The best romantasy books to start with

Romantasy is fantasy where the love story carries equal weight with the plot — not a fantasy novel with a kiss in it, and not a romance with a dragon on the cover.

These are the ones that hold up on both halves. The page counts are listed because several of them are commitments.

  1. Fourth Wing

    Rebecca Yarros · 517 pages · 2023

    Violet trained her whole life to be a scribe and gets sent to the war college for dragon riders instead, where the cadets who do not bond a dragon mostly do not survive the year.

  2. A Court of Thorns and Roses

    Sarah J. Maas · 419 pages · 2015

    A huntress kills the wrong wolf and is taken across the wall into the faerie lands to pay for it. Retells Beauty and the Beast for about half a book and then stops.

  3. A Court of Mist and Fury

    Sarah J. Maas · 626 pages · 2016

    The book the entire fandom is actually talking about: recovery, a different court, and a bargain that turns out to mean something else.

  4. Iron Flame

    Rebecca Yarros · 623 pages · 2023

    The sequel picks up with second year at Basgiath, a new commandant who wants Violet gone, and a war that has stopped being theoretical.

  5. Onyx Storm

    Rebecca Yarros · 544 pages · 2025

    The third Empyrean book sends Violet beyond the wards in search of something that might save Navarre, and almost nothing she was taught turns out to be true.

  6. The Cruel Prince

    Holly Black · 370 pages · 2018

    A mortal girl raised in Faerie by the man who murdered her parents decides she would rather have power than safety. Everyone in it is lying.

  7. The House in the Cerulean Sea

    T. J. Klune · 394 pages · 2020

    A by-the-book caseworker is sent to inspect an orphanage for magical children, one of whom is the Antichrist and mostly wants to be a bellhop.

  8. Divine Rivals

    Rebecca Ross · 357 pages · 2023

    Two rival journalists in a city at war, gods walking the front line, and a pair of enchanted typewriters that keep delivering letters to the wrong person.

  9. The Wicked King

    Holly Black · 336 pages · 2019

    Jude has the High King of Faerie under her control for exactly a year and a day, and every week of it costs her something she did not budget for.

  10. The Queen of Nothing

    Holly Black · 308 pages · 2019

    Exiled to the mortal world, Jude takes a job impersonating her twin and walks straight back into the court that threw her out.

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