The Dark Romance That Will Ruin You For All Others

A love letter to the story that raised the bar and made me obsessed with toxic characters

Jun 17, 2025

I’ve been thinking about the main character moments that live rent-free in our brains. You know the ones: the scenes where a character makes a choice so wild, so beautiful, so devastating, you feel like you’ve just been spiritually body-slammed into another dimension.

I can’t let those moments go. I don’t want to let them go.

And the one I’ll never recover from? It belongs to Beautiful Fiend by Lola King.

🕮 This Week’s Bookish Mood

me, reading the most deranged mmc: I can fix him

also me, five seconds later: But he’s so perfect like this!!

meme looking at the phone absolutely swooning like an idiot

I can’t shut up about this book and I won’t shut up about this book. periodt

I read Beautiful Fiend a year ago and it still owns me. I recommend it to anyone who breathes in my general direction and I will not be stopped.

Without spoiling (because you really need to go in raw), there’s a moment when Caden - our wicked, morally rotted male lead - makes a choice for Billie that wrecked me. It’s brutal, self-sacrificing, and she doesn’t even know what he did for her.

I cried. Like ugly sobbing cried. Like clutching my chest, spiraling and sitting on the shower tiles cried.

What sets this book apart isn’t just the plot twists (although there are soooo many). it’s the way both Caden and Billie are equally messed up, dangerous, and *eventually deeply devoted to each other.

They’re not enemies-to-lovers-lite. They ARE enemies. And they act like it. I’m talking fights, manipulation, absolutely no rolling over for each other. Billie is sharp and entirely capable of burning the world to the ground herself. She genuinely does not need Caden. That’s why they work. That’s why it hits.

Too many dark romances give us a morally gray guy and a girly pop who folds. Not here. Lola King said: what if both of them are the problem? What if they hurt people (not just each other), and what if that is exactly what made them perfect for each other?

How can anyone ever top perfection like that??

Why this book changed me (and ruined others for me)

I used to think I liked dark romance as a genre. But really, I like this kind of dark romance:

🖤 A female lead who is actually strong. Not palatable strong. Not strong-but-still-cute strong. Just strong.

🖤 A male lead who burns his world down for love. not the whole world, not someone else’s, HIS

🖤 Plot twists that punch you so hard in the face, Mike Tyson would be jealous

🖤 Stakes that never let you rest.

Everything else now feels… meh, flat. I read other dark romances after Beautiful Fiend and I kept waiting for the Lola King gut-punch. Waiting for the moment that would drop me to my knees. It never came.

This book taught me to demand more from characters. Plus, as an author it completely reshaped how I think about building conflict. One main arc is not enough. Predictable twists? I’m bored of myself. Flat characters? Pass.

If you wanna get obsessed with a book that is deliciously toxic and genuinely complex, this is that girl.

If I’ve not made it clear how freaking fabulous it is, here’s my pitch for you to pick it up:

If I, the girl who gives herself mental breakdowns for fun, had a gun to my head and could only read one standalone dark romance before I die, it would be this one. It is brutal and so goddamn GOOD.

*but read the trigger warnings. Seriously.

Make me cry for sport

Which book left you GASPING? Which character did something so insane you still think about it a year later? I’m always open to be obliterated, so drop your recs in the comments or on the chat

And while we’re at it:

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May your pillow always be cold and your nemesis stub their pinky toes on tables daily,
𓂃🖋 Rachel