Enemies to lovers is one of the most popular young adult/new adult literary tropes of the modern age,with particular fantasy novels featuring enemies-to-lovers arcs emerging as the best.Books that perfectly blend romance and fantasyare among BookTok’s favorite titles, typically featuring some stubborn and charismatic characters who give rise to the namesake’s intense dynamic. At its core, enemies to lovers is about overcoming initial misunderstandings and prejudices to find a life-changing romance.
Readers also typically enjoy the mystery of an enemies-to-lovers story, with one or both characters having concealed motivations, giving the relationship a thrilling element. Most readers would alsohate these fantasy book boyfriends in real life, demonstrating how the appeal of the trope lies in its fictionality. However, such romance novels are still among theBookTok books that deserve their hypewhenthe charged emotions of hate and love are sometimes closely entwined — essentially this book trope’s bread and butter.
10Pride And Prejudice And Zombies
By Seth Grahame-Smith
Lizzy and Darcy are arguably the original enemies to lovers of fiction, characterized by their brilliant banter of insults and deconstruction.Pride and Prejudice and Zombiesbecame a runaway hit by repurposing a lot of the original dialoguefromPride and Prejudice— with the ever-present threat of a zombie attack. An entirely new element of violence and combative skill is introduced to the story, as the ability to kill zombies is necessary to survive and another way for the narrative to express Lizzy’s frustration with her inferior social status.
Release date
Goodreads score
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
2009
3.3
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Darcy unwittingly falls in love with Lizzy also because of her fighting skills,while their interactions are even more tense when they might actually kill each other. Yet underneath it is all the clever formality ofPride and Prejudice, utilized to show these two stubborn people falling in love.Pride and Prejudice and Zombiesfeatures an amazing blend of what feels like a typical period romance, with a smattering of hilariously morbid and dirty comments certainly not present in the original.
9A Court Of Mist And Fury
By Sarah J. Maas
Sarah J. Maas created her own trope of tricking her readers into believing in a love interest or love triangle before a new suitor sweeps in to steal the show and everyone’s hearts in the second or third book. Rhys is a very charismatic andpowerful character inA Court of Thorns and Roses, about whom everyone wants to know more. They are rewarded for readingA Court of Mist and Fury, in whichFeyre is drawn into the world of the Night Court, an experience that is tied up with her changing relationship with Rhys.
Their story has all the intrigue and fantasy of most romantasy books, but some profound beats of realism.
A Court of Mist and Fury
2016
Feyre Archeron & Rhysand
4.6
Feyre had already become friendly with Rhys because of their alliance against Amarantha before she even knew what he had to lose. Their evolving dynamic is weightier and healthier because Feyre doesn’t go straight from Tamlin to Rhys, having a“just friends”period with him.A Court of Mist and Furyalso emphasizes howFeyre and Rhys support each other regarding their mental health.Their story has all the intrigue and fantasy of most romantasy books, but some profound beats of realism.
8The Cruel Prince
By Holly Black
The main romance of Holly Black’sThe Folk of the Airtrilogy is characterized by all the chaos of two teenagers unsure of their emotions and bearing the burden of living in a dangerous faerie society.Jude and Cardan are at war with their enemies, their families, and definitely each other. Cardan bullies Jude and her sister for years because he can’t deal with being attracted to someone of a lower social status than him — apparently, he took notes from Darcy.
2018
Jude Duarte & Cardan Greenbriar
4
Jude and Cardan are desperately scheming to remain in power and protect their loved ones, which results in a shaky alliance between the two of them. Steeped in the fairy core aesthetic ofThe Spiderwick Chronicles, surrounded by fantastical faeries and intense conflicts of all kinds,Jude and Cardan find that they can only depend on each other.Jude and Cardan surprise readers and each other with their own emotions and loyalties, bringing the story to a happy end.
7To Kill A Kingdom
By Alexandra Christo
In a bloody retelling ofThe Little Mermaid, power in the undersea kingdom is measured by how many human hearts a siren collects. Princess Lira is the vicious heir to the kingdom, until a well-intentioned transgression results in her mother, the Sea Queen, cursing her to be human. Lira’s only path home is to rip out the heart of the human prince Elian, the captain of a skilled crew of siren hunters. Of course,Lira and Elian are destined for romance to further complicate their already messy lives,where they are both torn between duty and passion.
Princess Lira & Prince Elian
3.7
To Kill a Kingdomincludes some nods to Disney’sThe Little Mermaid— a red-haired siren princess and an octopus sea witch, for instance — bringing in the iconography the audience is most familiar with.What is most interesting about Lira’s relationship with Elian and the rest of his crew is that there is a defining moment where she realizes she wants to do things differently than her motherbecause of what she has learned from them. This depiction of young lovers figuring out their place in the world and discovering it through each other makes for an even stronger enemies-to-lovers arc.
6Dreams Of Gods And Monsters
By Laini Taylor
The trilogy started byDaughter of Smoke and Bonehas one of themost unique fantasy book magic systemsand some deeply fascinating enemies-to-lovers subplots, predating many of the most remembered examples in the romantasy BookTok world.The series follows an ongoing war between the chimaeras and seraphim,with the protagonist Karou being raised by four members of the former group. Naturally, people falling in love when they are on opposite sides of this war facilitates a bigger debate about the nature of the conflict.
Dreams of Gods and Monsters
2014
Ziri & Liraz
4.1
Karou grapples with her feelings for the seraph soldier Akiva throughout the trilogy, butan even more interesting subplot happens between the chimaera Ziri and seraph Liraz,whose possible romantic relationship is established in the third book. The two are initially hostile towards each other because of the losses they have both experienced. However, they gradually learn that they can help each other cope with their grief. As the characters from the opposing sides of the war inDaughter of Smoke and Bonecome to each other’s aid again and again, Ziri and Liraz naturally fall into a relationship.
5Crier’s War
By Nina Varela
Crier’s Warsets up a familiar enemies-to-lovers premise, with some strong twists calling back to The Terminator and Blade Runner.Crier’s Wardelves into questions of technology and humanity in a setting Made people have long oppressed the human race. Under these circumstances,the human servant Ayla plans to kill the Made Lady Crier to avenge her loved ones,while Crier is discovering some ugly truths about her family.
2019
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Inherent in the enemies-to-lovers story is the discovery of new information that makes a forbidden love possible.Crier’s Wardraws out the confusion between its two leads into the second book, whereinthe audience is blessed with the dramatic irony of seeing Ayla and Crier unknowingly fighting for each other miles apart.The Terminatorfranchise hardly has enough romance, but fans of these two subgenres will be intrigued byCrier’s War.
4We Hunt The Flame
By Hafsah Faizal
In the duology pitched as a fantasy version ofThe Hunger Games,Zafira and Nasir have an instantly electric dynamic, despite having every reason to dislike each other.Zafira is a huntress providing for her village while disguised as a man to avoid persecution, while Nasir is the kingdom’s prince and deadliest assassin, extorted into killing by his father. Their paths cross when they are both sent to a dangerous island in search of an ancient artifact and unwittingly end up becoming part of a larger band of outcasts.
Zafira bint Iskandar & Nasir Ghameq
3.9
The other characters present like each other and have no problem with friendly comradery;Zafira and Nasir are the defensive outlierswho realize that they have all been brought together for a reason. As they venture deeper into the island’s terrain, their intuitive familiarity with each other grows. Zafira and Nasir emerge from this experience as an effective team with strong feelings for each other and have to figure out what their future together holds.
3Serpent & Dove
By Shelby Mahurin
Serpent & Dove’s enemies-to-lovers plot kicks off with a marriage to save face between two people incredibly unlikely to fall in love with each other. Lou is a wild rogue witch while Reid is a devout witch hunter, the latter unaware of the former’s identity when he marries her — he just generally finds her detestable.There are some cute moments depicting Lou and Reid coming to appreciate each other just because of proximity,but the best parts are once the secrets of the first book have been revealed.
Lou le Blanc & Reid Diggory
Both Lou and Reid have instilled beliefs about each other and themselveswhich come apart as they see more of their world. They have wildly different personalities and tastes, making daily interactions between them difficult. But as they head into the second book, Reid sees the good parts of magic while Lou sees the good parts of religion, making for a love story about forming more nuanced understandings of people in service of a single relationship.
2These Violent Delights
By Chloe Gong
Another classic enemies-to-lovers couple (who follow the typical framework of this trope less than Lizzy and Darcy) is Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers. However,Chloe Gong’s best bookspends more time on Juliette and Roma’s inner turmoil and conflicting loyalties, as they go back and forth from being enemies and lovers.When they meet, Juliette and Roma are both hopeful teenagers not yet overwhelmed by the weight of their families' expectations,finding some sense of freedom and simple happiness in each other.
Yet their relationship becomes more volatile as they become more implicated in their families' war, and they grow up far too quickly.
2020
Juliette Cai & Roma Montagov
3.8
Yet their relationship becomes more volatile as they become more implicated in their families' war, and they grow up far too quickly. They are forced to ask themselves again and again what their priorities are as the situation in 1920s Shanghai gets more dangerous.Intertwined with Juliette and Roma’s story is an enigmatic fantasy subplot as a foreign monster threatens their city,and they band together to fight it. Juliette and Roma’s romance is especially characterized by agency, as they have to boldly declare that they reject what the world wants from them for each other.
1Six Of Crows
By Leigh Bardugo
The TV show adaptation ofShadow and Bonegets several things wrong about the Crowsand never got the chance to see Nina and Matthias' story to completion. Nina and Matthias were both raised by people who led them to see each other as irredeemable: The Fjerdans believe that the Grisha are monsters while the Grisha know that running across the Fjerdan Drüskelle is the worst thing that can happen to them.By chance, Nina and Matthias find themselves dependent upon each other in the wildernessand slowly abandon their own presumptions.
2015
4.5
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Six of Crowscreates three great romances out of six main characters, each facing setbacks of realistic miscommunications and misunderstandings.Nina and Matthias' story is not linear;Nina is forced to betray Matthias, leading him to believe he was initially right about her. He later reconciles his upbringing with the Nina he knows, while Nina finds herself becoming a key figure in Fjerda. Both characters are also dynamic, flawed individuals, a narrative element that helps all the best fantasy enemies-to-lovers stories along.
