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I came to romantasy late, and for a while I was fairly smug about it. As someone who writes grimdark and reads mostly epic fantasy, I’d written the genre off before I’d actually read any of it, filed it under “not for me” and moved on to the next war-torn continent and morally bankrupt protagonist. I was wrong to do that, and it took embarrassingly long to admit it.
What I hadn’t clocked is that romantasy takes most of what makes fantasy work, big worlds, real stakes, characters with blood on their hands and reasons for it, and adds a layer most epic fantasy only gestures at: it puts love, loss, and desire at the centre of the story rather than treating them as a subplot to reward the reader for finishing the war. You get much of the same moral grey and impossible choices you’d find in any good fantasy, but the personal stakes are brought to thr front, made as loud as the political ones, and the character studies get to go somewhere a battle sequence never quite reaches. If you’re the kind of reader who wants a story led by its characters rather than its plot machinery, that combination is the whole appeal.
This list is the shelf that resulted once I stopped being precious about it, ranked, argued over, and occasionally defended in group chats I probably shouldn’t still be in.
What Is Romantasy?
Romantasy is exactly what it sounds like: romance plus fantasy, with neither one playing second fiddle. The stakes are epic, kingdoms falling, bonds being forged, ancient evils waking up cranky, but the emotional engine of the book is the relationship. Enemies-to-lovers works better here than almost anywhere else, because when your enemy is also a general with an army and a tragic backstory, the tension writes itself.
It’s not a new idea, despite what the branding might suggest. The SFWA has written about romantasy as an old genre wearing a new name, and they’re right, this is the direct descendant of decades of fantasy romance, just with better marketing and a TikTok algorithm behind it. What’s changed is the volume of readers finding it at once, not the formula itself.
If you’re after the best romantasy series specifically, most of the list below doubles as one. Very few of these authors know how to stop at a single book, which is either a blessing or a financial problem depending on your library card situation.
The Best Romantasy Books, Ranked
11. Twilight — Stephenie Meyer
Twilight gets mocked constantly, however, it also started the entire modern wave of this genre, so it earns its spot whether people like it or not. Bella and Edward are objectively a mess, the age gap alone should have been a group chat intervention, some of the writing, may make you cringe. But, that the obsessive, all-consuming quality of that romance is the blueprint half this list is built on. I did a full honest review of Twilight if you want the longer, more conflicted version of this opinion.
10. Heartless — Marissa Meyer
Before the Queen of Hearts was a villain, she was Catherine Pinkerton, a girl who wanted to open a bakery and fell for the court jester instead. Heartless is a prequel to Alice in Wonderland that plays the romance completely straight before it turns the knife, and the ending still gets me every time. My full breakdown is in the Heartless review.
9. The Wrath and the Dawn — Renée Ahdieh
A Thousand and One Nights retelling where Shahrzad marries a murderous caliph to avenge her best friend, only to find out he’s not quite the monster the rumours describe. The world-building leans hard into Persian folklore rather than the usual fae-and-castles default, which makes it stand out on a genre shelf that can feel repetitive by book six.
8. From Blood and Ash — Jennifer L. Armentrout
This is the one Reddit will not stop talking about. Readers keep saying it ruined their ability to enjoy a slow burn ever again, and honestly, fair. Poppy is a Maiden destined for the gods, guarded by a hooded enforcer who is obviously not what he seems. It’s spicy, it’s fast, and it does not pretend to be subtle about where it’s going.
7. The Bridge Kingdom — Danielle L. Jensen
Lara is trained from childhood to be a spy, sent into an enemy kingdom disguised as a bride so she can bring it down from the inside. The problem is her husband, King Aren, turns out to be a genuinely good ruler and a genuinely difficult person to keep hating. This is one of the more underrated titles here, less famous than the others, but the political tension is sharper than most books twice its size.
6. Daughter of Smoke and Bone — Laini Taylor
Karou is an art student in Prague with blue hair, a sketchbook full of monsters, and an errand-running job for a chimera that involves collecting teeth from around the world. Then an angel shows up trying to kill her, and things get complicated fast. This trilogy has some of the best prose in the genre, properly literary, properly strange, and I’ve written a longer Daughter of Smoke and Bone review for anyone who wants the deeper cut.
5. A Discovery of Witches — Deborah Harkness
Diana Bishop is a witch who refuses to use magic, working quietly as a historian, until she stumbles across an alchemical manuscript that every vampire, witch, and daemon in the world suddenly wants. Enter Matthew Clairmont, a vampire geneticist with old money and older secrets. It’s slower and more academic than most romantasy on this list, closer to dark academia with fangs, but the slow burn pays off properly by book two.
4. The Priory of the Orange Tree — Samantha Shannon
A standalone in a genre that rarely commits to one, Priory follows four characters across three continents as an ancient dragon threatens to wake. The romance is quieter here than in most of these entries, but it’s earned, and the world-building is some of the most ambitious in modern fantasy. I compared it directly against the genre’s biggest name in my Priory vs ACOTAR comparison, and I stand by the result on that one, even when it upsets people in the comments.
3. Fourth Wing — Rebecca Yarros
Violet Sorrengail was supposed to join the Scribe Quadrant, quiet, safe, bookish. Instead her mother forces her into the Riders Quadrant, where the dropout rate is fatal and the dragons bond with whoever they don’t eat first. Xaden Riorson, the guy most likely to have killed people close to her, becomes her assigned mentor. It’s brutal, it’s horny, it’s got dragons casually snapping cadets in half during training exercises, and it earned every bit of the hype it got. I’ve gone deeper on this one twice, once in a Fourth Wing review and again in an Empyrean series ranking, because apparently once wasn’t enough for me either.
2. Throne of Glass — Sarah J. Maas
Celaena Sardothien starts this series as an assassin dragged out of a labour camp to compete for the position of the King’s Champion, and by the end she’s considerably more than that. No spoilers. The series stretches across eight books and grows more ambitious with every one, swapping a fairly straightforward “assassin competition” premise for full-blown mythology, war, and a cast list that eventually needs its own spreadsheet to track. I ranked the whole series, book by book, in Throne of Glass ranked, and yes, I have strong opinions about where it peaks.
1. A Court of Thorns and Roses — Sarah J. Maas
The book that started my entire romantasy shelf, and it’s still sitting at the top for a reason. Feyre kills a fae wolf in the woods to feed her family, gets dragged Under the Mountain as payment, and ends up rewriting the entire political structure of a fae court she was never supposed to survive meeting. Tamlin, Rhysand, the Night Court, the Spring Court, the absolute chaos of book three onward, it’s messy, it’s soapy, it’s occasionally ridiculous, and I have never once put a book down faster to go start the sequel. I’ve written more about it than probably any other series on Litloop, starting with the ACOTAR series review if you want the full case for why it’s still number one.
How They Stack Up
Ranking is subjective, Goodreads ratings less so. Here’s how the shelf scores when a few million other readers weigh in.
| Rank | Book | Author | Goodreads Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas | 4.19 | Still the gateway drug |
| 2 | Throne of Glass | Sarah J. Maas | 4.18 | An assassin epic that grows into full mythology |
| 3 | Fourth Wing | Rebecca Yarros | 4.55 | Dragons, brutality, and hype that’s actually earned |
| 4 | The Priory of the Orange Tree | Samantha Shannon | 4.17 | Quiet romance, enormous world |
| 5 | A Discovery of Witches | Deborah Harkness | 4.01 | Dark academia with fangs |
| 6 | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor | 3.99 | The best prose on this list |
| 7 | The Bridge Kingdom | Danielle L. Jensen | 4.05 | Underrated political slow burn |
| 8 | From Blood and Ash | Jennifer L. Armentrout | 4.21 | Fast, spicy, no apologies about it |
| 9 | The Wrath and the Dawn | Renée Ahdieh | 4.04 | Folklore-driven, not another fae court |
| 10 | Heartless | Marissa Meyer | 4.09 | A villain origin story with real heartbreak |
| 11 | Twilight | Stephenie Meyer | 3.66 | The one that started it all, angst included |
Worth noting: Fourth Wing has the highest rating on this list by a wide margin and is also the newest book here by several years. Recency and rating momentum tend to move together on Goodreads, so take the top of that column with a small grain of salt.
So, What Should You Read Next?
If you’re new to the genre, start with ACOTAR or Fourth Wing, both are gateway drugs for a reason, and both will turn you into the person recommending romantasy to everyone in your book club within a month. If you’ve already burned through the obvious picks, The Bridge Kingdom and Priory of the Orange Tree are the ones I see get slept on the most, and they deserve better shelf space than they usually get.
Either way, log it on Litloop when you’re done. Half the fun of romantasy is the argument afterwards, who was right, who was wrong about Tamlin, whether book three ruined everything, and that argument is a lot more fun with friends who actually read the thing.
Read one of these and need someone to argue with about it? Litloop connects you with readers who’ve been through the same books, and have just as many opinions about Tamlin as you do.
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