Danger Trip!

It's like a road trip, but there's uhhhh danger

Because it wasn’t enough to just do another road trip roundup, I needed an additional thematic alignment: DANGER! Long-time subscribers know that I love pain and strife and adrenaline-pumping plots just as much as I love a travel tale, so this felt like a natural round-up to curate. You will also start seeing more paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy books, at long last, because the dam really broke for me in 2025 for some reason (perhaps because reality sucks? Hmmm couldn’t be that…), so prepare yourselves for even more chaotic curation in the future 😈

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne. Ripping my nails into the wall of the universe demanding more Joanna Bourne books, because her one and only series is EXCEPTIONAL. This is book 3, though this series is kind of told out of chronology so you don’t have to read it in publication order, and follows Marguerite de Fleurignac aka Maggie Duncan who’s trying to flee the French countryside at the height of the French Revolution after her aristocratic home is burned to the ground. She’s also got more going on than that (she’s the head of a secret society helping people escape the Revolution, her dad is also important), and though she knows the sudden appearance of a man calling himself Guillaume means he’s not being truthful, she needs his help on her dangerous trek to Paris.

Guillaume is, in fact, not being truthful- he’s William Doyle, a British spymaster who knows exactly who Maggie/Marguerite is and who is trying to get her to reveal the location of her father, a man responsible for the death of several British officers. He’s accompanied on this journey by the eventual hero of book 4, the irascible Hawker.

Everyone is in disguise, everyone is lying to each other but kind of knows they’re being lied to in return, the sexual tension is as thrilling as the narrative tension, and everyone is caught between duty, family, love, and whether truth is really as immutable as we believe it to be.

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥

Dark City Omega by Elizabeth Stephens. I want to state for the record that Omegaverse is Not My Thing. However. Elizabeth Stephens is Extremely My Thing, and I recently went down the rabbit hole and read everything she’s ever published. This was the series I was least looking forward to in my quest to Consume Everything Elizabeth Stephens, because of the aforementioned Omegaverse side-eyeing, and yet, I found myself absolutely sucked in. I think what did it was the meet “cute”- Echo is a recently awakened Omega running for her life, knowing that if an Alpha, especially an Alpha Berserker, gets wind of her, her life is no longer her own. So when her path intersects with Adam, the Alpha Berserker and leader of Dark City, what’s a girl to do but violently stab herself in the femoral artery, because she’d literally rather die than be some man’s plaything?

I was immediately hooked by a heroine correctly horrified by the worldbuilding who doesn’t simply fall into line because “well the guy is hot and actually I like the sub/Dom stuff in bed, so I guess my complete loss of autonomy is worth it.” She is a FIGHTER, she is FERAL, she is… strangely more powerful than ordinary Omegas, and it turns out that submission, for her at least, isn’t the same as losing herself. And though it’ll take Adam some time to win her trust, not to mention her heart, he’s willing to put in the work. Then there’s secret societies and betrayals and climactic final zombie battles and ok, I might not be into the Omegaverse, but I’m EXTREMELY into Beasts of Gatamora. Next book when!!

What I love about Elizabeth Stephens books is that she does not introduce world building details for shock value, only to drop them when it’s convenient for the love story. This is a trend I notice a lot in dark romance; it’s aesthetic without anyone ever bothering with the practical reality outside of the immediate HEA. She commits fully to the transformative power of love and partnership, and it goes beyond the core relationship. She’ll never show you a terrible society only for the characters to escape and find peace elsewhere- they’ll always be back to fuck shit up for the better. She’s an author I trust to not only pile on the angst and tension and drama, but to imagine worlds where progress holistically is possible.

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

ZomRomCom by Olivia Dade. Olivia Dade’s first foray into the supernatural (out August 5th, the same day, incidentally, that my interview with her will be going live on FP!) is truly so much fun. And the timing worked out, since I’ve got an interview with Olivia out in less than two weeks, just in time for this book to be released! I managed to snag an early reader copy so I’ve been quietly obsessed with this book for a few months, and I’m delighted to finally get to talk about it when it’s possible for everyone else to enjoy it alongside me!

What she’s set up isn’t precisely a zombie apocalypse, because apocalypse implies the world is in a lot more disrepair than is true for her world. Outside of a particular area, surrounding the facility where the remaining zombies from a previous horrific outbreak have been quarantined, the world is pretty much business as usual. Of course, Edie Brandstrup lives in the immediate vicinity still, because that’s where her family home is, and it’s all she has left of them after they were killed in the outbreak nearly two decades earlier. She’s one of the few people who choose to remain so close to danger, and is, delightfully, an artisanal soap maker. Such a romcom heroine job. Extremely great.

She has one immediate neighbor, a dumb dumb frat boy she knows as Max but eventually discovers to be an ageless vampire known as Gaston Boucher, who himself is… spoilers. I don’t want to ruin it. Gaston’s whole deal is so funny it deserves to be read without prior knowledge. All you need to know for the purposes of this post is that he’s hilarious, he’s obsessed with Edie, and they have to go on a dangerous road trip when they realize someone is letting the zombies out but the usual alarm systems aren’t working, so the citizens who stayed behind will need to band together to protect their livelihoods against the conspiracy.

It is literally a zombie romcom. It’s Olivia Dade. It’s great, obviously. Read this book when it comes out because whoops I mistimed this roundup a little but that’s fine because it’s my newsletter and I do what I want.

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥

---

Next week, I’ll be recommending books about beasts! Ahem. I mean heroes who are referred to as Beast in the title and beyond. Wink.

What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!

Follow me on social: Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky

Available now: my debut marriage of convenience romance Rehabbing the Billionaire! Buy your copy on Amazon, or snag it on Kindle Unlimited! Then, rate it on Goodreads to help more people discover it!