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Oct 29, 2024

Books Similar To A Court Of Thorns And Roses For ACOTAR Fans

If you're looking for books like ACOTAR, with spice, we've got a list for you! BuzzFeed Contributor And just so it's clear, "spice" refers to sexual content of varying degrees. The books on this least

If you're looking for books like ACOTAR, with spice, we've got a list for you!

BuzzFeed Contributor

And just so it's clear, "spice" refers to sexual content of varying degrees. The books on this least have different spiciness levels, but may contain explicit or implicit descriptions of nudity, sexual acts, kinks, or other things of a sexual nature. Make sure you review any content warnings before diving into their pages!

From Blood and Ash (FBAA) is one of the top recommended series to overcome your ACOTAR hangover — for good reason. If you're looking for a male love interest rivaling Rhysand in debauchery, you'll love Hawke. He's twisted in the most deliciously depraved ways. It's as if "Under the Mountain Rhys" morphed into a Vlad-the-Impaler type vampire/god with a dark sense of humor and fetish for women wielding swords, but also highly compassionate — fiction men are wild like that. The series' female protagonist, Poppy, is introduced at the start of the series as "The Maiden" but becomes anything but by the end of book one. The six-book series (four are presently out) builds in sexual content, and in the third book, readers finally get a scene set up from book one. There's action, violence, political intrigue, vampires/gods/primals/shapeshifters, horrifying snake-filled zombies, and an Amarantha-esque queen to keep the action moving.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro. fm.

There are three books in The Bridge Kingdom series, and readers' emotional investment in the main characters is a testament to Jensen's ability to create sexy but flawed protagonists. Lara Veliant is a princess of Maridrina and one of the many daughters of the cruel King Silas. At five years old, she's pulled out of the harem she was born into, along with many of her sisters, to be raised into a cunning and brutal assassin. King Silas sends Lara to marry the new king of Ithicana, Aren Kertell, as part of an old peace treaty and to take control of the famous bridge of Ithicana, which makes or breaks a country due to trade routes. Oh, and she has to kill her new husband. Lara is more than willing to play her part if only to save Maridrina's starving people. The world-building (poisonous jungles, pirates, misty islands, desolate deserts with hidden compounds) created by Jensen is lush and seductive, and the witty banter doesn't disappoint. The spice is a slow build with ample simmer — and by book two, you don't even blink when an operation to cure an infected leg turns into a guilty, angsty bang. Yes, the cover is divisive, but don't let that stop you. Enemies to lovers, forced marriage, and plot twists with a genuinely otherworldly femme fatale make The Bridge Kingdom an engaging read.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound.

USA Today bestselling author Scarlett St. Clair knows her readers aren't here for the maiden-to-maiden headless trope. Princess Isolde de Lara is trained in combat, sleuths around enemy war camps, and enjoys the occasional nighttime stroll killing zombie-like beings. But when she's suddenly within proximity to who she believes is the ruthless war-lord vampire, King Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, she's fighting both her disgust and undeniable attraction to him. They marry quickly in the book — Isolde is pushed (really, she. volunteers) into marriage with plans to assassinate the vampire king, whose armies are gobbling up neighboring territories. Adrian demands to marry Isolde for a much more complicated reason. Shaky nuptials aside, the newlyweds have no issue consummating their marriage — like, immediately. This exchange between Isolde and Adrian is a good precursor of what's to come following their marriage: "You assume I want a wife," he said. "But I came for a queen." It was my turn to stare. "So our marriage will be one of pageantry?" "Oh, I think we are both too passionate for that." St. Clair is also the author of the Hades x Persephone series, which is frequently recommended for fans of ACOTAR.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

This spin-off of Armentrout's Blood and Ash series follows protagonist Seraphena, the princess of a country being slowly overtaken by a plague (aka the rot) who is trained from birth for one task: marry then kill the Primal of Death. Her family believes the Primal is the cause of the rot, and the only way to ensure the country doesn't wither and die is through a bargained marriage treaty between Seraphena's ancestors and the Primal of Death. But Seraphena is anything but pliant, and once the Primal of Death is summoned to collect his young bride, he refuses her. Suddenly, her status as bride-savior turns assassin in order to meet her family's political gains. During a nighttime outing, Seraphena witnesses several gruesome murders and is almost caught by the murderer, if not for the sudden arrival of what she believes to be a god. This introduces readers to Ash. There's plenty of foreplay and an eventual de-flowering, but not of the female main character — Ash is a virgin by choice, and it's more of a control thing. Which… also… just…builds on the tension and heat. It's the first book in the Flesh and Fire series, and has two sequels out now — the fourth will be out in May. You don't have to read FBAA to enjoy Ash and Seraphena's story; the lake scene lives rent-free in my head. Hell, I'd pay that scene rent.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Maas' most recently published series, Crescent City, leans more towards modern fantasy and is expected to be a trilogy. The first book focuses on Bryce Quinlan, a party girl whose life of quickies in bathrooms and drug use is upended after a demon murders her closest friends, sending her into a spiral of trauma and guilt. She becomes a central suspect in the murder investigation and is forced to help detectives (a team of attractive and well-built Fallen angels) find the true killer and clear her name. Assigned to closely monitor Bryce in the investigation is Hunt Athalar — a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. Hunt dismisses Bryce as a spoiled party girl, incapable of comprehending his present-day brutality and traumatized past. But Bryce proves to be more like Maas' first female badass, Aelin, from the Throne of Glass series. In the second book in the series, House of Sky and Breath, we're blessed with some fine scenes with the tattooed Fae Prince Ruhn — one involving a lip ring. Fallen angels, Fae shapeshifters, a Lucien-esque merman, and demons. There's a reason why a slew of BookToks feature reader reactions to a particular chapter from A House Sky and Breath. Like I said, these books are spicy.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound.

Yeine Darr is an outsider from the barbarian north, summoned to the opulent city of Sky following her mother's mysterious death. There, she's named an heiress to the king — surprising no one more than Yeine. But like other badass female protagonists we're getting to know, the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won. Jemisin is a must-read author, and with the type of intricate world-building and plot she creates, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms deserves a prominent space on your #TBR. Plain and simple, it's phenomenal high fantasy. Jemisin upends many formulaic tropes and pulls epic fantasy into a much more layered and multicultural world that other authors struggle with. The spicy moments are milder, but they are still there.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Sumptuous and vivid, Weaks' series is a fantasy romance at its best. The Witch Collector is the first book in the Witch Walker series, which follows mainly from the point of view of witch Raina Bloodgood, who cannot speak, so she communicates using a form of sign language and weaves spells using her hands. She's also hell-bent on killing the Witch Collector for kidnapping her sister several years prior and the Frost King, who holds her sister prisoner. On witch collecting day, Raina plans her attack but things go wrong. She's suddenly forced to ally with Alexus (aka the Witch Collector), who is profoundly alluring and handsome, to battle sinister forces destroying villages around them. Book One is excellent, but like ACOTAR, the lead-up to book two, City of Ruin, is where you'll find the more explicit, spell-binding moments.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Like Maas, the author of The Winter Knight pulls on well-known legends and lore and re-creates the narrative. The Winter Knight is a closer tie to Maas’ Crescent City, but once you know how that series is connected to ACOTAR the jump in time doesn’t seem that fantastical. Arthurian legends are given a fresh life in this upbeat queer urban fantasy, where the knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver. When one winds up suspiciously dead, Hildie, a Valkyrie investigator assigned to the case, needs to find the killer — and on her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain. After finding himself at the crime scene, Wayne is pulled deeper into his own medieval family history, all while attempting to flirt with the charming dean’s assistant Burt — who also happens to be a prime murder suspect in Hildie’s investigation. Fallen knights, conniving runesmiths, and witches are pulled into the investigation while Wayne and Hildie struggle to find out the truth. The Winter Knight is fast-paced with queer and trans heroes and is decidedly a slow burn. The climax (of a sort) happens later in the book and is M/M (male on male).

Get it from your local indie bookstore via Indiebound.

Have you ever asked for the spicier sauce at a restaurant, only to have the waiter ask, "Are you sure?" This is that moment. If you're not ready to contemplate the finer points of an apparition's "virile member" or for a public bath display that would cause the Rite of Spring in ACOTAR to avert its eyes, move on. While this series has certain issues, lacking in mature content isn't one of them. The Fae love interest, Caelum, gives very "touch her, and you'll die” vibes, and the first two books bring on the fated lovers, forced proximity, warring fae political houses, and enemies-to-lover tropes that ACOTAR fans seem to eat up. The series lacks world-building in a way Maas excels at (although any tie-in to Queen Mab is fabulous), and you might not even really enjoy the dialogue, save for when a few members of the Wild Hunt speak, but it does the trick when you're looking for a bit of a quickie… There are three books in this series by Wood, titled Of Flesh and Bone.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Growing in popularity, Broadbent's The Serpent and the Wings has strong similarities to The Hunger Games and ACOTAR (i.e., the trials set for Feyre by Amarantha). This is the first book in the Crowns of Nyaxia series and sets off into a world of powerful vampires and magical beings broken into warring classes, with humans at the bottom of the feeding line. Oraya is the adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king and has grown from a girl into a woman keenly aware the world around her is designed to kill her. Her only chance to become immortal (and survive in her vampire-dominated world) is by entering the Kejari, a tournament held by the goddess of death herself, in which she will compete amongst cunning and vicious opponents from different vampire houses. She's forced into an alliance (very Under the Mountain vibes) with a mysterious rival, Raihn, who, like many of the males in the fantasy romance genre, is tall and roguishly handsome. The violent trials bring the two closer, while the more adult content doesn't happen until near the end of the book; it's worth the wait. Two books in the Crowns of Nyaxia series have been published, and four more are planned.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound.

Written by BookToker and author Stacey McEwan, book one, Ledge: The Glacian Trilogy, is so hot it’s cold — forgive me, but it is a very fun romp in the fantasy genre with plenty of witty banter and an action-filled plot. Dawsyn, an axe-wielding beauty, lives on what is called Ledge, an icy place high in the mountains. Her tiny village is filled with hardship, and if you try to leave, you have two options: fall off the Ledge to your death or become a human sacrifice to the Glacians, a species of incredibly strong beings who come to steal a member of the town once every season, presumably to eat. Dawsyn is chosen by the Glacians and is ripped from her icy home — but suddenly a half-Glacian bat-winged half-breed (sound familiar?), Ryon, rescues her from an uncertain fate. The two prove to be brave companions in this chilly world, each on their own path of revenge. The sexual tension between the two main characters smolders. It's very enemies-to-lovers with a lusty build-up for a more adult level of spice. Make sure you check the trigger warnings before reading this one, though.

Get it from your local indie bookstore via Indiebound.

Hannah Whitten's For the Wolf is another favorite of ACOTAR fans but is on YA's mild side regarding adult content. On the other hand, The Foxglove King is a much more adult romantic epic and is the first in Whitten's The Nightshade Crown trilogy series. It's on this list for the progression of spice in the upcoming books and the flawless, gorgeous writing the author is known for. Book one is the tale of a young woman, Lore, with the secret power (Mortem) to raise the dead — which plunges her into the treacherous yet glamorous world of the Sainted King's royal court. When Lore's power is revealed, she's taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior monks, to the Sainted King. Lore expects her life to end, but King August surprises her with an offer: use her magic and help him discover why entire villages in his country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random, or die. Suddenly pulled into the King's court, Lore finds herself tangled within politics, religion, and forbidden romance as she navigates a Versailles-esque level of debauched society.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Without fail, you'll see The Bargainer series frequently mentioned on Bookstagram as a follow-up to ACOTAR. Bestselling indie author Laura Thalassa just released the revised and edited first book in the The Bargainer series, Rhapsodic, about the dark fantasy romance between siren Calypso Lillis and the Bargainer Desmond Flynn, aka King of the Night. It's widely known that if you need a favor, you go to the Bargainer to make it happen. Calypso is woefully indebted after several years of favor-asking, and everyone knows the Bargainer will collect his debts sooner or later. And when Callie finds the Bargainer in her room one evening with a grin on his lips, she knows he's come to collect. At first, he only asks for a "truth" — for her to acknowledge their attraction. But really, he's after more... Desmond needs her help in the Otherworld. Fae warriors are going missing, and only the women are returned, each in a glass casket, a child clutched to their breast. For the Bargainer to save his people, he'll need a favor from the siren. If you dig morally gray characters with a very will-they-wont-they-then-they-do-a-lot relationship, The Bargainer is fantastic.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro. fm.

Fans of Dune and ACOTAR will likely enjoy this series, but fair warning: the spice flows in abundance within Carey’s epic fantasy. Kushiel’s Dart isbook one of the Phèdre's Trilogy. Carey masterfully builds a world of unchecked opulence, sacrifice, political intrigue, and fascinating characters with a flawed but clever heroine. Phédre nó Delaunay is born into indentured servitude to be purchased by a nobleman trained in history, politics, foreign languages, and the finer arts of pleasure. She is also the ultimate submissive in that, through magic, pain causes her arousal. She becomes an elite courtesan and talented spy for the nobleman...and an unlikely heroine after she stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange. There are many, many trigger warnings for this series, and it absolutely falls under adult reading.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

Kerri Maniscalco's Kingdom of the Wicked trilogy will make you hungry for more than dashing demons with wicked dialogue — it’ll make you crave Italian comfort food. It is similar in many ways to ACOTAR, except instead of Fae, it involves witches and demons. Emilia is a streghe (witch in Italian), like the rest of her family, who lives secretly among humans while running a trattoria. When her vibrant twin sister is found dead, Emilia’s world turns to vengeance and she uses dark magic to summon a demon prince for answers. The hell prince who turns up is Wrath, who isn’t at all what she expected. If there could be a “second book syndrome” ACOTAR trope, Kingdom of the Cursed falls within it. There’s a gradual build too the adult content in the series, which really hits in book two — the lagoon scene in Kingdom of the Cursed should come with a block of ice to cool down. Maniscalco is brilliant at setting the scene and creating mysterious, sexy worlds, where different kingdoms represent the different seven sins, full of hidden secrets and magic.

Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound. You can also try the audiobook version through Libro.fm.

I’m a huge Jenny Hickman fan, and forever recommend her Myths of Airren series to anyone that craves morally gray MMCs with a sense of humor. Hickman has a knack for writing layered characters with backstories and a penchant for backstabbing that are as delicious as they are entertaining. Her newest series, Bound and Freed, with book one titled Bound by Gravity, is a darker and sexier turn for the Ireland-based author and does not disappoint. It’s also a favorite of bookstagrammer and book event coordinator Brooke aka @b4bookish, who loves the fated mates and forbidden love in this new series from Hickman.

Drug-addled and heartbroken Senan is the spare prince of the fae realm and agrees with everyone else around him; he’s the disposable one, the frivolous one, the one that’s high or having sex, or ideally both. But when he meets a blue haired fae gathering lemons in a market his wayward saunter finally has a clear end point—Allette. Senan and Allette begin what is undoubtedly a badly timed and ill-fated affair that only causes both of them extreme risk and trauma, but they can’t seem to stay away. And Senan will risk even his own wings to keep her. There are more on-the-page sex scenes than in Hickman’s previous series; there are also a good deal of mature topics, like self-harm, drug use, and abuse, which give this series a darker vibe than her previous work. But for fans of ACOTAR, like myself, they’ll likely eat up anything Hickman has to serve. She’s got that same sort of irreverent dialogue that hooks you in, with a talent for writing flawed love interests. Fair warning, book one ends is one epic of a cliffhanger

A darling of booktok at the moment filling up booktoks and bookstagrams is the gothic witchy romance Phantasma by Kaylie Smith. Perfect for fans of Carissa Broadbent’s The Serpent and the Wings of Night and ACOTAR is Smith’s heart racing and twisty romance with morally gray love interests that will keep you up at night. Ophelia has spent most of her life surrounded by death, so the grim doesn’t really scare her. But when her sister disappears and the only way to get her back is playing a very dark and dangerous game, she’ll need more than her bravery to keep her head. The game Ophelia enters is Phantasma, a contest within a dark and mysterious labyrinth of a mansion...that promises the winner of the game will be granted a single wish—which she plans on using to save her sister. And just when the bloody monsters seem too much to handle, a hottie named Blackwell shows up to smoothly offer his assistance, at a price. Creepy, haunting, intense and hot is the best way to sum up Smith’s Phantasma.

I’m a little shocked when I hear readers first fall in love with romantasy by reading Fourth Wing first and then make their way to ACOTAR. Usually, it’s ACOTAR and then into a spiraling book addiction that leads, and rightfully so, to Fourth Wing. But however you got here - welcome. You don’t have to read romances with smut, but frankly, more of us should. And one of the undeniable best is Rebecca Yarros’ sexy dragon rider Empyrean Series aka Fourth Wing. Millions of copies have been sold, with numbers only climbing with book three in the Empyrean series, Onyx Storm, set to release in January 2025. There’s also a television series in the works with Amazon studios.

The series centers on Violet Sorrengail, daughter of an emotionally abusive and distant general mother who is all but pushed into joining a deathtrap of an academy…where the survivors are expected to bond with a dragon…assuming they can live through the process. And Violet, who’s seen as a weak link to the more ambitious cadets, has a target on her back. If she isn’t bullied for her size, it’s for the fact her mother played a brutal and violent role in squashing a rebellion that occurred years ago. Enter Xaden Riorson aka shadow daddy with commitment issues and the world on his back, he has every reason to not want anything to do with Violet but her ability to cheat death, smarts and peculiar hair color have brought him to his literal knees. Many spicy peppers. I’d read it for the little gold dragon, but I’d also read it for the chair scene in book two.

Fans of ACOTAR will gobble up Riftborne, especially once they meet the Laryk Ashford. It’s got enemies-to-lovers, detailed world building, morally gray love interests, slow burn spice that’s worth the torture, an underdog female lead like Yarros’ Violet and a rad power-system loosely inspired by the X-Men. Fia Riftborne has survived twenty years as an outcast in a city that’s deadly for someone like her. Aside from being a child from the rebellion she’s hiding an even bigger secret that could put her at risk, a power that claws to get out of her.

And just when she thinks her secret might begin to control her the handsome and brooding Sidhe General, Laryk Ashford sees Fia loose hold of her power—and believes if harnessed her power can become a deadly weapon in their world. The General has been crafting an elite unit of powerful wielders within his Guard in order to fight and survive Wraiths of darkness. And Laryk isn’t above blackmailing Fia to use her in the upcoming conflicts, and although she despises everything about him his offer to finally control and train the magic within her is too tempting to turn down. For Throne of Glass fans I am getting slight Chaol and Selena vibes from Fia and Laryk, and Riftborne does end on a glorious gut-punch of a cliffhanger.