Enemies to Lovers Books: 12 Ranked by a Romance Author

The first enemies to lovers book I ever loved was one I picked up fully expecting to hate. Fourth Wing, two nights, a war college that wants Violet dead and a cadet with a family grudge standing right there in the courtyard. I read it in a blink and was annoyed with myself the entire time, because I could see every gear turning and I fell for it anyway. That is the trope working as designed.

I read 80-plus books a year (likely 100-plus this year), and somewhere in the last two years I became the person my friends text when they want a good slow burn with a grudge in it. I also write these arcs myself. My next book has a heroine who is sent to destroy a man and falls for him instead, so I have spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about what makes the turn work. Here is the short version: the hostility has to be real, the burn has to run long enough that you are begging for it, and the turn has to feel earned instead of scheduled.

Below are the best enemies to lovers books I have actually finished, ranked, with my real rating on every one, a spice level wherever I logged one, and zero spoilers. Three stars on this page means I liked it and had notes. Anything I could not finish did not make the list, and I add to it as I read. Let’s dive in.

The best enemies to lovers books, if you read exactly one: Fourth Wing for the modern gateway, Phantasma for the deal-with-a-devil version, and The Bridge Kingdom for the assassin bride. Everything else on this list is a matter of how much slow burn you can stand.

1. Phantasma by Kaylie Smith

This book is about… Ophelia, a witch who has just lost her mother and is about to lose her family home, enters Phantasma, a haunted manor competition where one survivor gets a wish, and the devil who runs the trials takes an interest in her.

Subgenre: modern dark romantasy / deadly trials, set in a New Orleans that already feels haunted.

Why they’re enemies: She needs Blackwell to survive the trials, he needs something from her that he will not name, and neither of them trusts the other for a single page. The banter is the weapon.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ 4/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 stars. I do not usually like romantasy with the word “dark” anywhere near it, and this book rewired that opinion. It is the only book on this list where I finished without a list of things I would change (the side characters are thin, and I did not care). Read my full review here!

2. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

This book is about… Violet Sorrengail, who was supposed to be a scribe, is forced into a war college where cadets bond with dragons or die trying, and the most dangerous cadet there has a generational grudge against her family name.

Subgenre: dragon-rider romantasy / military academy.

Why they’re enemies: His family died because of hers. The school is actively trying to kill her. You can see exactly where it is going, and the book makes you wait for it anyway.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars. This is the one that made me a sucker for the trope. As a writer I pay attention to the mechanics, and the slow burn is long enough that you are begging for the turn. My notes: the prose is workmanlike, and Violet’s dialogue is less pithy than the book keeps telling me she is. Read my full review here!

3. Quicksilver by Callie Hart

This book is about… Saeris, a thief scraping by in a desert city, pulls a sword-in-the-stone move by accident and lands in a fae realm at war, in the custody of the coldest warrior in it.

Subgenre: fae romantasy with vampires, alchemy, and a very good glare.

Why they’re enemies: Kingfisher wants her for what she can do with metal and makes no effort to be pleasant about it. She wants to go home. The insults are the flirting for a very long time.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars. Half the ACOTAR readers I know hyped this one up and they were right about the romance. My biggest gripe was not the story at all: the Kindle edition I read was full of typos and formatting slips, and a book this good deserved a proofreader. Read my full review here!

4. The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen

This book is about… Lara, a princess raised in secret as a weapon, has one mission: marry the king of a rival kingdom and destroy it from the inside. Aren, the husband in question, is infuriatingly not the monster she was promised.

Subgenre: assassin-bride romantasy / political fantasy.

Why they’re enemies: She was literally trained from childhood to bring down his kingdom. Every dinner is reconnaissance. Every kindness from him is a problem for the plan.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars. The assassin tropes here are the best I have read in romantasy: the training flashbacks, the concealed-blade competence, the heroine who could kill everyone at the table and has to pass the salt instead. My one note is that a couple of mid-book turns lean on people withholding information a beat too long. Read my full review here!

5. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (the series)

This book is about… Feyre, a huntress keeping her family alive in a starving village, kills a wolf in the woods and is dragged into the faerie lands as the price, where a curse, a court, and a certain High Lord of the Night Court are waiting.

Subgenre: the romantasy series everyone references / fae courts.

Why they’re enemies: The enemies to lovers arc is not in book one. It is Rhysand, the villain of the first book, and the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, is where the whole series turns on it.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️ 2/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars. I am not traditionally a romance or fantasy reader and this series still changed my reading life. Book one starts slower than I wanted (my rating above is for book one), and my ACOMAF review explains why the second book is the one I would hand you. Read them in order, and my ACOTAR reading order guide will keep you from skipping ahead. Read my full review here!

6. Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli

This book is about… Rune is a socialite by day and the Crimson Moth by night, smuggling witches out of a city that burns them. Gideon is the witch hunter who would burn her if he knew what she was. They start seeing each other to spy on each other.

Subgenre: YA romantasy / witch-hunter romance.

Why they’re enemies: Each of them is hunting the other, and every dance, dinner, and polite conversation is a knife fight in disguise. It is the single most combustible setup on this list.

Spice level: 🌶️ 1/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. The premise machinery is great and the pages turn fast. The book keeps flirting with its own darkest questions (what it costs to love your enemy for real) and then steps back from them, so the stakes stay closer to the surface than I wanted. This is the one to hand a teenager. Read my full review here!

7. Spark of the Everflame by Penn Cole

This book is about… Diem, a healer’s daughter in a kingdom where mortals are second-class, ends up serving in the palace of the dying king while his enigmatic heir watches her every move. Book one of the Kindred’s Curse Saga.

Subgenre: slow-burn romantasy / class-divided kingdom.

Why they’re enemies: She is mortal, he is the heir who benefits from a system that crushes people like her, and she cannot afford to like him. The book wears its slow burn openly.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️ 2/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. The character work is the draw. Penn Cole gives Diem real interiority, and the moral dilemmas are real ones where every option costs something. It is slow and it knows it, and none of the archetypes will surprise you if you have read a shelf of these. I wanted comfort food, and that is what it is. Read my full review here!

8. The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent

This book is about… Oraya, a human raised by the vampire king, enters the Kejari, a deadly tournament held in the goddess’s honor, and allies with Raihn, a vampire she has every reason to want dead.

Subgenre: vampire romantasy / deadly trials.

Why they’re enemies: They are rival contestants in a tournament designed to leave one survivor, and the alliance is a truce with an expiration date. The tension is structural, which is my favorite kind.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️ 2/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. This is the polished, thoughtful end of self-published-turned-megahit romantasy, and the trials have actual rules. What I missed was wit. It plays everything a little somber and a little safe, and the dialogue is more functional than clever. Read my full review here!

9. Slaying the Vampire Conqueror by Carissa Broadbent

This book is about… Sylina, an assassin-priestess of a sisterhood sworn to the goddess of fate, gave up her eyes for the order and gained other ways of seeing. Her mission is Atrius, the vampire conqueror tearing through her homeland.

Subgenre: assassin romantasy / Crowns of Nyaxia universe.

Why they’re enemies: She was sent to kill him, and for the first stretch of the book that assignment is the only thing between them. The friction comes from a heroine whose job is the man she is falling for.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. Fast and well built, with worldbuilding I respect (the Arachessen alone are a great invention). It keeps its feelings on a leash, though. The characters read a little one-note, and the big turns needed one more twist of the knife to land the way they were designed to. Read my full review here!

10. A Court This Cruel & Lovely by Stacia Stark

This book is about… Prisca has spent her life hiding the forbidden magic that would get her killed, and when it finally slips, she is on the run with the last man she should trust: a ruthless mercenary with his own reasons for keeping her alive.

Subgenre: romantasy romp / fugitive-and-hunter road story.

Why they’re enemies: He is exactly the kind of man she has been hiding from, and he makes no secret of what he thinks of her. The road trip does the rest.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️ 2/5

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. The momentum is the whole appeal. Stacia Stark builds set pieces like she storyboarded them first, the leads are a good time together, and the book simply moves. What it will not do is slow down long enough for nuance, in the world or in anyone’s interior life. Go in knowing it chooses romp every single time. Read my full review here!

11. The Ever King by L.J. Andrews

This book is about… Erik Bloodsinger, the scarred king of the Ever Kingdom, has spent years imprisoned beneath the waves plotting revenge on the man who killed his father. When that man’s daughter breaks his chains by accident, she becomes the pawn in his revenge.

Subgenre: pirate romantasy / sea kingdom.

Why they’re enemies: She is the daughter of his enemy and he takes her precisely because of it. The premise gives the romance real friction from page one.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. The sea kingdom is a fun sandbox and the book knows exactly what flavor it is serving, which I respect. The danger stays theoretical, though. For a story about a vicious pirate king I wanted more menace, more twists, and more moments where the characters were up against something that could actually cost them. Read my full review here!

12. Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood

This book is about… Two rival game developers get snowed in together during a work trip and have to share a lot more than a deadline. A novella, so clear one evening, not one weekend.

Subgenre: contemporary romance novella / rivals in the video game industry.

Why they’re enemies: Professional rivals, not sworn enemies. They compete for the same thing and would rather lose a finger than lose to each other, which is its own flavor of the trope.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars. A complete arc compressed into novella length that still reads like an actual story instead of an extended epilogue, which is harder than it looks. Some of the Hazelwood alchemy is missing, that specific stack of banter and pining that makes you accidentally read until 2am. Ingredients, yes. Full spell, not quite. Read my full review here!

Honorable Mentions

The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman is a captive-heroine story where the enemy slowly becomes a shield. It is unmistakably a child of the ACOTAR era, fast and low-friction, and the characters are drawn in broad strokes. A qualified yes from me (my review).

Metal Slinger by Rachel Schneider was tracking as a four-star read, possibly five, for three quarters of the book, and then the ending broke the first-person contract in a way I explain without spoilers in my review. An enemy soldier, metal magic, high seas. Read it with an asterisk.

And Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, which I read all seven of in a month. Celaena spends the whole series turning enemies into allies and allies into something else, and the fact that I could not stop tells you the pull is real, even if the individual books landed at three stars for me.

How I Rank Enemies to Lovers Books

I rank on three things, and I learned all three the hard way in TV writers’ rooms before I ever wrote a romance. First, is the hostility real, with a reason I believe, or are two attractive people just being rude to each other on a schedule? Second, is the burn long enough that I am begging for the turn? Third, does the book survive the turn? A lot of these deflate the moment the leads admit it, because the tension was the only engine. The best ones have somewhere to go afterward.

A good enemies to lovers book is a slow burn with a reason. A bad one is a grudge with a page count.

If you want the wider shelf, my ranked list of the best romantasy books covers every subgenre, and my Kindle Unlimited romantasy list only carries books that are free with a KU membership. For the same trope in a very different costume, my romantic thriller list is where the guns come out.

And yes, I wrote one. Lola Whitman is sent to take down billionaire Ezekiel Crane and falls for him instead, which is this trope with an FBI wire taped to it.

FAQ: Enemies to Lovers Books

What does enemies to lovers mean?

Enemies to lovers is a romance where the two leads start as opponents, rivals, or actual enemies, and the story turns that hostility into love over a slow burn. The hostility has to have a reason (a war, a grudge, a mission) or the trope does not work.

What is the best enemies to lovers book?

Fourth Wing is the modern gateway and the one I hand people first. Phantasma is my highest-rated book on this list, and The Bridge Kingdom is the best pure version of the trope, because the heroine was literally trained to destroy the man she marries.

Is Fourth Wing enemies to lovers?

Yes. Violet and Xaden start on opposite sides of a family grudge inside a school that is trying to kill her, and the slow burn runs most of the book. My books like Fourth Wing list has the rest of the dragon-and-rivalry shelf.

What is the difference between enemies to lovers and rivals to lovers?

Rivals compete for the same thing and want to win. Enemies want each other gone. Two Can Play is rivals (two developers, one prize). The Bridge Kingdom is enemies (one of them was sent to end the other’s kingdom). Both count on this list, and I have noted which is which under every entry.

Pick the grudge you would carry, and clear a weekend. Here’s to the turn you see coming and fall for anyway.