My 6 Star & Favorite Reads

📚 Complete trilogy, book 1 is Daughter of No Worlds
🧝🏼‍♀️ Epic romantic fantasy
🎧 Dual-narrated audiobook
🔥 Lower spice

Plot: She is a former slave who needs the help of the magical Order to take down her oppressors. They tell her she needs the help of a former soldier as her trainer and he wants literally nothing to do with her or the Order.

Why it’s a favorite: My all-time favorite series. Beautiful writing, complex dynamics and themes (colonialism, war PTSD, trauma, etc.), incredible main characters, and it’s just stunning. I have a shelf devoted to this series that just keeps growing.

📚 Complete trilogy, book 1 is The City of Brass
🧝🏼‍♀️ Epic romantic fantasy
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook

Plot: Nahri is a con woman living in Cairo and has always had a hint of healing magic. One day walking home from a con she accidentally calls to a djinn, who shows up when the bodies in a cemetery start reanimating and he sweeps her away to a whole new world. Now, she’s swept up in the politics of a people she didn’t even know exist trying to understand who she is in all of it.

Why it’s a favorite: The world-building in this is OUTTA CONTROL in the best way. It’s so rich, so dense, and the magic is just amazing. There’s also a delicious romantic subplot that GAHHH I LOVE SO MUCH. Also this trilogy made me SOB. SOBBBBBB. I loved it so, so much.

📚 Incomplete trilogy, book 1 is This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me
🧝🏼‍♀️ Epic romantic fantasy
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook

Plot: Maggie wakes up in the world of her favorite unfinished book series; 2 of 3 books are out and she doesn’t know if book 3 will ever come out. BUT right now, she needs to survive. She knows things having read the series a bajillion times, but she has no identity and no way to navigate in this world. So she starts to pedal the information she knows for favors; a place to sleep, help from a famed warrior to save some kids, so on and so forth.

Her end goal is to save the city from the uprising and destruction she knows is coming, but will every action she takes have a positive or negative reaction? Will she fix things or make it worse?

Why it’s a favorite: I read this then IMMEDIATELY reread it. This was/is my whole personality. The world is so interesting, Maggie is a DELIGHTFUL MMC, there is a sense of humor, a DEEEEELICIOUS romantic subplot, and this is everything I want from a romantic fantasy.

📚 Incomplete 4 book series, book 1 is The Will of the Many
🧝🏼‍♀️ Epic sci-fi/fantasy
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook

Plot: A brilliant orphan boy with a mysterious past lives in a society where people cede their Will (aka their power/energy/etc.) to the caste of people directly above them in the hierarchy pyramid. So the higher you go, the stronger people are. He doesn’t want to cede and is trying to figure out how to keep from doing it. However he catches the eye of a powerful man who puts him into a prestigious school for reasons of his own.

Why it’s a favorite: Oh my god this is just brilliant. I love the caste system, the magic is so interesting, the Roman Empire influence is super cool, and I just am obsessed with how this story is unraveling.

📚 Complete duology, book 1 is The Knight and the Moth
🧝🏼‍♀️ Epic romantic fantasy duology
🎧 Dual-narrated audiobook
🔥 Lower spice

Plot: She is a Diviner, a religious tool for the gods that is drowned in order to provide visions and omens to paying customers. He’s a knight who quite dislikes both the pageantry of this as well as the harm, and therefore doesn’t much like her. But they join forces when her fellow Diviners start going missing.

Why it’s a favorite: The gargoyle is 1000% my favorite side character of ALL TIME. It is insane how that doofy little guy can be both the silliest nonsense man while also deeply introspective and wise. Aside from the perfection that is him, the writing is amazing. The themes of religious weaponization and symbolism are beautiful, and I think this duology is perfect.

📚 Incomplete trilogy, book 1 is Swordheart
🧝🏼‍♀️ Romantic fantasy in the White Rat world
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook
🔥 Lower spice

Plot: When her uncle dies leaving his entire estate to Halla, she becomes the target of the family’s ire. So much so that even before the funeral they lock her up until she agrees to marry her cousin. & when she’s finally decided her only exit was to end herself, a mystery warrior pops out of the sword she was planning on using.

Why it’s a favorite: This is SO FUN and SO DELIGHTFUL and I’m having the absolute time of my life in this trilogy. T Kinfisher writes the fuck out of worlds and gives such fun, seemingly minor details that round it out so fully and make you never want to leave. Incredible humor, incredible lead characters, stupendous side characters; I love everything.

📚 Incomplete trilogy, book 1 is A Forbidden Alchemy
🧝🏼‍♀️ Romantic fantasy
🎧 Dual-narrated audiobook
🔥 Lower spice

Plot: Patrick and Nina, both from separate poor, blue collar mining towns, are sent into the city at 12 years old to attend a ceremony to find out if they’re magical. But when they meet, they accidentally discover a huge secret that sets off a class war. Fast forward 10 years later and they run into each other, but not as the friends they once were.

Why it’s a favorite: Okay for one? Patrick mothafuckin’ Colson is the man you didn’t know you needed. King shit. But also, the politics in this is GREAT. I love love love this world and this trilogy stresses me to no end in the absolute best way. Banger after banger.

📗 Romantic fantasy standalone
❤️‍🔥 Has spice
🎧 Dual-narrated audiobook

Plot: He’s a scholar who has been tasked with recording the history of his country’s most legendary knight. But what he doesn’t know is that this assignment will actually take him into the past to live her glory alongside her in a repeating time loop. What he also doesn’t know is that maybe the glory isn’t quite what the legends have said over time.

Why I Love It: Oh my god the writing in this is absolutely insane (complimentary). It also recently won the Hugo Award for best novel, so if you don’t trust me you should at least trust them. But it’s also got a sense of humor, heartbreak, hope, and everything in between. Beautifully poignant themes around colonialism, who writes the history books, and family. I couldn’t love this more if you paid me to.

📕 Fantasy standalone
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook

Plot: Sciona is working to become the first female high mage in her city state, which doesn’t respect women. So when her success and skill becomes undeniable, the powers at be decide to place her with an immigrant; a people they disrespect just as much a women if not more.

Why I Love It: For one, this book absolutely wrecked me. The themes, the character arcs, the story, the magic system, the brutality? Oh my god it had me in my feels HARD. It’s beautiful, it’s brutal, it’s perfect.

📕 Novella in the Nyaxia world (7 additional books, but you can read this alone if you want)
🧛🏼‍♀️ Romantic fantasy
❤️‍🔥 Lower spice
🎧 Solo-narrated audiobook

Plot: Lilith was born to die, but when a blight is threatening her town and everyone she loves, she’s not quite ready to go just yet. She’s brilliant and ready to do research, but what she needs is the reclusive mystery vampire on the outskirts of town for help. And he’s got no real reason to help her.

Why I Love It: I cannot BELIEVE Carissa Broadbent was able to make me feel so many things in so few pages. This was just magnificent. The FMC being neurodivergent and so lovable was an absolute gem, the MMC being exactly what he was was so wonderful, and their chemistry was everything. I just love this.

📕 DARK romantic fantasy standalone
❤️‍🔥 Def spicy
🎧 Duet-narrated audiobook

Plot: Darcy is an orphan who receives a summons; go to the town of Fairydale to be a part of the will reading of your now dead biological father you didn’t know about. When she gets there, everything is weird; the people, the things, the houses… just everything. The longer she stays, the more she realizes the town has a really sordid history and she needs to figure out what she knows of it.

Why I Love It: I want to clarify this is NOT for everyone; it is dark af and messy and confusing and weird. But I loved every single messed up second. This somehow became the most epic love story I think I’ve ever read and the ending had me staring at a wall wondering how to start this journey back over.