I love the idea of dark romance, but so far the few i've read range from okay to utter garbage. However I refuse to give up on the genre, I am sure there must be atleast one dark romance book that will meet my standards.
My standards for a good dark romance book are
– the female charecter is fleshed out with hobbies and personality traits outside of dumb, sad, or strong
– the male is actually morally grey or outright evil. I'm sick of books that write a horrible man, but shove in some really dumb reason to excuse their actions. it feels like the book is trying to gaslight me into seeing the guy as good, and it never works.
– is there are multiple guys, they need to have diffrent personalities and fufill diffrent kinks
– I want full commitment to the bit. If a girl is meant to be a dominant badass, she better be shown doing that. If a guy is a sadist, he better be disgusting.
– the story isnt just a delivery for more sex. The only exception would be if the story takes place in a small area and is genuinly just about the two main charecters, like the guy kidnaps the girl and the story follows her attempts at escape. If the story tries to be more then that, it should be written well.
For context i'd say the best dark romance series i've read is the her soul series by Harley Laroux, as while I found the charecters tropy and shallow, I found the story genuinly as entertaining as the sex. I'd also say I was surprised I quite enjoyed Birthday Girl, as I found the dad to be well layered.
by Shi_draws
1 Comment
It’s M/M but Captive Prince is actually well written. I don’t like dark romance because I feel like the characters never have agency or emotional depth and it makes it feel like it’s icky, but I could read this one because the characters were so complex and did have agency.