Books,and worlds worth moving into.
I want a world with rules, a magic system with limits, and a series long enough to settle into. Give me lore, slow-burn tension, dangerous men with questionable judgement, and characters I will still be arguing about a year later. Getting deeply invested is the point… and yes, I will stay up too late for it.
My reader DNA
Apparently I’ve wanted the same ingredients since I was twelve.
Big immersive worlds
The bigger, the better.
Interesting magic systems
Give me rules, limits, and lore.
High stakes
Danger makes the story.
Yearning + tension
Slow burn, every time.
Morally gray characters
Perfect people are boring.
Competent heroines
She has goals. She gets things done.
Long series
I want to live in these worlds for a while.
Elementary through high school
Where the Magic Started
I will always remember the fall evening I went over to my neighbor’s house, and she handed me a book, telling me her grandson had loved it. I curled up in her armchair and was completely lost in Harry Potter and the Wizarding World. That love turned into late nights outside Barnes & Noble waiting for the midnight release of the next book, then reading all 700-plus pages in a single night.
Everworld was my introduction to the gods. It opens with a girl named Senna being dragged into a lake by a giant wolf, and four high schoolers getting pulled in after her. On the other side is a world where the old gods fled when people stopped believing in them: Loki, Merlin, Zeus on Olympus, Vikings, and Ka Anor, a god who eats other gods. I loved the adventure and the rush that came every time the story took a turn I didn’t see coming.
Daughters of the Moon brought witchcraft and fantasy into a contemporary setting. Four girls in Los Angeles discover they are goddesses, each with her own power: invisibility, time travel, reading minds, and premonitions. Wearing moon amulets, they fight the Atrox, an ancient evil that drains people of hope. Add a little light romance, and following those girls as they learned to master their magic was everything books should be.
Magic systems, mythology, witchcraft, the supernatural. These three series laid the foundation for the books I love today.
After high school and into my early twenties
Romance Moves In
After high school, my reading grew up with me. Twilight took the supernatural I already loved and put romance at the center of it. Beautiful Creatures did the same in a small Southern town, with Casters instead of witches and a curse hanging over everything. The Hunger Games was something new entirely: a dystopia where the stakes were survival, and a heroine who refused to play by the rules.
I read plenty of romance novels in between, but none of them stuck with me the way these did. Then came Fifty Shades of Grey. I honestly don’t remember how I landed on it, but I later learned it started life as Twilight fan fiction, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight.
Love, danger, and higher stakes. These books taught me I wanted more than magic. I wanted to feel something.
Pandemic reconnection
Coming Back to Books
When the world shut down, I started reading again, but not for escape at first. I reached for books that made me think: Switch, How to Be an Antiracist, And the Spirit Moved Them, and Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Books about how change happens, how systems shape people, and the women whose stories got left out of history.
Eventually I missed the kind of story I’ve always craved, so I went searching for fantasy. That’s how I found Shadow and Bone, well before Netflix made it a show, and then The Mortal Instruments. Everything I loved as a kid came rushing back: magic systems, hidden worlds, and found family. I hadn’t left fantasy behind. I’d just been waiting for the right books to bring me home.
After baby #2
The Spiral
After a quiet stretch, reading found me again in the most unexpected place. After my son was born, I spent a lot of time in long, warm baths recovering from childbirth, and somewhere in there I picked up A Court of Thorns and Roses. I don’t even remember how I found it. For a lot of readers, ACOTAR is the gateway drug into romantasy. For me, it was the moment I realized I’d found the perfect genre.
From there, it spiraled. Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm. The entire Blood and Ash series. The Shepherd King, Crowns of Nyaxia, The Legends of Thezmarr, the Everflame books, the Hades x Persephone Saga, The Plated Prisoner, Divine Rivals, Quicksilver, Phantasma, and it just keeps going.
I took a few detours along the way: a Bridgerton phase, then hockey romance and why choose with That One Night and Pucking Around. Then I brought it right back to fantasy with The Dark Side, Beasts of the Briar, The Arrow Hart Academy, and The Bonds That Tie. Holy fuck, I had no idea there was so much coordination involved in five guys being obsessed with pleasing one woman.
Somewhere along the way, everything from those first eras came back. I started a shelf just for Greek mythology: Hades and Persephone, Neon Gods, Blood of Hercules. The witches returned too, with Spellcaster, Night Witch, and Rebel Witch. The kid who fell for Everworld and Daughters of the Moon never really left.
Romantasy brought it all together. The magic systems and mythology from my childhood, and the romance I fell for in my twenties, finally on the same page. Every era before this one was leading here.
Current obsessions
Authors and books I can’t get enough of right now.
Authors I can’t get enough of
Single books I keep pressing on people
Reading notes
Thoughts, rambles, and recommendations.
More ramblings coming soon.
This is a living archive, after all.
I keep track of what I read on romance.io and Goodreads.
thanks for being here ♡