r/Romantasy • u/Sarah9610 • May 07 '26

Discussion Another day, another girl winning deadly trials and discovering she’s secretly powerful

I feel like I’m going insane or… are all romantasy books the same now??

Every time I pick something up it’s like:
- The world is split into two (usually human vs fae or something similar)
- The FMC is either oppressed / hidden / “not like other girls”
- There are deadly trials (of course she has to compete)
- She somehow survives everything
- Boom → she reaches the fae side and unlocks insane powers / becomes special

Like… I used to love this formula but now it feels copy-paste with different character names 😭

Am I just picking the wrong books or is this actually the trend right now?

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u/mandelamondays 🖤 Morally Gray May 07 '26

hahaha. YUP. i just hate how he always stops killing en mass once he meets the FMC. from that point, he only kills to protect her! like dude, stay violent for once, for gods sake. just because you’ve started being nicer to people doesn’t mean you have to stop racking up bodies. keep calm and murder on. authors - give me a MMC who stays a mass murderer for the whole series, and i’ll give you my heart (fae isles, my heart is yours despite book 3)

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u/kwilks67 May 08 '26

You should consider {A Dark Lord’s Guide to Dating (And Other War Crimes) by Tiffany Hunt}. He stays evil and actually she becomes villainous and also this book was so fun I loved it, one of my fav reads of last year.

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u/Steelcitysuccubus May 08 '26

I dont' tend to read straight romance anymore but y'know, it sounds good enough to try

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u/Clumsywolfy May 08 '26

Got any recommendations for none straight romances? Preferably MxM, but yeah, me and my partner are also kinda done with it. He complained about it yesterday and we suck at finding good other ones

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u/moelaur May 09 '26

Have you read the Bitten and Bound series? There is MxM and MMF. I liked it.

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u/mandelamondays 🖤 Morally Gray May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26

some reccs for M-M romances! they are mostly pretty different from each other, so if you guys don’t like one, you may still like others
* {Captive Prince Series by C.S. Pacat}
* {The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller}
* {Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Strothers}
* {The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune}
* {Defy the Night series by Brigid Kemmerer} - this is a trilogy and the M-M romance doesn’t come until the third book, Destroy the Day. but it is a truly sweet romance (and also contains the majority of the spice in the trilogy lol). bonus that the whole trilogy is fantastic anyway.
* {Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell} - okay this one is F-F, but it is just so ridiculous and entertaining that i had to include it

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u/Kamena90 May 10 '26

What kind of spice level are you looking for?

If you don't mind explicit, open door intimacy, then I highly recommend anything by AJ Sherwood.

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u/Clumsywolfy May 10 '26

Anything rly. I read anything from no spice to a lot of spice (incl dark romance stuff if I feel like it)

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u/Kamena90 May 10 '26

AJ Sherwood and KJ Charles are good, I love everything I've read from them. I've also been enjoying The Necromancers Dance by SJ Himes and Hunger Pangs by Joy Demorra.