Books like The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent reads as dark, emotional. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

What The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King is like to read

A vengeance-and-alliance fantasy romance where betrayal, secret power, and a fraught partnership drive the plot forward at high emotional intensity. Best for: readers of romantasy who want political intrigue tangled with a slow-building forbidden romance.

Covet

Tracy Wolff · 2021

A high-drama paranormal-academy soap opera piling coronation politics, arrest warrants, and a fractured love life onto its heroine — plotty, propulsive, and emotionally maximalist.

mildly eerieYAcliffhanger

The Serpent & the Wings of Night

Carissa Broadbent · 2022

A deadly tournament backdrop fuels a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers arc where every alliance could be a trap.

mildly eeriecliffhangerdeep cut

Bride

Ali Hazelwood · 2024

A political marriage-of-convenience between a vampyre outcast and a were alpha, powered by wary attraction and hidden motives — genre-forward paranormal romance with alpha/outsider tension.

high heatmildly eeriedeep cut

Divine Rivals

Rebecca Ross · 2023

An epistolary-tinged rivals-to-lovers romance set against a war of gods, where anonymous letters carry more feeling than the newsroom banter — emotionally forward, romance-driven, with wartime ache underneath.

cliffhangerdeep cut

The Queen of Nothing

Holly Black · 2019

A propulsive trilogy-capper of court intrigue, poisoned alliances, and hard-won romance — Jude's wry, ruthless first-person voice drives betrayals and reversals to a satisfying HEA.

guaranteed HEAmildly eerieYA

A Court of Wings and Ruin

Sarah J. Maas · 2017

A sprawling war-arc finale that trades the intimacy of book two for battlefield scale, court politics, and reunions — propulsive, emotionally heightened, and unabashedly romantic.

guaranteed HEAhigh heatmildly eerie

The Traitor Queen

Danielle L. Jensen · 2020

Another road into romantasy and war, taken at quick, propulsive pacing.

King of Battle and Blood

Scarlett St. Clair · 2021

A politically bound marriage between mortal queen and vampire king ignites dangerous attraction amid court intrigue and looming war.

deep cut

A Dawn of Onyx

Kate Golden · 2023

A captive-heroine romantasy where a healer prisoner and an infuriating fellow captive edge toward alliance amid dark woods and back-stabbing royals.

mildly eeriedeep cut

Glow

Raven Kennedy · 2022

A vengeance-and-alliance fantasy romance told in first person, with a captive-turned-power-player narrator fighting back against the kings who caged her while leaning on a morally gray ally.

happy-for-nowmildly eeriecliffhanger

King of Scars

Leigh Bardugo · 2019

A returning-cast fantasy that braids a young king's fight to hold his fractured country with a darker inner corruption threatening to consume him.

mildly eeriecliffhangerdeep cut

From Blood and Ash

Jennifer L. Armentrout · 2020

A forbidden-romance romantasy where a sheltered chosen-one heroine and her golden-eyed guard slow-burn through banter into betrayal and destiny.

happy-for-nowhigh heatmildly eerie

About The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King — what the genome says

Is The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King a complete story or a cliffhanger?

It ends on a cliffhanger — plan on reading the next book.

How scary is The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King?

Mildly eerie — tension without real scares.

How spicy is The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King?

Moderate heat — some open-door scenes.

Who is The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King for?

readers of romantasy who want political intrigue tangled with a slow-building forbidden romance

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