, forbidden love, criminal heiress, private members’ club, deception, class difference, duet with the HEA in book two.

What Is An Exclusive Game About?

An Exclusive Game is book one of the Ruby Realm Duet, published on 11 October 2023 at 226 pages, and it belongs to a large and deliberately structured body of work: Persephone Black writes sapphic mafia romance in two-book units, and readers who like one duet tend to read all of them. One Goodreads reviewer notes she is six books deep and that the model works — with the caveat, in her own words, that the story carries some weight on whether a reader picks up the second book.

Natalie is a federal agent assigned to bring down Alessa de Luca, a mafia heiress who runs an exclusive private members’ club with a gambling operation underneath it. Natalie goes in undercover as an heiress. Alessa is charming, dangerous and, it turns out, extremely interested. The closer the operation gets to a result, the less Natalie can tell whether she is running the deception or inside it.

It has done well. Goodreads has it at 4.29 across 806 ratings with 57 written reviews; Amazon at 4.6 across 607, with a histogram of 71 percent five stars, 23 percent four, 6 percent three and nothing at all below that; romance.io at 4.31 across 13. Its strongest Amazon ranking is #49 in LGBTQ+ Mystery, which is the right shelf — this is a suspense novel that happens to be a romance.

It is on Kindle Unlimited, verified on the Amazon listing on 20 August 2026.

What Makes This Sapphic Mafia Romance Work

Atmosphere, first. Even the reviewer most critical of this book grants that Black builds a suspenseful, tense atmosphere and that the plot is clean and easy to follow with some genuine small twists. The club is the reason: a single glamorous, closed setting where every conversation is a performance and everyone has a second purpose. It does a great deal of work cheaply.

Alessa is the second reason, and she is the character readers actually come back for. Reviewers describe her as magnetic, as having her persona entirely under control, as a businesswoman with a heart of gold and a streak of the dominatrix. Even readers who did not much enjoy the book say she is interesting. That is the mark of a lead who has been thought about.

Third, it is short and it moves. At 226 pages this is a book you finish in an evening, and the reviews reflect that — “captivating”, “rollercoaster”, “addictive” recur. There is no sag, because there is no room for one.

Book Synopsis

Alessa de Luca always gets what she wants, and what she currently wants is the elegant new member of her club. That member is Natalie, a federal agent working undercover to dismantle the illicit empire Alessa runs beneath a legitimate one. The assignment requires proximity. The proximity produces something neither of them planned for.

As Natalie’s team closes in, the deception she is running starts to cost more than she budgeted for, and the line between playing a part and meaning it stops being visible. When the lies begin to collapse, she has to choose between the job she swore to do and the woman she was sent to destroy.

My Review

The thing you most need to know about this book is not in the blurb: it does not end. Not in the sense of a cliffhanger anyone in our sample complained about, but in the structural sense — a Goodreads reviewer states plainly that this is the first of two books and the resolution, the happy ending, comes in the second. The Amazon listing calls it “Ruby Realm Duet Book 1” and stops there. If you read book one expecting a complete romance, you will not get one. Book two, A Dangerous Prize, is published, is also on Kindle Unlimited, and rates higher than this one. Plan to read both.

With that settled, this is a good book doing a specific job well. The undercover premise is one of the most reliable engines in romance because it makes intimacy and betrayal the same act, and Black knows it. The tension is real, the club is a genuinely well-chosen setting, and the pacing never slackens.

Where it strains is Natalie. Two independent reviewers make the same objection from different angles: one calls the detective in this book so incompetent it is an achievement; the other dislikes the trope of someone supposedly excellent at her job becoming a complete idiot the moment she is attracted to someone, and says that is what happens to both leads. In a novel whose entire tension depends on the reader believing the operation is real, an agent who stops behaving like an agent costs you something. It is not a majority view — five three-star reviews and one two-star out of thirty — but it is the specific complaint that recurs.

The related charge is flatness. One three-star reviewer who liked the premise and the atmosphere says the characters were dull, and that the romance went dull with them. Set against a dozen five-star readers calling the chemistry electric, that reads as a book with a wide response range rather than a broken one — but it is the same divide you see in a lot of short, plot-forward romance: readers who want the situation are satisfied, readers who want the people are not always.

How Spicy Is An Exclusive Game?

Four out of five, and the sources line up. romance.io bands the steam at 4/5, “Explicit open door”. I Heart SapphFic bands it “Hot & Steamy” — its definition is full graphic description of sexual acts, possibly with crude language. The publisher’s own description calls it a steamy F/F mafia romance with some dark elements and a lot of angst. And one three-star reviewer, who was not otherwise impressed, says two of her three stars are for the sex scenes and for Alessa.

That last detail is the useful one. When a lukewarm reader singles out the heat as a reason to round up, the heat is doing real work. This is explicit, on the page, and a substantial part of what readers are here for.

Who Should Read This Book?

Read it if the undercover-and-compromised premise is your thing, and you want it played as suspense rather than as farce. Read it if you like a closed, glamorous setting and a lead who is genuinely dangerous rather than dangerous-adjacent. Read it if you want a mafia romance that is explicit but, per I Heart SapphFic, keeps its violence non-graphic. And read it if you are happy to commit to two books, because that is the unit of purchase here.

Approach with care if you need a complete arc in one volume. Approach with care if procedural plausibility matters to you — the agent’s tradecraft is the thing two readers could not get past. And approach with care if “dark elements” is a phrase that concerns you, because the publisher uses it and the page you found this book on previously said the opposite.

On content specifically: the publisher does enumerate content notes — on the copyright page, inside the book, where no one can see them before buying. What we can tell you from outside is that I Heart SapphFic reports murder and violence in line with mafia romance but not graphic, and that a romance.io reader has tagged the book for human trafficking. Those two statements are not in conflict, but the second is the sort of thing a shopper deserves to know in advance. We have not verified it against the book’s own notes.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

Our thirty-review Goodreads sample splits twelve five-star, eleven four-star, five three-star, one two-star and one unrated — a flatter, more four-star-heavy shape than most books in this cluster, which is what a well-executed genre exercise tends to look like. Amazon is warmer still: 71 percent five stars and nothing below three.

The praise is for tension, atmosphere and Alessa, in roughly that order, and for the reading experience — readers describe finishing it fast and immediately wanting the next one. Persephone Black has a following that treats the duets as a set, and several reviews are really about the whole Sapphic Mafia body of work rather than this instalment.

The criticism is narrow and concentrated: the agent’s competence, and characters some readers found flat. One reviewer’s entire verdict is that this could have been exceptional, which is its own kind of compliment. Nobody in our sample calls the book badly written, and nobody complains about the editing — unusual in this catalogue.

Discovery here is running through the author’s backlist and through audio rather than through press. We found no trade reviews and no blog coverage. What we did find is a Libro.fm bookseller recommendation for the whole Sapphic Mafia Universe, which is a real independent endorsement from a bookseller rather than a reader — and worth noting that the same text also appears as a Goodreads review, so do not count it twice.

Prefer audio? Listen to An Exclusive Game on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores. It is narrated by Avery Reid and Quinn Riley, published by Tantor Media, and runs six hours and fifteen minutes. Book two is on Libro.fm too, which matters given that the story finishes there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does An Exclusive Game end on a cliffhanger?

It ends without the happy ending. A Goodreads reviewer states directly that this is the first of a two-book series and the HEA arrives in the second. Nobody in our sample describes a shock cut mid-scene, so “unresolved” is fairer than “cliffhanger” — but the romance does not conclude here. Book two, A Dangerous Prize, is out and also on Kindle Unlimited.

How explicit is it?

Explicit. romance.io bands the steam 4/5, “Explicit open door”; I Heart SapphFic bands it “Hot & Steamy”; the publisher’s own copy calls it steamy. One three-star reviewer credits the sex scenes for part of her rating.

Is it dark?

Somewhat — and more than the listing lets on. The publisher’s description says “some dark elements and a lot of angst”. I Heart SapphFic reports murder and violence consistent with mafia romance but not graphic. A romance.io reader has tagged the book for human trafficking. This is not extreme dark romance, but it is not a clean caper either.

Are there content warnings?

The publisher says content notes are on the copyright page — that is, inside the book, invisible to anyone browsing. Nothing is enumerated on the Amazon listing. The external flags we could find are murder and violence, described as non-graphic, and one reader tag for human trafficking.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Avery Reid and Quinn Riley, published by Tantor Media, six hours fifteen minutes, and available on Libro.fm.

Is it on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes — verified on the Amazon listing on 20 August 2026, and so is book two, which you will want. Kindle Unlimited availability is the publisher’s to change, so check the listing before you plan around it.

If You Loved An Exclusive Game, Read These Next

The next book you need is the other half of this one: A Dangerous Prize, which finishes Alessa and Natalie’s story and rates higher than this instalment. After that, The Ties That Bind Us is the darker sapphic mafia option if you want the violence on the page rather than off it. More in our mafia Kindle Unlimited list and across all our book reviews.

The Bottom Line

An Exclusive Game is a well-made piece of genre engineering. The premise is strong, the club is a superb setting, Alessa is the kind of antagonist-love-interest the subgenre exists to produce, and at 226 pages it does not waste a chapter. It is also half a story sold as a book, and its federal agent behaves in ways two readers found impossible to credit. Neither of those is fatal — 806 Goodreads ratings averaging 4.29 and an Amazon histogram with nothing below three stars say most readers had a very good time — but both are worth knowing before you start. Pick it up on Kindle Unlimited if you are willing to read the duet as one book. If you want a self-contained mafia romance, start elsewhere.

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, An Exclusive Game ranks as a tense, explicit, cleanly plotted sapphic mafia romance with an excellent central setting and a magnetic criminal lead — held back by an undercover agent two readers found implausible, characterisation some found thin, and a resolution deferred to a second book the listing does not warn you about.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 4.0/5

✓ 4.29 average across 806 Goodreads ratings
✓ 4.6 on Amazon across 607 ratings, nothing below three stars
✓ #49 in LGBTQ+ Mystery on Amazon
✓ The romance does not resolve until book two

Romance ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

✓ Undercover premise makes intimacy and betrayal the same act
✓ Readers repeatedly describe the chemistry as electric
✓ Forbidden dynamic sustained without artificial obstacles
✓ One three-star reader found the romance dull

Characters ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

✓ Alessa is praised even by unimpressed readers
✓ Her control of her own persona is the book’s best idea
✓ Two reviewers find the federal agent implausibly incompetent
✓ One reviewer calls both leads flat

Writing ★★★★☆ 4.0/5

✓ Suspenseful, tense atmosphere granted even by critics
✓ Plot is clean and easy to follow, with real small twists
✓ No editing complaints anywhere in our sample
✓ 226 pages leaves little room for depth

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.0/5

✓ “Rollercoaster” and “addictive” recur across reviews
✓ Readers finish it in a sitting and want the sequel
✓ The author’s duets retain readers across whole series
✓ A minority felt nothing much at all

Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”
✓ I Heart SapphFic bands it “Hot & Steamy”
✓ A lukewarm reviewer credits the sex scenes for her rating
✓ Publisher’s own copy calls it steamy

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

✓ No abrupt mid-scene cut reported in our sample
✓ Book two is published and on Kindle Unlimited
✓ The HEA is withheld until that second book
✓ One reader found the ending predictable

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ Short enough to revisit before reading book two
✓ A six-hour audiobook offers a second format
✓ Deception plots reward a second pass
✓ The twists lose force once known

Find It On Amazon

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August 20, 2026 1

Twisted Sorcery Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Twisted Sorcery by Kira Adler book cover

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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 1,163 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 1,163 ratings with 104 written reviews, 4.4 on Amazon across 833, 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 (August 2026)

This is a healthy series opener: 1,163 Goodreads ratings against 104 written reviews, 833 on Amazon with 12 per cent at three stars, 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 1,163 Goodreads ratings
✓ 4.4 on Amazon across 833 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

Find It On Amazon

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August 20, 2026 1

The Ties That Bind Us Review — Is It Worth Reading?

The Ties That Bind Us by Eden Emory book cover

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Verdict: A deliberately toxic dark sapphic romance that tells you upfront it is not about good people — and delivers on that, while asking readers to accept prose that several describe as unedited and a male-heavy cast that a lot of them did not sign up for.

Best for: Readers who want a genuinely unpleasant dynamic written without apology, who are fine with an engaged-to-a-man heroine and on-page men in a sapphic romance, and who care more about the toxicity than the sentences.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful”, though readers are split on whether it works)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.3/5 — a 3.75 Goodreads average across 1,833 ratings and one of the most evenly split samples we have seen: three one-star and six five-star reviews out of thirty)

Tropes: Dark romance, toxic relationship, reunion after three years, cheating, engaged to someone else, rich woman and poor woman, morally grey leads, obsession, class difference, caretaking a sick parent.

The Ties That Bind Us is Eden Emory’s dark sapphic romance, published in January 2022, in which a woman working several jobs to cover her mother’s hospital bills — and engaged to a man — is pulled back to the wealthy woman she was involved with three years earlier.

The listing does something almost nothing else in this category does: it warns you. The publisher’s own copy says plainly that this is not a typical romance and that if you want something sweet with good people, this book is not for you, then directs readers to the author’s site for content warnings. That candour is worth crediting, and it is also the single most useful thing to know before you start. The numbers are 3.75 on Goodreads across 1,833 ratings with 171 written reviews, 4.3 on Amazon across 938, and 3.90 on romance.io.

What Is The Ties That Bind Us About?

This is dark romance in the sense that means the relationship itself is the damage, not that there is a villain somewhere causing it. There is no kidnapping, no captivity, no crime plot to hide behind. What there is instead is two women who are bad for each other, one of them engaged to someone else, and a book that declines to have either of them behave well. Readers who arrive expecting the trappings of dark romance find something more domestic and more uncomfortable than that.

Jean is introduced through obligation: several jobs, her mother’s hospital bills, a fiancé who represents stability, and a version of her life she has decided to want. Shae is introduced through money and appetite — the woman Jean was involved with three years ago, who has not gone anywhere and does not intend to. The novel is honest that Jean’s motives are mixed, including financially, and that honesty is what makes it hard to root for anyone in it. That is the design.

What Makes This Dark Sapphic Romance Work

It warns you, and then means it: The publisher’s own copy says this is not a book about good people. Very few dark romances in this category are that direct, and readers who took the warning seriously rate it far higher than those who did not.
The toxicity is written, not gestured at: Readers who like the book praise it for committing — one describes the author as knowing how to write a toxic, attractive woman, and that is precisely the appeal.
Class is doing real work: Hospital bills against inherited money is not decoration here; it is why Jean is available to be pulled back.
The last act lands for its defenders: More than one reviewer describes the final chapters as the part that won them over, having been unsure until then.
Top-band heat: romance.io files it as explicit and plentiful, and the sexual content is central rather than occasional.

Book Synopsis

Jean’s life is a schedule. Her mother is in hospital and the bills do not pause for anyone, so she works more jobs than a person should and keeps the arithmetic in her head. The engagement is part of the arithmetic too — not a romance so much as a structure, a man who represents a version of the future in which the sums come out. She has told herself this is what she wants often enough to have stopped noticing that she is telling herself.

Shae is the thing the arithmetic does not survive. Three years ago there was something between them, and Jean has spent the time since deciding it was finished and that she is a different person now. Shae has money, certainty and no interest at all in Jean’s reasonable plans, and when she comes back into the picture she does not do it delicately.

Jean tells herself it is about the money. It is a good excuse and it is even partly true, which is worse. What follows is a relationship neither woman is improved by, conducted around a fiancé who does not know, with a sick parent and a stack of bills underneath it. The question the book is interested in is not whether they belong together in any healthy sense. It is what each of them is willing to burn down to have it anyway.

My Review

Credit where it is due: this book tells you what it is. The listing states outright that it is not a typical romance and that readers wanting something sweet with good people should go elsewhere, then points to the author’s site for content warnings. After reviewing Vibe, whose entire warning was that it “confronts several issues”, the contrast is instructive. A dark romance that is upfront about being dark is doing the minimum right, and the minimum is more than most manage.

It also commits. Jean’s motives are mixed in a way romance usually cleans up — there is money involved, she knows it, and the book does not arrange for her to be secretly noble about it. Shae is written as genuinely magnetic and genuinely bad news, and the reader who says the author knows how to write a toxic attractive woman has identified the actual skill on display. The class machinery underneath it — hospital bills against inherited wealth — is what makes the whole thing move.

The dominant complaint is craft, and it is blunt. One reviewer says the book reads like a first draft: weak writing, frequent errors, tense switches, sentences that do not parse. She skimmed most of it. That is a single detailed voice, but it is consistent with a wider sense in the reviews that the prose is not equal to what the story is attempting, and it is the clearest reason this sits where it does rather than higher.

The second complaint is one this site takes seriously because of who reads it: the men. Jean is engaged to a man, men occupy meaningful space on the page, and multiple reviewers react badly — one says flatly that she wanted a sapphic take on a favourite premise and got something else, another asks why men exist in this book at all. That is not prudishness; it is an expectation problem. This is shelved and sold as sapphic romance, it also ranks in Bisexual Romance on Amazon, and readers who came for two women and nobody else are not getting that. Know it in advance and the objection largely evaporates.

Third, and most damaging structurally: several readers finish unconvinced by the couple. One puts it precisely — the book ends and she still did not believe in them. In a romance where the entire proposition is that you will follow two people you are not supposed to like, failing to make the bond persuasive is the failure that matters most. Its defenders report the opposite, and say the last few chapters are what turned them, which is why the sample splits as evenly as it does.

My honest note: An honest, committed, badly edited dark romance about two people behaving badly. If toxic is what you came for and rough prose will not stop you, it delivers exactly what the listing promises. If you want the couple to earn it, you will finish unconvinced.

Element	In The Ties That Bind Us
Central relationship	Jean & Shae — a woman working several jobs for her mother’s hospital bills, engaged to a man, and the wealthy woman she was involved with three years ago
Core tropes	Dark romance, toxic relationship, reunion, cheating, engaged to someone else, rich woman and poor woman, morally grey leads
Setting	Contemporary — hospital bills and multiple jobs on one side, inherited money on the other
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, and central to the book
Series	Standalone; readers note stylistic overlap with the author’s Club Pétale books
Content notes	The publisher directs readers to the author’s site rather than listing them. From the reviews: infidelity, a toxic and coercive central dynamic, serious parental illness and medical debt, on-page men in a sapphic romance, explicit sexual content

How Dark and Spicy Is The Ties That Bind Us?

Five out of five on heat — romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful” and the sexual content is central rather than punctuating. Readers are divided on execution rather than volume: one of the two-star reviews complains specifically that not even the explicit scenes worked for her this time, which is a notable thing to say about a book at this band.

On darkness, the important structural point is what kind of dark this is. There is no captivity, no crime syndicate, no external villain — the damage is the relationship. What readers report is infidelity, coercion inside the central dynamic, serious parental illness and medical debt used as leverage, and two women who are not improved by each other. The publisher does not enumerate any of it, directing readers to the author’s site instead. For comparison on the site, Vibe is darker and far worse at disclosure, and Precious Red Pearls is the same heat band with a captivity premise instead.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a toxic dynamic written without apology, you like a heroine whose motives are mixed and stay mixed, class difference as an engine appeals to you, and rough prose will not stop you.

You may want to skip it if: you want a sapphic romance with no significant male presence, editing quality matters to you, infidelity is a hard limit, or you need to believe in the couple by the end.

In short: an honest dark romance that does what it says and does not write well enough to make you glad it did.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

This is one of the most evenly divided books in our Kindle Unlimited catalogue: 1,833 Goodreads ratings against 171 written reviews, 938 on Amazon, and only five ratings on romance.io. In a thirty-review Goodreads sample the spread was three one-star, five two-star, seven three-star, seven four-star and six five-star — a nearly flat distribution, which is rare and tells you the book is doing something readers genuinely disagree about rather than something it does badly for everyone. There is no trade coverage, no StoryGraph community data visible, and no audiobook edition on Libro.fm. One small oddity worth noting for anyone cross-checking: Amazon credits the book to Eden Emory, while romance.io’s record lists Eden Rose and Elle Mae.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The toxicity, first — readers who wanted a genuinely unpleasant dynamic say the author writes an attractive, poisonous woman well, and that the appeal builds as the book goes on. Second, honesty: several appreciate that Jean’s motives are mercenary as well as emotional and that the book does not tidy that up. Third, the final chapters, which more than one reviewer names as the stretch that won them over. And fourth, novelty — several readers say this was their first dark sapphic romance and that reading toxic women rather than toxic men was the point.

What readers argue about and complain about: The writing, above everything. The most detailed negative review calls it a first draft — weak prose, frequent errors, tense switches, sentences that do not parse — and says she skimmed most of the book. Second, the male presence: multiple reviewers object to how much room men take up in a book sold as sapphic romance, in terms ranging from disappointed to insulted. Third, and most consequential, persuasion: at least one reader finishes without believing in the couple at all, which in a dark romance is the whole ball game. Fourth, and from a two-star reviewer, that the explicit scenes did not land either. The split is not about tolerance for darkness — readers on both sides of it are dark-romance readers.

The standalone question worth asking first: This resolves and no reviewer in our sample reports a cliffhanger. It stands alone, though readers familiar with the author note stylistic continuity with her Club Pétale books. The genuinely useful pre-purchase step is the one the publisher itself recommends: go to the author’s site and read the content warnings before you start. For a book that warns you this directly, not taking the warning is the main way readers end up unhappy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is The Ties That Bind Us really a sapphic romance?

Yes, but with a significant male presence — one lead is engaged to a man and men occupy real space on the page. Multiple reviewers object to this, and Amazon ranks the book in Bisexual Romance as well as Lesbian Romance. Know it going in.

What are the content warnings?

The publisher does not list them; the book’s own description directs readers to the author’s site. From the reviews: infidelity, a toxic and coercive central dynamic, serious parental illness and medical debt, and explicit sexual content.

How explicit is The Ties That Bind Us?

A 5/5. romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful”, though readers disagree about how well the scenes work.

Does it end on a cliffhanger?

No. It resolves and stands alone. Whether the resolution convinces you is the thing readers most disagree about.

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 The Ties That Bind Us, Read These Next

Vibe is the darker, more extreme version of the same proposition — and a lesson in how much worse the disclosure can be. Precious Red Pearls matches the heat band with a captivity premise handled at novella length. And Ribbonwood is where to go for difficult material handled with genuine craft. More in our mafia and dark Kindle Unlimited list and across all our book reviews.

The Bottom Line

The Ties That Bind Us sets out to write two women who are bad for each other and refuses to redeem either of them, and it is honest about that from the listing onward — which, in a category full of books that hide what they contain, counts for something. The class machinery works, Shae is genuinely magnetic, and readers who wanted a toxic dynamic get one. What it does not offer is prose equal to the material, a cast that matches what sapphic-romance readers expect, or a couple that everyone finishes believing in. Take the publisher’s own advice, read the warnings first, and go in calibrated. Check The Ties That Bind Us on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The Ties That Bind Us ranks as an honest but under-edited dark sapphic romance — committed to its own unpleasantness and unusually candid about it, held back by first-draft prose and a couple many readers never believe in, and best approached by dark-romance readers who have read the author’s content warnings first.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

✓ 3.75 average across 1,833 Goodreads ratings
✓ 4.3 on Amazon across 938 ratings
✓ Publisher warns honestly about the content
✓ Nearly flat 1-to-5 spread in our sample

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.1/5

✓ Toxic dynamic committed to fully
✓ Mixed motives kept mixed throughout
✓ Defenders won over by the final chapters
✓ Several readers finish unconvinced by the couple

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Shae written as genuinely magnetic
✓ Jean’s mercenary streak left intact
✓ Class positions drive both women
✓ Male cast crowds a sapphic romance

Writing ★★★☆☆ 2.7/5

✓ Voice recognisable from the author’s other books
✓ Class detail concrete and specific
✓ Final chapters land for its defenders
✓ Described by one reader as a first draft

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

✓ Medical debt gives real desperation
✓ Toxicity lands as intended for many
✓ First dark sapphic read for several reviewers
✓ Blunted for readers who never buy the bond

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io: “Explicit and plentiful”
✓ Sexual content central, not occasional
✓ Coercive charge is deliberate
✓ One reviewer says the scenes did not work

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5

✓ Resolves; no cliffhanger reported
✓ Standalone requiring nothing else
✓ Late chapters convert some doubters
✓ Resolution unpersuasive for others

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 2.9/5

✓ Short at 220 pages
✓ Author’s other books share the register
✓ Divisive enough to reward a second look
✓ No audio edition; prose discourages a return

Find It On Amazon

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August 20, 2026 1

Vibe Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A genuinely extreme dark sapphic romance with real chemistry and real craft problems, published behind a trigger warning so vague that readers have had to write the proper one themselves — and that omission is the most important thing about it.

Best for: Experienced dark-romance readers who want obsession played without a safety net, who can absorb graphic sexual violence on the page, and who have read the reader-compiled content list below before buying.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful”; this is filed as erotica by its own retailer)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.2/5 — a 3.57 Goodreads average across 5,664 ratings that conceals a split readership: in a thirty-review sample, nine gave it five stars and nine gave it one)

Tropes: Dark romance, obsession, forbidden secret, dancer and outsider, religious control, morally grey leads, possessive dynamic, trauma and survival, duology opener, erotica-adjacent heat.

Vibe is the first book in Liza James’s dark romance duology Pandora’s Box, published in 2021, and it puts a woman being groomed for advancement inside a controlling hierarchy opposite a dancer at the club that gives the series its name.

The aggregate numbers are the least informative part of this book. Goodreads has it at 3.57 across 5,664 ratings with 970 written reviews; Amazon at 4.2 across 1,808 with 17 per cent of ratings at three stars and seven per cent below that; romance.io at 3.60. What those averages are actually averaging is two incompatible reading experiences, and which one you have will depend almost entirely on what you already know before you open it. That is the whole reason this review exists.

What Is Vibe About?

This is dark romance in the register that means what it says, and Amazon files it under erotica rather than romance, which is a fair description of the balance. The book is written in first person from both women, in alternating sections that read as confessions rather than as narration — the voice is the thing readers either fall into completely or bounce off within a chapter.

Aura is introduced through obedience: a life she was assigned rather than chose, a hierarchy she is climbing at a cost she does not name, and a role — quiet, meek, their little wildflower — that other people decided on for her. Ruby is introduced through work: another night at Pandora’s Box, another dance, another round of thrown money, until one customer changes the shape of the evening. The premise is a secret relationship across a boundary that will cost both of them, and the darkness is not atmospheric. It is what happens to these two women, on the page.

What Makes This Dark Sapphic Romance Work

The pull between them: Chemistry and tension are what defenders name first and most consistently, described as addictive rather than merely present.
Ruby’s backstory: Readers who love the book single out her history as the part that gives the obsession weight rather than making it decorative.
The voice: The confessional first-person style produces lines readers quote back in their reviews, which is not something that happens to books people are lukewarm about.
It does not soften: For readers who want dark romance that refuses to reassure them, this is one of the few sapphic titles that genuinely delivers that, and its five-star reviews say so explicitly.
Author loyalty: A large share of the positive reviews come from readers who have read everything this author has published, which tells you the voice has a real following even where the book divides opinion.

Book Synopsis

Aura’s life was decided for her. There is a ladder she is expected to climb and a version of herself she is expected to present while she does it — quiet, agreeable, easily led — and the cost of that arrangement is something she has learned not to examine. She is somebody’s idea of a good outcome. What she is not is a person with anything of her own.

Ruby works at Pandora’s Box. The nights are a routine of dances and teasing and money thrown without much interest in the woman it lands on, and she has arranged herself around that routine the way people do when the alternative is thinking about how they got here. She is not looking for anything and she is certainly not expecting anyone.

Then one night the room changes. What starts between them is immediate, mutual and completely incompatible with the life Aura is being groomed for — which makes it, from the first moment, a secret rather than a relationship. Both women have histories that make this dangerous in different ways, and the world around Aura is not the kind that tolerates deviation. The question the book is asking is not whether they want each other. It is what each of them will do, and let happen, to keep it.

My Review

Let me start with what is not in dispute. The connection between Aura and Ruby is the reason this book has 5,664 ratings and a devoted readership: readers describe the pull between them as addictive, quote lines from it in their reviews, and come back for the sequel. The confessional first-person voice is doing that work. When it lands, it lands hard, and the emotional damage it inflicts is what its five-star reviewers are actually praising.

The craft objections are separate from the content objections, and it is worth keeping them apart, because one reviewer makes a point of saying so — her two-star review, she writes, has nothing to do with how dark the book is and everything to do with significant craft issues. That is the fair summary of the negative case on writing: information delivered in blocks rather than dramatised, a profanity habit that at least one reader counted and found exhausting, and prose that several people describe as simply not good enough to carry what it is attempting. In a 466-page book asking this much of its reader, that matters.

Then the content, which is where this review has an actual job to do. Readers report graphic depictions of rape, and they report them as depictions rather than references. They describe Aura as treated as property by essentially every character around her, and the central relationship as toxic in ways the book does not step back from. Reviewers compiling their own warning lists name statutory rape and the sexual abuse of a minor, misogyny, extreme internalised homophobia, drug use and religious cult dynamics. One reviewer, who says she is not afraid of dark books, puts her objection as an absence of balance — that everything in this relationship sits at one extreme with nothing to offset it.

And here is the thing that turns a divisive book into a reader-safety problem. The book’s own trigger warning, in full, is that it “confronts several issues that could be potential triggers”, contains explicit sexual scenes, and is incredibly dark. That is all. For a novel containing what readers describe, that is not a content warning; it is a mood note. The most useful warning list available for this book was written by an angry one-star reviewer, and she was right to write it. If you are choosing whether to read this, you should be able to get that information from the publisher and you cannot.

So the fair position is this. Dark romance is a real genre with real readers, and a book is not bad for going to extremes — several of the people who loved this one are experienced readers of exactly that. But a book that goes this far owes its audience a specific warning, and this one does not give it. That is why this sits at 3.2 rather than at the number its chemistry might otherwise earn.

My honest note: Real heat, real obsession, real craft problems, and a content load the publisher will not name. If you read dark romance seriously, read the reader-compiled warnings below and then decide. If you do not, this is not the book to start with.

Element	In Vibe
Central relationship	Aura & Ruby — a woman being advanced through a controlling hierarchy, and a dancer at Pandora’s Box
Core tropes	Dark romance, obsession, forbidden secret, possessive dynamic, morally grey leads, trauma and survival
Setting	Contemporary — a strip club called Pandora’s Box on one side, a controlling organisation on the other
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful; Amazon files the book under erotica rather than romance
Series	Pandora’s Box book 1 of 2; the sequel, Hush, rates higher at 3.88
Content notes	Compiled by readers, not the publisher: graphic rape, sexual abuse of a minor and statutory rape, misogyny, extreme internalised homophobia, drug use, religious cult dynamics, a possessive and controlling central relationship, explicit sexual content throughout

How Dark and Spicy Is Vibe?

Five out of five on heat, and there is no ambiguity about it: romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful”, the publisher describes explicit sexual scenes, and Amazon does not categorise it as romance at all — its bestseller ranks sit in Lesbian Erotica and Gay Erotica. Frequency and explicitness are both at the top of the scale.

Darkness is the section that matters, and it is longer than usual because the publisher has left the work undone. Reader-compiled warnings for this book include graphic rape written on the page, the sexual abuse of a minor and statutory rape, misogyny, extreme internalised homophobia, drug use, religious control, and a central relationship that multiple readers describe as toxic rather than merely intense. The book’s own warning says only that it confronts potential triggers and is incredibly dark. Those two descriptions are not the same document. Nobody should meet this content by surprise, and on the current listing they will. For comparison on the site, Precious Red Pearls is our other 5/5 dark title and a far gentler proposition, and Ribbonwood carries heavy material with considerably more care.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read dark romance regularly and want it without a safety net, obsession is the dynamic you are here for, you can absorb graphic sexual violence in fiction, and a confessional first-person voice is something you sink into rather than resist.

You may want to skip it if: sexual violence on the page is a hard limit, you want a relationship the book itself frames as healthy, craft problems pull you out of a story, or you are new to dark romance — this is not the entry point.

In short: a book that earns its readership and does not warn its readers.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

This is one of the most-discussed books in our Kindle Unlimited catalogue and one of the most divided: 5,664 Goodreads ratings against 970 written reviews, 1,808 on Amazon with a distribution that is soft where the popular titles are hard — 17 per cent at three stars, seven per cent below. In a thirty-review Goodreads sample the split was almost exactly symmetrical: nine five-star reviews and nine one-star reviews, with very little in between. There is no trade coverage and no StoryGraph community data visible. What there is instead is an unusual amount of reader labour: the most complete content-warning list for this book was written by a reviewer who was angry that she had to.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The chemistry, first — described as addictive, and named in almost every positive review. Second, the emotional force: readers report being wrecked by it, thinking about it days later, and they mean that as praise. Third, Ruby’s backstory, which the book’s admirers say is what stops the obsession from being empty. Fourth, the voice — five-star reviews quote it directly. And fifth, author loyalty: a substantial share of these readers have read everything Liza James has written and came to this expecting exactly what they got.

What readers argue about and complain about: The content, first and most loudly. Reviewers report graphic depictions of rape, a heroine treated as property by everyone around her, and a central relationship they describe as toxic rather than dark. One reader who explicitly says she is not afraid of dark books frames her objection as a lack of balance — nothing in the relationship offsets anything else. Second, and deliberately kept separate by at least one reviewer, craft: information dumps, prose that several readers find weak, and a profanity habit one reader found impossible to ignore. Third, and this is the complaint that should carry the most weight for a prospective buyer, the warning: multiple readers say the book’s own trigger note is uselessly generic, and at least one published her own list in its place. The split here is not about taste in darkness — experienced dark-romance readers appear on both sides of it.

The series question worth asking first: Vibe is book one of two. Hush follows and rates higher at 3.88, which is the same pattern we found in other duologies — the opener carries the weight of establishing the world and takes the ratings hit for it. No reviewer in our sample reports a cliffhanger, but with a two-book arc and this much unresolved history, treat the pair as one purchase rather than assuming book one stands alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the content warnings for Vibe?

Readers have compiled: graphic rape, sexual abuse of a minor and statutory rape, misogyny, extreme internalised homophobia, drug use, religious cult dynamics, and a possessive central relationship. The book’s own warning says only that it confronts potential triggers and is incredibly dark, which is why readers wrote their own.

How explicit is Vibe?

A 5/5. romance.io bands it “Explicit and plentiful”, and Amazon ranks it in erotica rather than romance.

Does Vibe end on a cliffhanger?

No reviewer in our sample reports one, but it is book one of a two-book arc and the sequel continues the same couple. Treat the duology as one purchase.

Is Vibe worth reading if I am new to dark romance?

No. Readers on both sides of the split agree this is at the extreme end, and the negative reviews come from experienced dark-romance readers as well as newcomers. Start somewhere with a published content list.

Which book in the series is better?

Hush, on the numbers — book two rates 3.88 against this book’s 3.57.

Is Vibe 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 Vibe, Read These Next

Precious Red Pearls is the closest match on the site for 5/5 heat inside a dark premise, played straight and at novella length. Ribbonwood is where to go if you want difficult content handled with more care and a reader-compiled warning list to check first. And Being Hers is the gentler end of power-exchange romance if this one is further than you want to go. More in our dark Kindle Unlimited list and across all our book reviews.

The Bottom Line

Vibe sets out to write obsession without a safety net, and for the readers it works on it does exactly that — the chemistry is genuinely addictive, the voice is distinctive enough to be quoted back, and the emotional damage is the point. What it does not manage is prose equal to its ambitions, a relationship its critics can read as anything other than toxic, or — most importantly — a content warning that tells a buyer what is actually in it. If you read dark romance seriously and you go in informed, this is a real book with a real readership. Go in uninformed and it is an ambush. Check Vibe on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Vibe ranks as an extreme dark sapphic romance with a disclosure problem — magnetic and genuinely uncompromising, held back by craft weaknesses and by a warning that names none of what is in it, and best approached only by experienced dark-romance readers who have read the reader-compiled list first.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5

✓ 3.57 average across 5,664 Goodreads ratings
✓ Nine 5-star and nine 1-star in a 30-review sample
✓ 4.2 on Amazon, 7 per cent below three stars
✓ Publisher warning names none of the content

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Chemistry described as addictive by defenders
✓ Obsession dynamic committed to fully
✓ Ruby’s history gives it weight
✓ Critics read the relationship as toxic

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3/5

✓ Ruby’s backstory praised consistently
✓ Both leads written with distinct voices
✓ Moral greyness is deliberate, not accidental
✓ Aura treated as property by nearly everyone

Writing ★★★☆☆ 2.8/5

✓ Confessional voice quoted back by readers
✓ Alternating first person used deliberately
✓ Distinctive enough to build a following
✓ Info dumps and profanity flagged repeatedly

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.6/5

✓ Readers report being wrecked by it
✓ Still on their minds days later
✓ Trauma written without softening
✓ One reader names a total lack of balance

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io: “Explicit and plentiful”
✓ Amazon ranks it in erotica, not romance
✓ Explicit content throughout the book
✓ Sexual violence included, not signposted

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5

✓ No cliffhanger reported in our sample
✓ Book one of a two-book arc
✓ Sequel rates higher at 3.88
✓ Much of the history left for book two

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3/5

✓ Devoted readers return for the duology
✓ Voice rewards a second pass
✓ Sequel pulls readers back
✓ 466 pages of unrelieved darkness

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August 20, 2026 2

Precious Red Pearls Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Precious Red Pearls by Holly Hawthorne book cover

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Verdict: A short, genuinely well-written gothic about hunger and ownership, undercut by a consent question five separate reviewers say the book never actually answers.

Best for: Dark romance readers who know what a captivity premise is and want it played straight, at novella length, with a vampire villainess worth the price on her own.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.83 Goodreads average, with five reviewers saying the captivity is not handled and no content warnings published anywhere outside the book itself)

Tropes: Vampire romance, dark captivity romance, blood slave, hate to lovers, age gap, obsession, gothic Victorian setting, monster-lover, ownership dynamic, novella length.

Precious Red Pearls by Holly Hawthorne is the first book of Roseshire County, independently published in January 2024, and it is the shortest and darkest thing on our sapphic vampire list — a Victorian-flavoured gothic in which Pearl is bought as a blood slave for Lady Veilthorn, and the book’s subtitle tells you exactly what it intends to be about.

It has a 3.83 average across 758 Goodreads ratings and a very low 4% did-not-finish rate, which for a dark romance is a sign that readers know what they picked up. What splits them is not the premise. It is whether the book does anything with it.

What Is Precious Red Pearls About?

This is a dark paranormal romance at novella length — 184 pages — with a Victorian gothic register and an ownership dynamic at the centre. The subgenre it belongs to is captivity romance, which has its own conventions and its own readership, and the important thing to say up front is that this book is not pretending otherwise. It is titled and marketed as a dark sapphic captivity romance.

Pearl is introduced through what has been done to her: she has been bought. Lady Veilthorn is introduced through appetite — she is the reason there is a market, and the book is considerably more interested in her than in anyone else. What follows is a hate-to-love arc inside a house where one woman owns the other, compressed into a very short span. The brevity is a real choice, and it is both the book’s best decision and the root of the complaint most readers end up making.

What Makes This Dark Sapphic Vampire Romance Work

Lady Veilthorn: The most-praised element by a distance. Readers reach for screen villainesses to describe her — Maleficent, Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil — and she is the reason several of them finished a book they otherwise had reservations about.
The prose about hunger: Readers single out the writing specifically where it deals with appetite and monstrousness. One calls that material an outright A-plus. This is not a book with an editing problem, which sets it apart from most of the indie titles on our list.
The atmosphere: Gothic, Victorian, contained. The single setting does real work and the book never leaves it long enough to lose the mood.
The length: Under two hundred pages. Several readers name the brevity as a virtue — “a quick read but so enjoyable and unique” — and for a premise this heavy, not outstaying its welcome is a genuine strength.
It resolves: There is an ending and an epilogue, and book two moves to different leads entirely. You are not being held for a sequel.

Book Synopsis

Roseshire County keeps its arrangements quiet. There are households in it that require a particular kind of servant, and there is a trade that supplies them, and everyone involved has agreed not to describe it plainly. Pearl arrives at Lady Veilthorn’s door as the product of that trade, having had no part in the decision.

Veilthorn is old, rich and entirely unembarrassed about what she is. She has done this before. Pearl is not the first girl bought for this house and, by the terms of the arrangement, will not be the last. What she is is unexpectedly difficult — not defiant in any way that would be useful, but present in a way Veilthorn had not budgeted for.

The book stays inside the house and inside that imbalance. Pearl has no leverage and no exit, and the thing that develops between them develops anyway. Whether that is a romance or something the arrangement produced is the question the novella sets itself, and it is the question its readers have spent two years arguing about.

My Review

Hawthorne can write, and specifically she can write hunger. The passages dealing with Veilthorn’s appetite and her monstrousness are the strongest thing here — readers name them directly, one of them with an unqualified A-plus — and they are why this book stands slightly apart from the indie shelf it sits on. Nobody in the reviews complains about typos, grammar or an unedited manuscript, which after several books on this list is worth saying out loud.

Lady Veilthorn is the other reason to read it. She is the rare vampire in this subgenre written as genuinely frightening rather than merely powerful, and the comparisons readers reach for are telling — not other books, but Maleficent and Lady Dimitrescu. She is a screen villainess in prose, and the novella is smart enough to know she is what people came for.

Where it struggles is the thing the subtitle promises to handle. Five independent reviewers say the consent dynamic is not dealt with, and the specific complaint is more precise than a general objection to captivity romance: it is that Pearl is written as naive to the point of childlikeness, which pushes the imbalance past the register the genre operates in. One reader says the slavery “removes her ability to give informed consent.” Another says Pearl was “too naive and childlike, it was creepy to me.” Three more find the ending rushed, and three say the world around the house is thin. Against all of that sits one five-star reader who names the same thing and shrugs: “very spicy, and highly problematic (but you know that going in).” That is the honest dark-romance position and it is worth weighing.

One thing to reset, and it is the most useful sentence in this review. There are no published content warnings for this book anywhere outside its own front matter. StoryGraph carries none — not author-submitted, not reader-submitted. A reviewer confirms the author does include a list inside the book, but no source reproduces it. So a reader arriving at this novella from a recommendation gets no advance warning of anything, in a book about slavery, a substantial age gap, and a woman turned into a vampire without being asked. That is a gap the book did not create but does not help with either.

My honest note: A better-written book than its Goodreads average suggests and a more complicated one than its marketing admits. If captivity romance is a genre you read, this is a good one. If it is a premise you are willing to try, this is not the book that will handle it gently.

Element	In Precious Red Pearls
Central relationship	Pearl & Lady Veilthorn — a girl bought as a blood slave and the vampire who owns the house she is delivered to
Core tropes	Dark captivity romance, blood slave, hate to lovers, age gap, obsession, monster-lover
Setting	Roseshire County — a Victorian-flavoured gothic world, almost entirely inside one house
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, though one reader rates the intensity considerably lower
Series	Roseshire County book 1 of 2 — resolves with an epilogue; book 2 The Dark Rose follows new leads in the same world
Content notes	Reader-reported only, because no platform carries a warning list for this book: slavery and ownership of a person, captivity, blood-drinking and feeding, a character turned vampire without her consent, a substantial age gap, and on-page sex including a period sex scene. The author includes a warning list inside the book itself, which no source reproduces

How Dark and Spicy Is Precious Red Pearls?

A 5/5 on our scale. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and the frequency is well supported — one five-star reader reports “lots and lots of quality spicy content.” I should flag a genuine dispute, though: at least one reader rates the intensity at 2.5 out of 5, so what is firmly evidenced here is volume rather than peak explicitness, and the book is short enough that the two can be hard to separate.

The element to name in advance is not a kink but the frame around all of it. This is a captivity romance in which one woman owns the other outright, and five reviewers say the book does not resolve what that means for anything that happens between them. The aggravating factor readers keep naming is not the ownership itself but Pearl’s characterisation — written young and naive enough that two reviewers found the dynamic uncomfortable in a way the genre does not usually produce. Read that as information rather than as a verdict: dark romance readers accept premises exactly like this one routinely. If you want the same band with the power question handled more deliberately, The Princess’s Pet and House of Crimson Hearts both sit at 5/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read dark romance on purpose and know the conventions, you want a vampire written as genuinely frightening, you value good prose over a big world, and you want to be finished in an evening.

You may want to skip it if: you need a captivity premise to be interrogated rather than played straight, a heroine written very young in a power-imbalanced dynamic will bother you, you want the world outside the house to exist, or you rely on published content warnings before starting a dark book.

In short: the best-written book on our list that most needs you to know what you are getting into.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no professional coverage of this book at all — nothing at The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks, The Lesbrary, Bookish Sapphic or Jude in the Stars, and I Heart SapphFic carries a listing rather than a review. There is no verifiable BookTok activity and no author website, newsletter or social presence I could find; Holly Hawthorne joined Goodreads in January 2024 and has published these two books and nothing else. There is no audiobook in any edition. What that leaves is a book with 758 Goodreads ratings and essentially no infrastructure around it — which makes the reader record the only record, and worth reading carefully.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Lady Veilthorn, first and by a wide margin. The comparisons are consistently to screen villainesses rather than to other books, which is a real signal about what she is doing on the page. Then the prose about hunger and monstrousness, which readers name as the strongest writing in the book. Then the gothic atmosphere and the tight single setting. And then the length — several readers treat “a quick read” as a compliment here, which for a heavy premise it is. One reader’s summary, “deliciously dark,” is about as concise as the appeal gets.

What readers argue about and complain about: Consent and agency, above everything — five independent reviewers say the captivity dynamic goes unhandled, and their objection is specific rather than general. It is not that the book has a slave narrative; it is that Pearl is written naive to a degree that makes the imbalance read differently than intended, and two reviewers use words like creepy about it rather than about the premise. Second: three readers find the ending rushed, and the epilogue in particular is the single most-disliked element in the whole book — a reader who otherwise enjoyed it says she has never hated anything more. Third: three find the world outside the house underdeveloped, which is what a 184-page book buys you. The dissenting voice is worth quoting properly, because it is the most defensible position anyone takes: one five-star reader calls the romance “very spicy, and highly problematic (but you know that going in).” Ten per cent of ratings sit below three stars, and the 4% did-not-finish rate says most people who start this book know what it is.

The series question everyone should ask first: this book resolves and you are not committed to anything. Roseshire County runs to two books, and The Dark Rose — published October 2024 — follows Persis and a different vampire in the same world, with its own blurb calling it a standalone. The ratings are near-identical, 3.83 against 3.85, though book one carries more than five times the readership. Worth knowing before you go on: romance.io bands book two at 3/5 rather than 5/5, so it is a considerably cooler read. No third book has been announced anywhere, and with no author website or newsletter to check, that is genuinely all that can be said about what comes next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Precious Red Pearls have a happy ending?

It resolves, with an epilogue, and book two moves to different leads — so nothing is left hanging. Be aware that the epilogue is the most-disliked element in the book among readers, and that Pearl’s transformation happens without her choosing it.

How dark is it, and does it handle the consent question?

Very dark, and five independent reviewers say it does not. Pearl is owned outright, and the objection readers raise is that she is written young and naive enough to make the imbalance uncomfortable rather than charged. One five-star reader accepts it as genre convention.

How spicy is Precious Red Pearls?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and readers report a high volume of content. One reader rates the intensity considerably lower at 2.5/5, so frequency is better evidenced here than peak explicitness.

Are there content warnings for Precious Red Pearls?

Inside the book, yes — a reviewer confirms the author includes a list. Outside it, none: StoryGraph carries no warnings at all for this title, author-submitted or reader-submitted, which is unusual for a captivity romance and worth knowing before you start.

Do I need to read The Dark Rose too?

No. Roseshire County book two follows different leads in the same world and is marketed as a standalone. It rates almost identically at 3.85 but is a much cooler book — romance.io bands it 3/5 rather than 5/5.

Is there a Precious Red Pearls audiobook?

No. Only Kindle and paperback editions exist, and no audio edition has been announced on any platform. If you need audio, this one is not available in it.

If You Loved Precious Red Pearls, Read These Next

No reader in our sweep offered a book-to-book comparison for this one — the comparisons are all to screen villainesses — so these are ours, on stated axes. If the owned-and-kept dynamic is the draw, The Princess’s Pet is the closest match on the list at the same 5/5 heat, with the warning that it does not resolve in one volume. If you want the darkness with more plot around it, Contract Bound puts a hunter opposite the vampire. And if what you actually wanted was a possessive vampire relationship examined rather than staged, A Dowry of Blood is the book that does it — at much lower heat and much higher intensity.

For more in this register, browse our best sapphic vampire romance books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Precious Red Pearls is a better-made book than the shelf it sits on would predict. The prose about appetite is the strongest writing on our sapphic vampire list, Lady Veilthorn is the only vampire here who reads as genuinely dangerous rather than simply powerful, the gothic setting is controlled, and at 184 pages it costs you an evening. It is also a captivity romance whose central power question five readers say goes unanswered, with a heroine written young enough to make two of them uncomfortable, an epilogue nobody liked, and no published content warnings anywhere outside its own pages. Dark romance readers will be fine. Everyone else should read this paragraph twice. Check Precious Red Pearls on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Precious Red Pearls ranks as a short gothic sapphic captivity romance — genuinely well written about hunger and carried by its villainess, unresolved about its own consent question, and best approached by readers who already read dark romance rather than by readers willing to try one.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

✓ 3.83 across 758 Goodreads ratings
✓ 4% did-not-finish, unusually low
✓ Prose named as a strength, not a flaw
✓ Five reviewers say consent goes unhandled

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Hate-to-love arc inside one house
✓ Veilthorn’s obsession genuinely charged
✓ Contained setting keeps the pressure on
✓ Ownership never resolved as a question

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

✓ Lady Veilthorn is the whole draw
✓ Compared to Maleficent and Lady Dimitrescu
✓ Villainess written as actually frightening
✓ Two readers find Pearl uncomfortably childlike

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ Hunger and monstrousness draw direct praise
✓ No editing complaints anywhere
✓ Gothic register held for 184 pages
✓ Three readers find the world thin

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Atmosphere does real emotional work
✓ Powerlessness is felt, not stated
✓ Short enough to stay intense
✓ Three readers find the ending rushed

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io top band, explicit and plentiful
✓ High volume across a short book
✓ Feeding written into the sensuality
✓ One reader rates the intensity 2.5/5

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5

✓ Resolves; book two moves to new leads
✓ No cliffhanger and no commitment
✓ Epilogue closes the arc formally
✓ The epilogue is the most-disliked element

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

✓ Under 200 pages, an evening to revisit
✓ Veilthorn worth returning to
✓ Companion novel in the same world
✓ No audiobook and a thin wider world

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August 18, 2026

Deadly Kiss Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A dystopian blood-draft premise with real teeth and a properly satisfying ending, badly let down by a manuscript that eight separate reviewers say was never edited.

Best for: Readers who want fated mates and a protective vampire at full heat, who care more about premise and payoff than prose, and who are happy to start a series at its weakest book.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.79 Goodreads average against 3.3 on StoryGraph, with eight reviewers naming the same editing problem)

Tropes: Vampire romance, fated mates, human blood draft, forced match, protectiveness, hurt/comfort, interracial romance, royal family, first in series, insta-love.

Deadly Kiss by Ariel Marie is the first book of The Immortal Reign, published by RNB Publishing in October 2021, and it runs on a premise the rest of our sapphic vampire list does not attempt — humans are drafted into service as a blood supply, and Quinn Hogan’s name comes up for a vampire princess who was not expecting to find her mate at the end of a conscription order.

It has a 3.79 average across 1,111 Goodreads ratings and a 3.3 on StoryGraph, which is a wide gap for the same book. The reason is not the story. Eight independent reviewers name the same craft problem, and two of them report something specific enough to be worth knowing before you buy.

What Is Deadly Kiss About?

This is a paranormal romance built on a dystopian frame rather than a hidden-world one. Vampires are not concealed here; they govern, and the arrangement between them and the human population is formalised into a draft. That structure does the thing court intrigue usually has to work for — it makes the power difference between the two leads a matter of law rather than temperament.

Quinn is introduced through what has already been decided for her: her name, her assignment, and a body that other people have a claim on. Velika Riskel is introduced through what she assumes, which is that this is administration. She is one of three sisters in a ruling family, and the series that follows gives each of them a book. The mating bond arrives early and the rest of the novel is about what two people do with a certainty neither of them asked for.

What Makes This Sapphic Vampire Fated-Mates Romance Work

The draft premise: The most-praised element. A legally compelled blood supply gives the book stakes that exist before the romance does, and readers name it as the reason they kept going.
The fated-mates payoff: Readers who like this trope report it delivering. The bond is not a shortcut here so much as the problem — it lands on two women who have no framework for it.
Protectiveness: Velika’s protectiveness toward Quinn is the emotional engine and the thing enthusiasts name after the premise.
The heat: romance.io’s top band, with the biting written into it rather than beside it — blood is flagged as graphic content by readers, and one reviewer specifically names the blood play.
It resolves properly: Book one ends with the couple together, and the series confirms it — by book two they are mated and expecting a child. No cliffhanger, no hostage-taking.

Book Synopsis

The world Quinn Hogan lives in has already made its arrangement with the vampires who run it. Humans are drafted, assigned, and expected to comply, and the paperwork is very tidy about what that means. Quinn has spent her life keeping her head down and hoping the system would look past her. It does not.

Velika Riskel is one of three sisters in a ruling family and has responsibilities she has never had reason to question. The draft is a mechanism she has always been on the correct side of. Then Quinn is delivered to her, and the bond that announces itself is not something Velika has a protocol for — she has spent centuries not expecting to find a mate, and certainly not like this.

What the book does with that is refuse to pretend the setup is romantic. Quinn arrives frightened, with reason. Velika has power she cannot give back and a family with its own view of what a human is for. The mating bond insists on something both women have to decide whether they want independently of it. Around them, the politics that made the draft possible have not stopped moving.

My Review

The premise is genuinely good and I want to give it its due before the rest of this. Most vampire romance has to manufacture a reason for a human and a vampire to be stuck with each other. Marie starts from a society that has legislated it — a blood draft, a forced match, paperwork — and that means the power imbalance is structural rather than a personality trait. It also means Quinn’s fear is legitimate rather than coy, which is a harder and more interesting place to start a romance from. Readers name the premise first when they explain why they finished.

The second strength is that it pays off. Fated mates is a trope that lives or dies on whether the bond feels like a problem or a shortcut, and here it is written as a problem for long enough to matter. The protectiveness that follows is the part enthusiasts name most often after the premise, and the resolution is real — book one ends with Quinn and Velika together, which book two confirms by giving them a child. In a subgenre where roughly a third of the titles we have reviewed end mid-story, that counts.

Where it struggles is that the manuscript reads unedited, and this is not a minority view — it is the single most repeated criticism in the reviews, from eight independent reviewers. One puts it as “the prose was so bad it felt unedited.” Another says it reads like low-tier fanfiction. And two separate readers report the same specific failure: character names swapped mid-scene, so the wrong woman is doing the thing. That is not a stylistic quibble, it is a proofreading failure, and it is why the StoryGraph average sits nearly half a point under the Goodreads one. Around it: four readers report insta-love without earned tension, three find the plot predictable, and two say the sex crowds out the story.

One thing to weigh before you start, flagged by a single reviewer and worth surfacing anyway. She reads the first sex scene as non-consensual given the state Quinn is in — frightened, drafted, carrying trauma. No other reviewer raises it and I am not going to inflate one voice into a consensus, but for a book whose entire premise is compelled service, a reader deserves to know the objection exists before page one rather than after it.

My honest note: A four-star idea inside a two-star manuscript. If typos and swapped names will end the book for you, start with book two instead — the series climbs steeply, and you will not lose anything you need.

Element	In Deadly Kiss
Central relationship	Quinn Hogan & Velika Riskel — a drafted human and the vampire princess she is assigned to, who turn out to be fated mates
Core tropes	Fated mates, human blood draft, forced match, protectiveness, hurt/comfort, insta-love
Setting	A society where vampires govern and humans are conscripted as a blood supply, and the Riskel ruling family
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, with blood play written into the sex
Series	The Immortal Reign book 1 of 4 published — each book a new couple; book 1 ends on an HEA
Content notes	Gore, graphic sexual content, violence, blood and kidnapping flagged at graphic weight; sexual assault, sexual violence and sexual harassment at moderate weight; grief and death of a parent at minor weight. One reader reads the first sex scene as non-consensual given the heroine’s state. Reader warning counts here are thin — one reader each

How Spicy Is Deadly Kiss?

A full 5/5, and this is a correction to what we previously published on our hub page. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit and plentiful,” its top band — not the four we had it at. Readers agree, and two of them complain about the volume rather than the intensity, describing pages and pages of it.

The element worth naming is the biting, because it is the thing this subgenre’s readers actually ask about. It is not decorative here: blood is flagged as graphic content by readers, one reviewer specifically names the blood play, and no reviewer describes the feeding as mechanical or plot-only. That makes it erotic rather than functional — also a correction to our earlier hub listing. If you want this band elsewhere, The Princess’s Pet and House of Crimson Hearts both sit at the same 5/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a power imbalance that is built into the world rather than into a personality, you read fated mates for the bond as a problem, you want explicit heat with real blood play, and you want a resolved ending.

You may want to skip it if: unedited prose ends a book for you, swapped character names would break the spell, you need attraction to build rather than announce itself, or a compelled-service premise is not something you want in a romance.

In short: the best premise on our list attached to the worst copy-editing, and the series gets much better immediately after.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no professional coverage of this book anywhere — nothing at The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks, The Lesbrary, Bookish Sapphic or Jude in the Stars, and I Heart SapphFic carries a listing rather than a review. There is no independent BookTok either; searches return the author’s own promotional posts and nothing else. What is actually moving the book is a dual-narrator audiobook from RNB Publishing, released June 2022 at 8 hours 3 minutes, and a series that readers are working through in order. One oddity worth flagging: the Libro.fm listing carries an AI-narration flag, which sits strangely against two named human narrators. Sample it before you commit.

Prefer audio? Listen to Deadly Kiss on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The draft premise, first — it is the thing readers name when explaining why they stayed with a book they had complaints about. Then the fated-mates payoff, from readers who came specifically for that trope and got what they wanted. Then Velika’s protectiveness. Then the spice, which several five-star readers treat as a headline feature. One reader calls it a “unique take on a familiar paranormal trope,” which is a fair summary of the split — the premise is fresh, the execution is not. On representation: romance.io tags the book for a Black main character and the author markets it as an interracial sapphic romance, but I should be straight with you that I could not find a single reader review engaging with that, on any platform. The tags and the marketing are the only firm evidence, and I am not going to invent reader sentiment that does not exist.

What readers argue about and complain about: Editing, above everything, and it is not close. Eight independent reviewers name unpolished prose, grammar or an unedited manuscript, and two of them report character names being swapped mid-scene — a proofreading failure rather than a style preference. Second: four readers report insta-love with no tension built before the bond arrives. Third: three find the plot predictable. Then two on the sex-to-story ratio and two on the audio narration. One reviewer raises a consent objection to the first sex scene, uncorroborated by anyone else. Thirteen and a half per cent of ratings sit below three stars, and the StoryGraph average of 3.3 against Goodreads’ 3.79 is where the craft complaint shows up most clearly. One genuine outlier worth naming: a three-and-a-half-star reviewer concedes the editing is bad and rates the romance a success anyway, which is the most honest summary of this book anyone has written.

The series question everyone should ask first: book one resolves, and this is now settled — our hub page previously listed the ending as unverified, and it should not have. Quinn and Velika end together, and book two shows them mated with a child on the way. The Immortal Reign is structured so it has to work that way: four books published, each following a new couple, with the first three covering the three Riskel sisters and a fifth listed for 2026. The more useful number is the trajectory. Book one sits at 3.79 across 1,111 ratings; Iced Heart at 4.19, Royal Bite at 4.31, Wicked Allure at 4.56. This is the most-read and the weakest book in its own series, and the gap is half a star. One more thing worth correcting: this is not Ariel Marie’s first sapphic work. Her Nightstar Shifters series ran to six F/F books starting in 2020, a year before this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Deadly Kiss end on a cliffhanger?

No. Quinn and Velika end the book together, and book two confirms it by showing them mated and expecting a child. Each book in The Immortal Reign follows a new couple, so nothing is held back.

How spicy is Deadly Kiss?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and the biting is written into the sex rather than beside it. Two readers complain about the volume rather than the intensity.

Do I need to read The Immortal Reign in order?

No. Each of the four published books follows a different couple, with earlier leads recurring as secondaries. If the editing on book one puts you off, starting at Iced Heart costs you very little.

Is the writing really that rough?

Eight independent reviewers say so, and two report character names swapped mid-scene. That is a proofreading failure rather than a matter of taste, and it is the main reason StoryGraph rates the book nearly half a star below Goodreads.

Is there a Deadly Kiss audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Ann Vaughn and Xenia Willacey for RNB Publishing, running 8 hours 3 minutes, released June 2022. It is on Libro.fm, though that listing also carries an AI-narration flag which sits oddly against two named narrators, so sample it first.

Is this Ariel Marie’s first sapphic book?

No. Her Nightstar Shifters series began in 2020 and runs to six F/F books, and she has since written a third sapphic series, The Montana Grizzlies. She has a substantial paranormal backlist across both F/F and M/F.

If You Loved Deadly Kiss, Read These Next

No reader in our sweep supplied a read-alike for this one, so these are ours, chosen on specific axes. If the claimed-human dynamic is what held you, The Princess’s Pet runs the same engine at the same 5/5 heat with a royal court around it — though it does not resolve in one volume. If it was the ruling-family politics, House of Crimson Hearts gives you a vampire aristocracy with a trials plot attached. And if you want the vampire-and-human bond written with cleaner prose, Will It Hurt? is the better-made book.

For more in this register, browse our best sapphic vampire romance books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Deadly Kiss has the most interesting premise on our sapphic vampire list. A legislated blood draft makes the power gap between its two women structural rather than decorative, the fated-mates bond is written as a problem before it becomes a comfort, the heat is at the top of the scale with the biting properly inside it, and — the thing a third of this subgenre cannot manage — it finishes. It is also a manuscript that eight readers say was never edited, with two of them catching the wrong character’s name in the wrong place. The series climbs half a star immediately afterwards and never looks back. Read it for the idea, and forgive the file. Check Deadly Kiss on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Deadly Kiss ranks as an indie sapphic vampire romance with a dystopian engine — a genuinely strong premise with a resolution that lands, badly served by its own copy-editing, and best approached as the entry point to a series that gets substantially better after it.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5

✓ 3.79 across 1,111 Goodreads ratings
✓ 3.3 on StoryGraph, a wide gap
✓ Premise and resolution both deliver
✓ Eight reviewers name the editing

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5

✓ Fated-mates bond written as a problem
✓ Protectiveness carries the middle
✓ Power gap is structural, not stylistic
✓ Four readers report unearned insta-love

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Quinn’s fear is legitimate, not coy
✓ Velika has a family with its own agenda
✓ Three sisters set up a whole series
✓ Interiority thins once the bond lands

Writing ★★★☆☆ 2.7/5

✓ Draft premise cleanly established
✓ Fast-paced by reader consensus
✓ Eight reviewers report unedited prose
✓ Two report character names swapped

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5

✓ Conscription gives real pre-romance stakes
✓ Protectiveness lands for most readers
✓ Consequences exist outside the couple
✓ Predictable by three readers’ account

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io top band, explicit and plentiful
✓ Blood play written into the sex
✓ Blood flagged as graphic by readers
✓ One reader disputes the first scene’s consent

Ending ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

✓ HEA, confirmed by book two
✓ Couple mated with a child by the sequel
✓ Series structure rules out a cliffhanger
✓ Resolution arrives without much resistance

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

✓ Dual-narrator audiobook at eight hours
✓ Series climbs steeply after this
✓ Sets up three sisters worth following
✓ Prose gives little reason to return

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August 18, 2026

For Love and Blood and Fury Review — Is It Worth Reading?

For Love and Blood and Fury by J.J. Arias book cover

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Verdict: The only sapphic vampire romance where the throuple is genuinely a throuple rather than a couple with a guest, sold as a complete romance and ending on a cliffhanger the blurb never mentions.

Best for: Readers who want a three-way relationship written with all three sides load-bearing, at the top of the heat scale, and who are willing to buy both books at once.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.1/5 — a 4.38 Goodreads average with under 3% of ratings below three stars, against a cliffhanger the packaging hides)

Tropes: Vampire romance, throuple and why-choose, witches, forced proximity, second chances, age gap, found family, class difference, insta-love, dark paranormal.

For Love and Blood and Fury by J.J. Arias is the first half of the Lilith’s Legacy duology, published by Uphaus Press in January 2025, and it is the only book on our sapphic vampire list built around three women rather than two — a vampire, a witch and a healer, in a Miami run by a vampire cartel and haunted by the mythology of Lilith herself.

It holds a 4.38 average across 1,203 Goodreads ratings, and the star distribution is remarkable: fewer than three per cent of those ratings sit below three stars. That is the strongest reader consensus of any book we have reviewed in this subgenre. It is also, according to four separate five-star reviewers, a cliffhanger — and the blurb does not say so.

What Is For Love and Blood and Fury About?

This is a paranormal romance in an urban-fantasy frame, set in a Miami where the supernatural has organised itself along cartel lines and the oldest vampire mythology in the world — Lilith, not Dracula — is the operating system. That choice matters: it puts the book in a lineage that is female from the beginning rather than one where women were added later.

The structure is the interesting part. Elena, Zuri and Marisol are introduced as three separate problems rather than a couple plus a complication, and the book runs third-person dual point of view across them. What that buys is the thing readers keep naming: you watch every pairing inside the trio form on its own terms, so by the time all three are in a room the relationship has three real sides instead of one and a half.

What Makes This Sapphic Vampire Throuple Romance Work

The throuple is actually a throuple: I went looking specifically for a reviewer arguing that one pairing is the real romance and the third woman is decoration. There isn’t one. In a subgenre where that complaint is near-universal, zero dissent across 147 text reviews is the finding of this sweep.
Every pairing is written separately: Jude in the Stars names all four relationships — Elena and Zuri, Elena and Marisol, Zuri and Marisol, and the three together — and credits the book with tracking how each affects the others.
No third-act breakup: Readers name this approvingly and by name. The book declines the manufactured separation the genre usually insists on, which for a three-hander is a structural choice rather than a shortcut.
The Lilith mythology: The worldbuilding is praised specifically for going back to Lilith rather than the standard vampire canon, and for building the Miami cartel structure on top of it.
The heat: romance.io’s top band, and nobody in the reviews says it under-delivers. The only argument is about how much of the book it occupies.

Book Synopsis

Miami’s supernatural world is not hidden so much as organised. Vampires run it the way anyone runs a city with money in it — by arrangement, by threat, and by keeping the older stories quiet. Zuri has been part of that arrangement long enough to have stopped asking what it costs.

Elena and Marisol arrive at it from outside. One has a power she has not been taught to use and the other has a history in this city that has not finished with her. What brings the three of them together is not attraction in the first instance; it is a threat none of them can meet alone, and an old mythology — Lilith’s, not the one in the films — that has started moving again.

The book spends its length on the negotiation between them: what each woman is prepared to want out loud, what she is prepared to share, and whether three people can hold a thing that was designed for two. The Lilith plot escalates around them at its own pace. What it is building toward is not a choice between two women. It is whether all three can survive being right about each other.

My Review

The throuple works, and I want to be specific about why that is worth leading with. Almost every polyamorous romance I have read for this site is a couple romance with a third person attached, and readers say so loudly when it happens. Here they don’t. One puts it as “no one feeling like a third wheel”; a reviewer at Jamie Geeks Out says the dynamic reads as a throuple rather than a couple with a third; Jude in the Stars breaks out all four relationships by name. Across 147 text reviews I could not find a single voice arguing otherwise. That is not a small technical achievement — it is the hardest thing this structure asks of a writer.

The second strength is the mythology. Arias goes back to Lilith rather than to the standard vampire canon, drops it into a Miami organised like a cartel, and lets the two systems explain each other. Readers name the worldbuilding as a headline pleasure, and there is a Cuban texture running underneath it that the author has talked about deliberately — one reviewer says the little mentions of Cuba leave her “craving a café con leche,” which is the kind of specific response that only real detail produces.

Where it struggles is the ratio. This is the dominant reader complaint and it is unusual in shape: up to nine independent reviewers say the sex crowds out the plot, and they are not clustered in the low ratings — they are spread across three-star and five-star reviews alike. One reader puts it at “almost literally half the book being sex scenes.” Another, rating it three stars, says she “left this book underfed.” Two readers separately find the three-way choreography hard to follow on the page. And here is the gap worth naming: the one full editorial review I could read raises it only as a gentle aside — Jude in the Stars wishes for “more getting to know one another and maybe a tiny bit less sex” — while the other professional coverage identifies no criticisms at all.

One expectation to reset, and it is the big one. The publisher’s copy sells this as a searing paranormal romance and says nothing about the ending. It is a cliffhanger. Four separate five-star reviewers warn about it because the marketing doesn’t — one simply writes, “Oh, what a crackin’ cliffhanger!” The saving grace is that the duology is finished: Blood from the Marrow published in October 2025 and rates higher than this book does. Buy both or wait.

My honest note: The best three-way romance in sapphic paranormal, and half a story. If you want the relationship written properly, this is where it is done. Just do not start it expecting to be finished at the end.

Element	In For Love and Blood and Fury
Central relationship	Elena, Zuri & Marisol — a throuple in which all three pairings are written separately and none is decorative
Core tropes	Throuple and why-choose, vampires and witches, forced proximity, second chances, age gap, found family
Setting	Miami, a supernatural underworld organised on cartel lines, and the mythology of Lilith
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, with group scenes and fem-dom elements
Series	Lilith’s Legacy book 1 of 2 — ends on a cliffhanger; the duology completes in Blood from the Marrow (October 2025)
Content notes	Graphic sexual content including group scenes, blood, murder; violence, body horror and injury detail at moderate weight; gun violence, misogyny and war at minor weight; graphic violence and death/grief also flagged; substantial age gap between the vampire lead and the others

How Spicy Is For Love and Blood and Fury?

A full 5/5. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and the tags include fem-dom and ménage. No reader in the sweep says the heat under-delivers — the entire argument runs the other way, with several putting the sexual content at roughly half the book.

The element worth naming in advance is choreography rather than content. Two reviewers independently report that the three-way scenes are hard to follow — who is doing what to whom becomes genuinely unclear at points, and one calls them clunky. That is a specific, actionable warning for anyone who finds spatial confusion in a sex scene more distracting than arousing. Beyond that, no reviewer flags kink content outside the tags above. If you want this band elsewhere, The Princess’s Pet and House of Crimson Hearts both sit at the same 5/5 — and both, like this one, decline to finish in a single volume.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a polyamorous romance where all three people matter, you read for worldbuilding as much as for the couple, you want heat at the very top of the scale, and you are happy to read a duology back to back.

You may want to skip it if: you need a book to resolve on its own, you want plot and spice in a more even ratio, three-way scenes are hard for you to track, or an undisclosed cliffhanger is the kind of thing that makes you put an author down.

In short: the genre’s best-balanced throuple, delivered as the first half of a story.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

The professional record here is thinner than the reader response but it is not empty, which makes this book unusual among the indie titles on our list. Jude in the Stars gave it four stars in March 2025. The Lesbian Review covered both books, though its text was not reachable for this sweep. Jamie Geeks Out ran a rave and, separately, an author interview in July 2025. There is no Publishers Weekly, no Kirkus, nothing from The Lesbrary, LezReviewBooks or Bookish Sapphic, and no title-specific BookTok activity I could verify either way. What is genuinely moving the book is a Tantor Media audiobook — Kingsley Rose narrating 12 hours 44 minutes, released June 2025 — which for a self-published author is the professional distribution step, and which arrived five months after the print edition.

Prefer audio? Listen to For Love and Blood and Fury on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The balance of the throuple, first and most consistently, and it is the rare case where a marketing promise survives contact with readers intact. Then the heat and the chemistry, described by one reader as among the spiciest she has encountered. Then the absence of a third-act breakup, which readers name approvingly and by name — they noticed it was missing and were glad. Then the Lilith mythology and the Miami setting. Zuri gets singled out as the standout of the three. And there is a quieter strand around the Cuban detail: Arias is Cuban-American and writes Cuban leads, and while only one reader engages it substantively in review, she engages it warmly. The author has spoken directly about wanting intersectional stories written from lived experience, and it shows in the texture rather than in the plot.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ratio of sex to story, above everything — up to nine independent voices, and the telling detail is that they are distributed across the star range rather than concentrated at the bottom. One three-star reader writes that there were “way too many sex scenes, it got boring after a while”; another puts the figure at half the book. Second: two readers find the three-way scenes clunky or hard to follow, one of them while giving the book five stars. Third: two or three report thin characterisation underneath the heat. Then the cliffhanger, which four readers raise — and here is the thing worth noticing, they raise it as a warning to other readers rather than as a criticism, because they all still rated it five stars. Under three per cent of all ratings sit below three stars, so the minority report here is genuinely small; what makes the sex-to-plot complaint significant is not its volume but its distribution.

The series question everyone should ask first: this book does not resolve, and the packaging does not tell you. It is book one of two, and it ends unresolved — that is a cliffhanger by any reasonable definition, and readers supply the warning the blurb omits. The good news is that the wait is over: Lilith’s Legacy is a complete duology, and Blood from the Marrow published in October 2025 at 4.54 across 576 ratings, with the same narrator and publisher for the audio. The sequel outperforming the opener is consistent with a first book that spends its length building. For context on Arias herself: she has 38 titles and a 4.28 career average, so 4.38 is above her own line but outside her top tier — eight of her books rate higher. And this is not a departure into vampires, it is a return to them. Her Dusk Queen series ran from 2018 to 2019, and every book in it rates below this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does For Love and Blood and Fury end on a cliffhanger?

Yes, and the publisher’s description does not mention it. Four separate five-star reviewers warn about it in their reviews. The story completes in book two, Blood from the Marrow, which is already out.

Is the Lilith’s Legacy series finished?

Yes. It is a duology, and Blood from the Marrow published in October 2025, rated 4.54 across 576 Goodreads ratings. Both books have Tantor audiobooks narrated by Kingsley Rose.

Is the throuple actually equal, or is one pairing the real romance?

Genuinely equal, and this is the book’s strongest claim. Across 147 text reviews we could not find one reader arguing that any of the three is a third wheel, and reviewers name all four relationship combinations as separately developed.

How spicy is For Love and Blood and Fury?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, with ménage and fem-dom tagged. Several readers estimate the sexual content at around half the book, and two find the three-way scenes hard to follow.

Is there a For Love and Blood and Fury audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Kingsley Rose for Tantor Media, running 12 hours 44 minutes, released 24 June 2025. It is stocked on Libro.fm, so you can buy it in a way that supports an independent bookshop.

Is this J.J. Arias’s first vampire book?

No. Her Dusk Queen series ran from 2018 to 2019 across five works, so this is a return to vampires after six years rather than a new direction. It is also her best-rated paranormal to date.

If You Loved For Love and Blood and Fury, Read These Next

If the vampire-and-witch pairing is what drew you, Will It Hurt? runs that combination through a contemporary city with a resurrection plot attached. If it was the court-and-cartel power structure, House of Crimson Hearts gives you a vampire aristocracy at the same 5/5 heat — and, fair warning, the same refusal to finish in one book. And if the claimed-and-kept dynamic is the appeal, The Princess’s Pet is the closest match on the list.

For more in this register, browse our best sapphic vampire romance books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

For Love and Blood and Fury does the hardest thing in polyamorous romance and makes it look ordinary. Three women, three real pairings, no third wheel, no manufactured breakup, and a Lilith mythology that gives the whole thing somewhere to stand. It is also front-loaded with sex to a degree that nine readers thought worth mentioning, occasionally hard to follow in the bedroom, and — the thing the packaging should have told you — only half a story. Under three per cent of its readers rated it below three stars, which tells you how little any of that mattered to them. Buy it with book two. Check For Love and Blood and Fury on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, For Love and Blood and Fury ranks as a high-heat sapphic paranormal throuple romance — the most genuinely equal three-way relationship in the subgenre, undercut by a cliffhanger its own blurb conceals, and best approached with book two already bought.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

✓ 4.38 across 1,203 Goodreads ratings
✓ Under 3% of ratings below three stars
✓ 4.14 on StoryGraph, 7% did-not-finish
✓ Undisclosed cliffhanger ending

Romance ★★★★★ 4.5/5

✓ All three pairings separately developed
✓ Zero reviewers report a third wheel
✓ No manufactured third-act breakup
✓ Insta-love pace flagged by romance.io

Characters ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ Zuri singled out as the standout
✓ Three distinct voices across dual POV
✓ Cuban texture written from lived experience
✓ Three readers report thin interiority

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.8/5

✓ Lilith mythology built rather than borrowed
✓ Miami cartel structure carries the world
✓ No editing complaints in the sweep
✓ Two readers find three-way scenes unclear

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Declines the third-act breakup entirely
✓ Each pairing carries its own weight
✓ Lilith backdrop raises the stakes
✓ One reader left “underfed” by the story

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io top band, explicit and plentiful
✓ Ménage and fem-dom on the page
✓ Readers estimate half the book
✓ Choreography confuses two reviewers

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.1/5

✓ Duology is complete, so no waiting
✓ Sequel rates higher at 4.54
✓ Readers warn each other about it
✓ Cliffhanger, undisclosed by the blurb

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Tantor audiobook is a strong second pass
✓ Duology reads well back to back
✓ Worldbuilding rewards a return
✓ Cliffhanger blunts a standalone reread

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August 18, 2026

Sun Poisoning Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Sun Poisoning by Phoenix Kathryn book cover

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Verdict: A seven-hundred-page sapphic vampire academy romance with a genuinely devastating final act and the most invented world on our list, held back by copy-editing that eleven separate reviewers stopped to mention.

Best for: Readers who want to move into a world for a fortnight, who cry at books on purpose, and who can read past typos without the spell breaking.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.20 Goodreads average pulled down by an editing complaint that appears in one-star and four-star reviews alike)

Tropes: Vampire romance, magical academy, enemies to lovers, fated mates, witch heroine, forced proximity, grumpy-sunshine, hurt/comfort, found family, age gap.

Sun Poisoning by Phoenix Kathryn is the first book in the Universally Knighted world, self-published in September 2025, and it is the largest thing on our sapphic vampire list by a wide margin — Piper arrives at Silvestro Academy carrying a curse she cannot control and finds herself sharing a campus with Kailani, a classmate who has been nineteen for two thousand years.

It has a 4.20 average across 753 Goodreads ratings, which for a self-published debut-scale title with no trade coverage and no retail placement is a striking number. It also has a 7% did-not-finish rate and a complaint that shows up in reviews rating it four and five stars. Both halves of that are worth understanding before you commit to seven hundred pages.

What Is Sun Poisoning About?

This is a paranormal academy romance that has been widely sold as dark academia, and the distinction matters more than it sounds. Silvestro Academy is a closed world with its own hierarchies, its own invented sport — a game called Styx that readers name as one of the book’s real pleasures — and its own rules about what students are and are not. What it does not have much of is coursework, which is the load-bearing element of actual dark academia.

Piper is introduced through what she has already destroyed: her magic killed her best friend, and she arrives at Silvestro carrying that. Kailani is introduced through what she assumes, which is that two thousand years has taught her how this ends. The book is long enough to give both women a full arc and then keep going, and the last stretch is where readers say it earns the page count.

What Makes This Sapphic Vampire Academy Romance Work

The worldbuilding: The single most-praised element, named by around ten separate reviewers. Silvestro and the invented sport of Styx get cited over and over as the reason readers stayed, and it is genuinely built rather than borrowed.
The chemistry: Seven reviewers name it specifically. One puts it as “unmatched,” and the enemies-to-lovers turn holds through the hostile phase rather than collapsing at first contact.
The last ten per cent: Five readers describe crying. Not “moving” — crying, by name, with one saying the final stretch “absolutely emotionally destroyed me.” For a seven-hundred-page book, sticking the ending is the hard part.
Mental health, chronic illness and disability on the page: Four reviewers single this out. Anxiety and chronic conditions are written as things the characters live with rather than as plot devices to be cured.
It resolves: A happily-ever-after with an epilogue, inside a world the author is continuing. No cliffhanger, no hostage-taking.

Book Synopsis

Piper’s magic has already killed someone she loved. That is where the book starts, and it is the fact she carries into Silvestro Academy — a school for people whose abilities are too dangerous to leave unsupervised, and the only place left that will take her.

Kailani has been at Silvestro longer than anyone. She looks nineteen and has looked nineteen for two millennia, and she has arranged her existence around not needing anything. The academy runs on hierarchies Piper does not understand and a sport she is expected to play, and Kailani sits somewhere near the top of both. Their first read of each other is hostile and mutual.

What the book does with its length is refuse to rush any of it. The curse is not a puzzle to be solved in an act. The antagonism does not thaw on schedule. Piper has to learn what she is, Kailani has to decide whether two thousand years of not needing anyone was a choice or a defence, and the academy keeps producing reasons for both of them to be in the same room. The question the book is building toward is not whether they want each other. It is what a person who has already lost someone to her own power is willing to risk again.

My Review

The world is the reason this book works, and it is worth being specific about why. Around ten separate reviewers name the worldbuilding, and what they keep coming back to is not the vampire lore — it is Styx, the sport Kathryn invented for the academy, which readers describe with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a favourite character. A self-published author writing a game that people want to talk about is a genuine achievement, and it is the clearest evidence that the seven hundred pages were spent on something.

The second real strength is the ending, which is not where a book this long usually delivers. Five readers describe crying at the last stretch, and the ones who defend the length do it by pointing there — the emotional payload is back-loaded, the epilogue closes properly, and nobody who finished reports feeling cheated. Around that sits a strand of representation that deserves more attention than it gets: anxiety, chronic illness and disability are written into these characters as conditions rather than as arcs to be resolved, and four reviewers single it out.

Where it struggles is at the sentence level. Eleven independent reviewers name typos, grammatical errors or prose that needed another pass, and — the detail that makes this the dominant complaint rather than a minority one — they span the whole star range, from a one-star review whose entire objection is the editing to four-star reviews that stop to mention it anyway. One did-not-finish at twelve per cent gives the writing as the reason. There is an important qualifier: several of those are ARC reviews, at least two reviewers say the author had flagged the ARC as non-final, and a “Classic Edition” and an omnibus have since appeared, which suggests the text has been reissued. Whether the file currently selling still carries those errors I could not confirm, and I am not going to assert that it does.

Two expectations to reset. First, “dark academia” is a label this book acquired rather than one it earns. It appears in none of its Goodreads shelves, none of its romance.io tags and none of its StoryGraph tags; Amazon’s own subtitle calls it “A Paranormal Queer Standalone Series”; one reader says the setting reads “too high school-like” and another notes that classes and spell-learning happen mostly off the page. It is a paranormal academy romance with dark-academia paint. Second, the length is genuinely contested rather than settled — four readers wanted it shorter and four others say it did not drag at all, one of them wanting more. Do not go in expecting a consensus that it needs cutting.

My honest note: A four-star world and a four-and-a-half-star ending delivered in three-star prose. If typos break the spell for you, seven hundred pages is a long time to be irritated. If they don’t, this is the most immersive thing on the list.

Element	In Sun Poisoning
Central relationship	Piper & Kailani — a cursed witch whose magic has already killed, and a two-thousand-year-old vampire classmate
Core tropes	Magical academy, enemies to lovers, fated mates, forced proximity, hurt/comfort, found family
Setting	Silvestro Academy, and its invented sport, Styx
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, with bloodplay, knife play, praise kink and restraints
Series	Universally Knighted book 1 — resolves with an HEA and epilogue; book 2 Frostbite follows, plus a tie-in novella
Content notes	Dubious consent, graphic violence, torture of main and side characters, abuse, past child neglect and abuse, mental trauma, death and grief; readers additionally report bloodplay, knife play and restraints on the page. At least one reader reports a late scene she reads as a sexual assault that the book’s own warnings do not cover — see below

How Dark and Spicy Is Sun Poisoning?

A full 5/5. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and the tags that come with it are not decorative — fem-dom, daddy kink and praise kink are all listed, and readers additionally report bloodplay, knife play and restraints on the page. One reviewer notes that the explicit scenes carry the relationship’s development, so skipping them costs you plot rather than just heat.

The element to name in advance is more serious than a kink flag. One reviewer reports a late scene — she calls it the graveyard sun scene — in which she reads Kailani, in a state of sun-sickness, as assaulting Piper, and argues the book’s stated content warnings omit rape and non-consent entirely. Her words: “There was zero consent in that scene.” That is one reader’s reading, and no other reviewer in the sweep corroborates it; another, rating the book 4.25, posts extensive warnings and does not flag assault. What does partially corroborate it is romance.io’s own metadata, which tags the book for dubious consent. I am reporting the disagreement rather than adjudicating it, because for a book at this heat level a reader deserves to know the argument exists. If you want this band with cleaner consent lines, House of Crimson Hearts sits at the same 5/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want to disappear into a world for a week, you read enemies-to-lovers for the hostile phase, you want an ending that costs the characters something, and unpolished prose does not pull you out of a story.

You may want to skip it if: typos break the spell, you want a magical academy that actually teaches, you need an audiobook to get through a long book, or dubious consent is a hard line rather than a tag you can weigh.

In short: the most immersive book on this list and the least polished, and which of those you notice first decides everything.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no professional criticism of this book anywhere — no Publishers Weekly, no Kirkus, no Library Journal, and nothing from The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks, The Lesbrary, Bookish Sapphic or Jude in the Stars either. I Heart SapphFic carries a listing, but it is author-supplied copy with an affiliate link, not a review. Every evaluative claim in existence about Sun Poisoning comes from readers, which is exactly why the editing complaint has never been professionally noted. What is driving the book instead is BookTok, and this is worth being precise about: the author runs an unusually vertically-integrated indie operation — TikTok, Instagram, Patreon, a direct-sales Shopify store with ARC programmes, Pride boxes and special editions. There is independent creator activity too, and the strongest evidence of it is that TikTok has generated a standing search page for “is Sun Poisoning a happy ending,” which is the kind of thing that forms from repeated user queries rather than from an author posting. Seven hundred pages and 753 ratings in under a year, with no retail placement, has no other plausible route. Note also that a meaningful share of the early Goodreads reviews are ARC reviews, and read the 4.20 with that in mind. There is no audiobook in any edition — an Audible search for the author returns nothing.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The world, first and by a distance — around ten reviewers name Silvestro and Styx, and the invented sport gets talked about like a character. Then the chemistry between Piper and Kailani, from seven. Then the emotional payload, from five, who use the word “crying” rather than “moving.” Then the mental-health, anxiety, chronic-illness and disability representation, from four readers who clearly did not expect to find it in a five-pepper paranormal romance. A meaningful minority also defend the length outright — one wanted more than seven hundred pages, which tells you something about how hard the world grips.

What readers argue about and complain about: Copy-editing, above everything, and it is not close. Eleven independent reviewers name typos, grammar or prose that needed another pass, and they span one star to four — a complaint that survives contact with people who loved the book is the one to believe. One reader abandoned it at twelve per cent, giving the writing as the reason; another says it reads like something “published on Wattpad.” Second, and genuinely split: length. Four readers wanted it cut, four say it did not drag, and one wanted it longer, so “too long” is a position rather than a consensus. Third, three readers name a repetitive push-pull rhythm in the relationship, and two note that action tends to happen off the page. Two find the explicit scenes one-directional. And there is the consent objection covered above — one voice, seriously argued, partially corroborated by metadata and uncorroborated by other readers.

The series question everyone should ask first: this book resolves. It ends on a happily-ever-after with an epilogue, and no reader in the sweep complains about being left hanging — the complaints are about typos and length, never about the ending. What it is not is a standalone in the plain sense: it is book one of Universally Knighted, marketed by the author as “a paranormal queer standalone series,” with book two Frostbite now appearing and a tie-in novella called Love, Violet: A Sun Poisoning Afterlife Novella sitting at 4.08. One warning for anyone counting: several Amazon listings called Sun Poisoning Part I, Part II and Part III are the same novel split for print, not sequels. And on the author’s wider catalogue — Sun Poisoning holds roughly three-quarters of her lifetime ratings, so what changed here was reach rather than acclaim; her best-rated title, Aces and Arrows, sits at 4.49 across just 49 ratings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Sun Poisoning actually dark academia?

Not really. It is a paranormal academy romance that BookTok labelled dark academia — the phrase appears in none of its Goodreads shelves, romance.io tags or StoryGraph tags, and Amazon’s own subtitle calls it a paranormal queer series. Readers note that classes and spell-learning mostly happen off the page.

Does Sun Poisoning have a happy ending?

Yes — a happily-ever-after with an epilogue, and no reader in our sweep reports an unresolved ending. The emotional damage is front-loaded into the final act rather than saved for a sequel.

How long is Sun Poisoning?

Roughly seven hundred pages, depending on edition — Goodreads lists 750 for the Kindle file, Google Books 721 for print, StoryGraph 690. There is no single official figure, so treat any precise number with suspicion.

How spicy is Sun Poisoning?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, with fem-dom, daddy kink and praise kink tagged. Readers additionally report bloodplay, knife play and restraints, and note that the scenes carry plot.

Are the typos still in the current edition?

Unknown, and we would rather say so. Eleven reviewers reported heavy copy-editing problems, many of them reading advance copies the author had flagged as non-final, and a Classic Edition and omnibus have since been released. Whether the file currently on sale has been corrected could not be confirmed.

Is there a Sun Poisoning audiobook?

No. An Audible search for Phoenix Kathryn returns no titles by her, and the author’s own store lists print editions, omnibus and special editions with no audio. If you need audio to get through a seven-hundred-page book, this one is not available in it.

If You Loved Sun Poisoning, Read These Next

If the academy-with-teeth setting is the draw, An Education in Malice is the real dark academia version of this — with the warning that it is not a romance and does not resolve like one. If it was the vampire aristocracy and the trials, House of Crimson Hearts runs the same 5/5 heat in a court setting at half the length. And if the vampire-and-witch pairing is what you want more of, Will It Hurt? puts it in a contemporary city with a resurrection plot attached.

For more in this register, browse our best sapphic vampire romance books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Sun Poisoning is the most ambitious self-published book on our sapphic vampire list. The world is genuinely invented down to its own sport, the final act does what seven hundred pages of setup promised, and the chronic-illness and mental-health writing is better than the genre usually manages. It is also under-edited, unevenly paced by some readings, and carrying a serious consent objection from one reader that its own content warnings do not answer. If unpolished prose costs you nothing, this is the deepest world here. If it costs you a lot, this is a very long way to find that out. Check Sun Poisoning on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Sun Poisoning ranks as a maximalist indie sapphic vampire academy romance — the most immersive world on the list with an ending that earns its length, held back by craft, and best approached for Silvestro and the last ten per cent rather than for the dark-academia billing.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ 4.20 across 753 Goodreads ratings
✓ 4.06 on StoryGraph, 7% did-not-finish
✓ Under 6% of ratings below three stars
✓ Eleven reviewers name the editing

Romance ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

✓ Chemistry named by seven reviewers
✓ Hostile phase holds before it turns
✓ Fated-mates pull earned across the length
✓ Three readers find the push-pull repetitive

Characters ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

✓ Anxiety and chronic illness written as lived
✓ Disability representation praised by four
✓ Piper’s guilt drives rather than decorates
✓ Secondary cast thins across 700 pages

Writing ★★★☆☆ 3.1/5

✓ Worldbuilding prose is the strength
✓ Styx invented well enough to be discussed
✓ Emotional beats land at the sentence level
✓ Typos named across every star band

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.4/5

✓ Five readers report crying by name
✓ Final ten per cent is the payoff
✓ Grief drives the premise, not the plot
✓ Off-page action lowers the stakes

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io top band, explicit and plentiful
✓ Bloodplay and knife play on the page
✓ Scenes carry relationship development
✓ One reader reports an unwarned consent breach

Ending ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

✓ HEA with a full epilogue
✓ No cliffhanger complaints in the sweep
✓ Resolves without requiring book two
✓ World continues into Frostbite

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5

✓ World deep enough to revisit
✓ Series pulls readers back through
✓ Tie-in novella extends the world
✓ 700 pages and no audiobook option

Find It On Amazon

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August 18, 2026

Martis the Brazen Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Martis the Brazen by Rien Gray book cover

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Verdict: Eighteen thousand words that carry more grief, atmosphere and craft than most books five times the length — with a “high heat” label three readers say the book does not quite meet.

Best for: Readers who want a half-dragon butch knight, an Arthurian world with no men in it, and a romance built on loss rather than on banter — in a single sitting.

Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — explicit, but author-billed rather than crowd-rated; romance.io has two entries for it and neither carries a steam rating at all)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.32 Goodreads average from a small, self-selected sample of 60 ratings)

Tropes: Half-dragon heroine, butch knight, rescue from a cult, grief and hurt/comfort, Arthurian retelling, all-women world, shapeshifting, novella, standalone-readable, HEA.

Martis the Brazen by Rien Gray is the second of the Out of True novellas — dark sapphic fantasy romance in an Arthurian-inflected realm called the Land of Maidens, where Martis, the daughter of a dragon and a witch, returns to the Gorsedd mountains to watch her father die and rescues a sorceress named Amoret from a cult that intends to sacrifice her.

Two things about the numbers before anything else. Sixty Goodreads ratings and eighteen written reviews is too small to call a consensus, and the sample is largely readers who already follow Gray — so treat everything below as indicative rather than settled. And the book was itch.io-exclusive for roughly two and a half years before reaching Amazon in August 2025, which is almost certainly why that number is sixty rather than six hundred.

What Is Martis the Brazen About?

The Out of True novellas are Arthuriana rewritten as a sequence of sapphic knight stories, and the world’s defining feature is that it is populated entirely by women and nonbinary people. The Land of Maidens has a king — Theomacha the Exalted, a woman — a court, an order of knights, and none of the gendered machinery that usually drives a chivalric romance. Gray writes it without comment, which is the right decision and part of why the setting works.

Martis is the sole daughter of the dragon Thouros and a witch, raised in the Gorsedd mountains. When her mother died she went through a grief-rampage that ended with King Theomacha stopping her, taking her into the court and giving her a new name — so the knight she now is exists because someone caught her at the worst moment of her life. Amoret is the woman she finds in the hands of a dragon-worshipping cult with a sacrifice planned, and whose identity turns out to complicate everything. StoryGraph’s crowd rates the book 61% character-driven, the most character-forward title in this batch by a wide margin, against 7% plot.

What Makes This Dark Sapphic Knight Novella Work

Grief is the engine, not the backdrop: four or more readers name it, and it is the recurring word. Martis comes home to watch her dragon father die, and the romance is built out of that rather than placed beside it.
Density per page: three readers name it. One puts it best — Gray has worked out exactly how much story goes into seventy pages.
The prose: three readers single it out, one calling it beautifully written, magical and hot in the same breath.
Heat that carries emotional weight: the most useful single observation anyone made — solid heat, but not all about the parts. The explicit content is doing character work.
A world with no men in it, unremarked: the all-women and nonbinary Land of Maidens is built rather than announced, and reviewers notice.

Book Synopsis

Martis has not been home in a long time. Home is the Gorsedd mountains, where a dragon called Thouros raised a half-human daughter and a witch raised a half-dragon one, and where both of those arrangements ended badly. She left as something feral and came back as a knight of the Land of Maidens, which is a distinction the mountains do not particularly recognise.

She is here because Thouros is dying. Dragons do not die quickly and they do not die quietly, and a daughter who has spent years not thinking about her father now has to sit with the process. The court gave her a name and an order and a reason to be somewhere else; none of that is any use up here.

Then there is a cult. They worship dragons in the way that ends with someone on an altar, and the someone they have chosen is a sorceress named Amoret — who is not what the cult thinks she is, and not quite what Martis assumes either. A rescue is straightforward. What follows it, in a mountain hall with a dying dragon and two women who have both been made into instruments by people who loved them, is not.

My Review

This is the most efficient book on our dragon shelf. Eighteen thousand words is a lunch break, and Gray gets a grieving half-dragon knight, a rescued sorceress, an Arthurian court, a dying father and a complete romantic arc into it without any of them feeling sketched. Three readers name the density specifically, and one of them puts it exactly right — Gray has worked out how much story fits in seventy pages, which is a craft skill most novella writers never acquire.

The grief is what elevates it. Martis comes home to sit with a dying dragon who is also her father, and the book is honest about what that does to a person who was already made out of a bad night — she became a knight because a king caught her mid-rampage after her mother died, which means her entire adult identity is a container someone else built for her feelings. The romance grows out of that soil rather than beside it, and four separate readers reach for grief as the word for what the book is about. StoryGraph’s crowd rates it 70% emotional against 7% plot-driven, which is the right shape.

The one criticism with any recurrence is that readers wanted more — three of them, and it is the single most repeated reservation. That is a compliment wearing a complaint’s clothes, but it is also a real limitation: this is a story with enough material for a novel, delivered at a fifth of the length.

The more useful complaint is about the label. Gray bills this, in the book’s own copy, as an eighteen-thousand-word high-heat f/f fantasy romance novella. Readers confirm it is explicit and well-written — magical and hot, in one reader’s phrase — but three independently report it delivering less than “high heat” implies. One StoryGraph reviewer says there is a single intimate scene arriving around the seventy-percent mark and was disappointed by the positioning; that specific claim rests on one voice, so treat it as such. Two more readers, independently, wanted more kink than they got. Nobody calls the book unerotic; several call it less than the label promises, and the direction is consistent across three readers.

What makes that gap worse is a genuinely odd piece of infrastructure. romance.io has two duplicate entries for this book and neither carries a steam rating — not five empty flames, but no flame widget rendered at all. Meanwhile its own series-mate, Valerin the Fair, is rated 3 out of 5 on the same site. So a reader trying to verify a “high heat” claim on the genre’s main steam database will find nothing, on a book whose sibling has a rating. That is a discoverability failure rather than a craft one, but it is the kind a reader can check in five seconds.

Two readers find the prose too ornate, one saying she reread paragraphs to work out what was happening — which is the natural cost of the density everyone else praises. And the low-star tail on Goodreads has no visible review text at all, so their reasoning is simply unknown and I am not going to invent it.

My honest note: A small, dark, beautifully made thing that ends before you want it to. Buy it for the grief and the knight; go in expecting one explicit scene rather than a high-heat novella, and you will not be disappointed by anything.

Element	In Martis the Brazen
Central relationship	Martis & Amoret — a half-dragon knight and a sorceress rescued from a dragon-worshipping cult
Core tropes	Half-dragon heroine, butch knight, rescue, grief and hurt/comfort, Arthurian retelling, shapeshifting
Setting	The Land of Maidens under King Theomacha — an all-women and nonbinary Arthurian realm — and the Gorsedd mountains
Heat level	4/5 — explicit, but author-billed; romance.io carries no steam rating on either of its two entries
Series	Out of True book 2 of 4 — reads standalone; originally itch.io-exclusive in 2023, on Amazon since August 2025
Content notes	Death of a parent as graphic; grief, injury and sexual content as moderate; attempted human sacrifice, a cult, hurt/comfort and shifted sex per the author

How Dark and Spicy Is Martis the Brazen?

Call it a 4/5, and know exactly where that comes from, because it does not come from the usual place. Gray’s own copy describes an eighteen-thousand-word high-heat f/f fantasy romance novella, and readers confirm the content is explicit and well written. But romance.io — the site this review normally quotes for heat — has two duplicate entries for the book and neither renders a steam widget at all, while Valerin the Fair, the previous book in the same series, is rated 3 out of 5 on that same site. So the heat claim here is entirely author-side, and the crowd has not weighed in.

The readers who have weighed in split the difference. Three of them, independently, report it delivering less than the label implies — one on scene count and placement, two wanting more kink than they got. Set against that, two readers praise the heat specifically for carrying emotional weight rather than existing on its own, which is the more interesting compliment. On darkness: the author files it as dark, StoryGraph’s crowd rates death of a parent as graphic, and there is an attempted human sacrifice in it. If you want verified top-band heat instead, Dragon Queens and Of Dreams and Poison both carry actual romance.io ratings at 5/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a butch half-dragon knight, you read for grief and atmosphere more than for plot, you like dense prose, and an evening is the commitment you have.

You may want to skip it if: you were buying on the “high heat” billing and want frequency, ornate prose slows you down, you want a full-length novel, or you need a book with enough readers behind it to trust the rating.

In short: an unusually well-made novella that under-delivers on exactly one of its own promises.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

The interesting thing about the discourse here is that it exists for the author and not for the book. A Reddit search for Martis the Brazen returns nothing at all. A search for Rien Gray returns around eleven threads — including the r/wlwbooks top romance recommendations of 2025, a heavily upvoted r/RomanceBooks thread about childfree romances, a trans-rights readathon roundup, and one post about this very series being free on itch.io, which is the only thread that touches these books at all. Reddit knows Gray, mostly through the contemporary Fatal Fidelity novels. It does not know Martis. There is no TikTok footprint, no trade coverage of any kind, and nothing from The Lesbrary, The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks or Lambda Literary. The one substantive outside review is at Smut Report, which highlights the identity-and-loss material and the dragon mythology. A second review exists on a now-defunct blogging platform and we could not reach it, so we are not citing it.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Grief, first and by a clear margin — four or more readers name it, and it is the recurring word for what the book is doing. Then density: three readers admire how much fits into seventy pages. Then the prose itself, named by three, one of whom simply says nobody does it like Rien Gray. And the sharpest compliment anyone paid it — that the heat is solid but not all about the parts, meaning the explicit content is emotionally load-bearing rather than decorative. StoryGraph’s crowd rates the book 100% adventurous, 70% emotional, 83% loveable and 80% diverse, on 43 reviews.

What readers argue about and complain about: Not much, and the sample is too small for confident conclusions — sixty Goodreads ratings, eighteen written reviews and two Amazon ratings with no written text at all. The single most repeated reservation is that readers wanted more length: three of them, one noting that eighteen thousand words leaves the reader wanting, another that she loved it but wished for more story. Second, and more actionable: three independent readers report the “high heat” billing over-promising, one on the single scene’s placement around the seventy-percent mark and two on wanting more kink. Third, two readers find the prose too flowery, one saying she reread paragraphs to follow what was happening — the exact inverse of the density everyone else praises. Beyond that there is a small tail of low ratings on Goodreads and StoryGraph with no review text attached, so their reasoning is genuinely unknown and we are not guessing at it.

The series question everyone should ask first: it resolves. The romance lands, readers describe a sweet and satisfying release at the end, and Gray states in the book’s own copy that it reads as either a standalone or a sequel. So you can start here. The series ladder is worth having, though, because it tells a story of its own: Valerin the Fair sits at 3.91 across 131 ratings, this book at 4.32 across 60, Seure the Tempered at 4.53 across 45, and the newest, Galeas the Keen, at 4.73 across 11. The rating rises as the sample shrinks, which is what happens when a series is read increasingly by people who already like it — so take the later numbers with that in mind. If you want a next step, Seure the Tempered has the best rating-to-sample ratio after this one. Do not start a romance-first reader on Valerin, which is the chronological predecessor and also the lowest-rated book in the series. Gray has signalled a further instalment following a blind butch knight, with no title or date confirmed.

There is no audiobook in any format, and no Rien Gray title on Libro.fm at all. The book is not in Kindle Unlimited; it is $2.99 to buy, with the first three of the series bundled at $8.97.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I read Martis the Brazen as a standalone?

Yes. Gray says so in the book’s own copy — it reads as either a standalone or a sequel to Valerin the Fair. It resolves, with a satisfying romantic ending and no cliffhanger.

How spicy is Martis the Brazen?

Explicit, but less frequent than the billing implies. Gray describes it as a high-heat novella, and readers confirm the content is graphic and well written — but three independently report it delivering less than that label suggests. romance.io has two entries for the book and neither carries a steam rating at all.

How long is Martis the Brazen?

About 18,000 words — the author’s own figure, and the only stable one, since page counts vary from 71 to 93 across retailers. Expect an evening.

Is it on Kindle Unlimited?

No. It is $2.99 to buy, with the first three books in the series available as a bundle.

Is there an audiobook?

No. There is no audiobook in any format, and no Rien Gray title on Libro.fm at all.

Which book in the series should I read next?

Seure the Tempered, at 4.53 across 45 Goodreads ratings — the best rating-to-sample ratio in the series after this one. Avoid starting with Valerin the Fair, the chronological predecessor, which is the lowest-rated book in the series at 3.91.

If You Loved Martis the Brazen, Read These Next

If it was the knight-and-dragon shape you wanted at similar length, The Bloodless Princes is the closest sibling on our shelf, with a lonely dragon and a knight in roughly the same page count. If the grief and the half-human inheritance are what landed, The Blood-Born Dragon runs a bond the heroine never asked for at a verified 4/5 heat. And if you want dense, serious sapphic fantasy in an evening, In the Vanishers’ Palace is the most demanding novella in the category.

For more in this register, browse our guide to dragon sapphic romantasy or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Martis the Brazen is the best-made small thing on this list. Gray packs a dying dragon, a grieving daughter, a cult, a rescue and a complete romantic arc into eighteen thousand words without any of it feeling rushed, and the grief at its centre — a woman whose entire adult identity was built around her by someone who caught her at her worst — gives the romance a foundation most novellas cannot afford. The reservations are two: readers want more of it, which is the good kind of complaint, and three of them report that the “high heat” billing promises more than one late scene delivers, which is the actionable kind. Sixty ratings is too small a sample to be certain of anything, but everything visible points the same way. Read it in an evening and expect to want the rest of the series. Check Martis the Brazen on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Martis the Brazen ranks as a superbly compressed dark sapphic knight novella — atmospheric, grief-driven and unusually well written for its length, held back by a heat claim it does not fully meet and a readership too small to confirm anything, and best approached for the mourning rather than for the spice.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ 4.32 Goodreads average, but only 60 ratings
✓ 61% character-driven — the most in this batch
✓ Itch.io exclusivity capped its readership for years
✓ Three readers say the heat billing over-promises

Romance ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Built out of grief rather than beside it
✓ Rescue premise avoids the obvious shape
✓ Lands a satisfying resolution in 18,000 words
✓ Three readers wanted more of it

Characters ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

✓ Martis’s knighthood is a container for grief
✓ Amoret’s identity complicates cleanly
✓ 83% call the cast loveable
✓ Amoret gets less room than Martis

Writing ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Three readers name the prose specifically
✓ Density-per-page is the standout craft
✓ All-women world built rather than announced
✓ Two readers find it too ornate to follow

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.3/5

✓ Grief is the recurring word across four readers
✓ Emotional at 70% on StoryGraph
✓ A dying dragon father is genuinely affecting
✓ The sample is too small to generalise from

Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Explicit and well written by reader account
✓ Author bills it high heat outright
✓ Readers say the spice carries emotional weight
✓ Two romance.io entries, neither with a steam rating

Ending ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Resolves with an earned romantic landing
✓ Reads standalone by the author’s own note
✓ No cliffhanger reported
✓ Arrives sooner than readers want

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.7/5

✓ An evening makes revisiting trivial
✓ Prose rewards a slower second pass
✓ Series continues across four books
✓ No audiobook, and not in Kindle Unlimited

Find It On Amazon

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August 18, 2026 0

Of Thorns and Wings Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Of Thorns and Wings by Darva Green book cover

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Verdict: A duology closer that actually closes — hotter than its opener, darker than its fairy-tale frame, and let down only by a final act that compresses more than it can carry.

Best for: Readers who finished Of Dreams and Poison on its cliffhanger and want the payoff, and who came for a married couple whose relationship keeps developing rather than resetting.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful”)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.1/5 — a 4.34 Goodreads average, a 0% did-not-finish rate, and only fourteen written reviews behind it)

Tropes: Fated mates, married couple, dark romantasy, fairy-tale retelling, dual POV, masc/femme pairing, enchanted captivity, revolution plot, dragon shifter, duology conclusion.

Of Thorns and Wings by Darva Green is the second half of The Dragon and The Devouring Tree, a self-published dark sapphic romantasy published in July 2025 and set in Lollishire — the King’s City and the Hartwood forest — where the witch Rosemary and the fae wraith Carabosse, already married by the time this volume opens, have to finish overthrowing a monarchy and survive what one of them is becoming.

It holds a 4.34 average across 217 Goodreads ratings and a 4.7 across 169 on Amazon, where there is not a single one- or two-star review. StoryGraph records a 0% did-not-finish rate — nobody who started it put it down, which against its own predecessor’s numbers is a real signal. The counterweight is that only fourteen readers have written anything at all, so the enthusiasm is wide but thin.

What Is Of Thorns and Wings About?

This is dark romantasy operating on a fairy-tale chassis, and both halves of that are load-bearing. The frame is Sleeping Beauty crossed with Robin Hood — an enchanted sleep, a stolen kingdom, a forest full of people the crown would rather not think about — and at least one reader spots a Hades and Persephone structure layered underneath it. Amazon files it under Folklore and Fairy Tale Fantasy rather than Romance, which is an unusually honest bit of shelving. StoryGraph’s crowd rates its moods 70% dark.

The structural thing worth knowing is that this is not a book about two people meeting. Rosemary and Carabosse are married when it opens, both point-of-view chapters call the other one “my wife”, and the romantic tension comes from what they are surviving rather than whether they will get together. One reader describes the pairing as masc and femme in dual POV, which is a combination sapphic romantasy talks about wanting more often than it delivers. The cost of that structure is that you cannot start here — and to Green’s credit, she says so in her own author’s note.

What Makes This Dark Sapphic Romantasy Work

It sticks the landing: the most consistent praise, from five separate readers, is that it works as a conclusion. “The storyline felt complete” is the recurring shape of it — and duology closers fail at this often enough that it deserves naming.
It is genuinely spicier than Part 1: five readers say so independently, and Part 1 was already at romance.io’s top band. Interestingly the database cannot see this escalation — both volumes are rated 5/5 “explicit and plentiful”, so the readers are the only source for it.
The scope opens out: two substantive reviewers describe the fairy-tale inspirations melting into a larger mythology, with ancient powers and new forces rather than the retelling running on rails.
The marriage keeps moving: readers specifically praise a relationship that never stands still — every hardship strengthening what is already built, rather than a manufactured rift.
Nobody put it down: a 0% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph, against 21% for the highest-DNF book in this batch. Whatever else is true, this one holds readers.

Book Synopsis

Rosemary wakes. That is where this begins — out of an enchanted sleep she did not choose, in a city that has every reason to keep her in it, married to a woman who has spent the interval doing whatever was necessary. The Hartwood is still pulling at her. The crown of Lollishire is still on the wrong head.

Carabosse made one mistake, more than twenty years ago, and has been paying for it ever since in ways that have started to change what she is. The fae wraith who came into Part 1 as an antagonist-shaped thing is now a wife with something dark moving under the surface of her, and the question of how much of that she can hold is the book’s real engine.

Between them and anything resembling peace sit the King’s City, a monarchy that will not be talked out of itself, and a forest with older loyalties than either of them. The two women who spent Part 1 learning to trust each other spend this one finding out what that trust is worth when the cost is named — and whether a happily-ever-after is something you win or something you agree to keep paying for.

My Review

The first thing to say is that this book knows what it is for. A duology closer has one job, and five independent readers report that it does it: the arc lands, the threads that matter close, and the ending reads as an ending rather than as a door left open for a book four. Green announced a two-part story and delivered a two-part story, which sounds like a low bar until you count how many indie romantasy duologies quietly become trilogies.

The romance is the strongest thing here, and the structural reason is that the couple is already married. There is no third-act breakup — Green is on Reddit recommendation lists specifically for not writing them — and no manufactured misunderstanding to burn a hundred pages on. What you get instead is a relationship under pressure from outside, with the tension coming from what Carabosse is becoming rather than from whether they will speak to each other. Readers name this directly: the relationship never stands still, and every reunion is stronger because something was actually spent to get there. Add a masc/femme dual POV that sapphic romantasy asks for far more often than it supplies, and the heat escalating past an already explicit Part 1, and it is easy to see why the ratings are where they are.

The complaint, and it is the only one with any recurrence behind it, is the final act. Three separate readers say the ending compresses too much into too few pages, and — this is the interesting part — all three still rated the book four stars or higher. The specifics agree: the resolution in the forest arrives fast and reads as unearned, one sequence in the King’s castle leaves readers confused rather than shocked, and a subplot involving three witches who matter to Rosemary is set up and then dropped. One reader adds a sharper craft note that nobody else raises: an intimate scene placed against high stakes in a way that undercuts both. That is a single voice, but it is a specific and checkable one.

Two things to flag about how this book is described rather than how it reads. The first is a numbering trap that will genuinely cost someone money: this is Happily Ever After Dark book three and Devouring Tree Part two at the same time, and Happily Ever After Dark book one is an unrelated retelling. If you buy “book three” without Part 1 you will be lost; if you dutifully start at series book one you will read the wrong story. The book you need first is Of Dreams and Poison, and it ends on a cliffhanger, so buy them together.

The second is the content warnings, or the absence of them. StoryGraph’s crowd has supplied exactly one — sexual content, graphic — for a book that runs 70% dark on its own mood ratings, opens on enchanted captivity, and turns on a woman losing herself to something. The author’s site carries content warnings for her other books and does not list this duology at all. Nothing here is unmarked in the text; it is unmarked in the metadata, and a reader relying on the usual sources will be under-warned.

My honest note: The best-executed duology conclusion I have read in indie sapphic romantasy this year, with a last act that needed another thirty pages. If you finished Part 1, this is not a decision — go and get it. If you have not, start there and treat the two as one book.

Element	In Of Thorns and Wings
Central relationship	Rosemary & Carabosse — a witch and a fae wraith, already married, fated mates in dual POV
Core tropes	Fated mates, married couple, dark romantasy, fairy-tale retelling, enchanted captivity, revolution
Setting	Lollishire — the King’s City and the Hartwood forest, in a Sleeping Beauty and Robin Hood frame
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful, and readers say hotter than Part 1
Series	The Dragon and The Devouring Tree Part 2, also Happily Ever After Dark #3 — the conclusion; Of Dreams and Poison is required first
Content notes	Explicit sexual content (18+ per the book’s own front matter), enchanted captivity and forced sleep, dark transformation, violence around a monarchy overthrow

How Dark and Spicy Is Of Thorns and Wings?

A full 5/5. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit and plentiful” — its top band, the same one it gives the most explicit titles in the genre — and five readers independently report that this volume is spicier than Part 1. Worth noting the limit of the database here: Part 1 carries the identical 5/5 rating, so the escalation readers describe is invisible to romance.io and the readers are the only evidence for it. The book’s own front matter states it is intended for an 18+ audience.

On the dark side, StoryGraph’s crowd rates the moods 70% dark and the imprint is called Happily Ever After Dark, so nothing here is a bait and switch. The element worth naming in advance is the transformation thread — one partner losing herself to something — set against an enchanted captivity that opens the book. One reader flags an intimate scene placed against high stakes in a way she found jarring; nobody else raises it. If you want this heat band elsewhere, Dragon Queens and Consort of Fire both sit at 5/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read Part 1 and want the payoff, you prefer a married couple under external pressure to a manufactured breakup, you want top-band heat inside a dark fairy-tale frame, and you like a masc/femme dual POV.

You may want to skip it if: you have not read Of Dreams and Poison, you want a standalone, a rushed final act spoils a book for you, or you rely on published content warnings and would rather not go in with only one.

In short: the duology closer this couple deserved, thirty pages short of the ending it deserved.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no organic conversation about this book anywhere outside the retail platforms, and the shape of that absence is unusual. A Reddit search for the title returns five results: an automated new-releases roundup, two requests for a completely different book called The Court of Thorns and Wings, a decade-old gaming post, and one thread I could not confirm is about this at all. But search the author’s name and you get twenty-two hits, several of them genuine reader recommendation threads — Green turns up in r/wlwbooks and r/RomanceBooks discussions about submissive love interests, about books with no third-act breakup, and about lesbian pirates, and she appears in the subreddit’s own monthly stats. So Darva Green is recommended on Reddit; Of Thorns and Wings is not discussed. There are no trade reviews, and nothing from The Lesbrary, The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks or Lambda Literary — which is worth naming precisely because this is the one indie book in this batch with a real trade audio publisher behind it, and even Tantor’s involvement produced no print coverage. The TikTok content I could index is the author’s own, alongside a Substack and a confirmed 2026 convention slot.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): That it works as a conclusion, first and most consistently — five readers name completeness, one calling it a fantastic captivating conclusion, another saying the author left no crumbs. Then the heat, and here “spicier” is the recurring word: five readers report an escalation over Part 1. Then the widening scope — two substantive reviewers describe the fairy-tale inspirations dissolving into a larger mythology, with one spotting a Hades and Persephone layer under the Sleeping Beauty frame and guessing, plausibly, that it was written to Hadestown. Two more praise the relationship specifically for never standing still. And two simply could not put it down, which StoryGraph corroborates with a 0% did-not-finish rate and not one reader rating the pace as slow.

What readers argue about and complain about: Only one thing recurs, and it recurs quietly. Three independent reviewers say the last act is rushed — the forest resolution arriving too fast to feel earned, a sequence in the King’s castle leaving readers confused, and a three-witches subplot that matters to Rosemary being raised and then dropped. All three of those readers still gave the book four stars or better, which tells you how much they liked everything else. Beneath that sits one specific craft objection from a single reviewer about an intimate scene landing in the middle of high stakes. And that is the entire negative case: Amazon has zero reviews below three stars, the lowest Goodreads rating on the book is a 2.5 with no text attached, and all the criticism that exists lives inside four-star reviews. A reader scanning star ratings alone would conclude this book has no detractors at all.

The series question everyone should ask first: this is the end, and it ends properly — resolved, with a happily-ever-after, and no cliffhanger reported by anyone. What it is not is a starting point, and the numbering makes that easy to get wrong. Part 1, Of Dreams and Poison, is required reading and does end on a cliffhanger; it also rates slightly higher, at 4.42 across 369 Goodreads ratings against this book’s 4.34 across 217, and has 70% more readers behind it. Buy the pair. No further book in the duology has been announced, titled or dated. If you want more of Green afterwards, her best-validated titles are She Came for Blood at 4.18 across 1,282 ratings and Of Tides and Snow at 4.21 across 1,255 — the latter being the unrelated Happily Ever After Dark book one. Avoid Pumpkin Smash if you are here for sapphic romance; it is m/f.

The audiobook arrived eight months after the ebook: narrated by Sophie Hunter Scott, running 9 hours 27 minutes, published by Tantor Media on 10 March 2026. Only two listeners have commented on the performance and both are positive, so treat that as encouraging rather than settled — though one of them rated the spice 3/5, which sits oddly against romance.io’s 5/5 and is worth knowing if you are choosing on heat.

Prefer audio? Listen to Of Thorns and Wings on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to read Of Dreams and Poison first?

Yes. The author says so herself in a note on the book, and Part 1 ends on a cliffhanger that this volume picks up. Buy them as a pair — and beware the numbering, because this is also Happily Ever After Dark book three, while that series’ book one is an unrelated retelling.

Does Of Thorns and Wings end on a cliffhanger?

No. It is the conclusion of the duology, it resolves, and it delivers a happily-ever-after. No reader reports being left hanging, and no further book has been announced.

How spicy is Of Thorns and Wings?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful”, its top band, and five readers independently say it is spicier than Part 1. The book’s own front matter marks it 18+.

Is Of Thorns and Wings on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes. It was in Kindle Unlimited when we checked on 17 August 2026, at $14.99 for the paperback. Availability changes without notice.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Sophie Hunter Scott, running 9 hours 27 minutes, published by Tantor Media on 10 March 2026, eight months after the ebook. Part 1 is also available in audio, so you can start the duology in that format.

What content warnings does it have?

Fewer than it should. StoryGraph’s crowd lists only graphic sexual content, for a book rated 70% dark by those same readers. From the text itself: enchanted captivity and forced sleep, a dark transformation, and violence around overthrowing a monarchy.

If You Loved Of Thorns and Wings, Read These Next

The obvious next step is backwards: Of Dreams and Poison is Part 1 and you should have read it first. After that, A Witch for Solstice is Green at novella length with a dragon queen as the love interest, if you want the same voice in an hour. For the same top heat band with a very different tone, Dragon Queens plays fantasy romance as comedy rather than as dread.

For more in this register, browse our guide to dragon sapphic romantasy or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Of Thorns and Wings is a closer that closes. The marriage at its centre keeps developing instead of resetting, the heat escalates past an already explicit first volume, and the fairy-tale frame opens out into something with more mythology behind it than the retelling label suggests — and nobody who started it on StoryGraph put it down. Against that: the final act compresses more than it can carry, a subplot that mattered gets dropped, and the metadata around the book is doing a poor job of describing it, from the double series numbering to a single crowd-sourced content warning on a book its own readers call 70% dark. Read the duology as one 670-page book and it is one of the better things indie sapphic romantasy produced last year. Check Of Thorns and Wings on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Of Thorns and Wings ranks as a top-band dark sapphic romantasy conclusion — hot, well-married and properly finished, held back by a compressed last act, and best approached as the second half of one book rather than as a place to start.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

✓ 4.34 average across 217 Goodreads ratings
✓ 0% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph
✓ Zero one- or two-star reviews on Amazon
✓ Only fourteen written reviews behind it

Romance ★★★★☆ 4.4/5

✓ Already married — no third-act breakup
✓ Relationship develops rather than resets
✓ Masc/femme dual POV done properly
✓ Tension comes from outside, not between them

Characters ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Carabosse’s transformation carries the book
✓ 66% rate the character development strong
✓ 88% call the cast loveable
✓ Three-witches subplot raised and dropped

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

✓ 80% rate the pace medium, none call it slow
✓ Fairy-tale frame opens into real mythology
✓ Hades and Persephone layer under the retelling
✓ Final act compresses too much

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

✓ Emotional at 90%, dark at 70%
✓ Nobody abandoned it
✓ Reunions land because something was spent
✓ One scene placed against the wrong stakes

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

✓ romance.io rates it explicit and plentiful
✓ Five readers say hotter than Part 1
✓ 18+ by the book’s own front matter
✓ One listener rated the spice far lower

Ending ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Resolves the duology properly
✓ Earned HEA, no cliffhanger
✓ Five readers praise it as a conclusion
✓ Three call the last act rushed

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 4/5

✓ Tantor audiobook is a strong second pass
✓ Duology invites a straight-through reread
✓ Free on Kindle Unlimited
✓ Nothing further announced to return for

Find It On Amazon

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