Each year, Goodreads holds an annual reading challenge. It’s not a contest, not really. You set your own goal and the only person who cares whether you hit it or not is you. You can also adjust your goal throughout the year. Personally, it’s usually a form of self-imposed torture because I almost never meet my goal. However, this year I made that shit my bitch.
March marked the first of what would become several boycotts against Amazon. Lots of authors (myself included) have felt the impact of those boycotts HARD. Both Kindle Unlimited page reads and ebook purchases have suffered a hard decline in the last few months. Well, at the start of it all, instead of leaning into the boycott, I decided to support my fellow authors. I reactivated my Kindle Unlimited and Audible memberships and I started working my way through my legendarily lengthy TBR pile. Once I started picking up momentum, I burned through so many books so fast. My goal was to read 100 dark romance books by the end of the year and as of the typing of the post, I’m at 108 books read since January 1st.
What I Learned: I think my reading choices over the last five-ish years have severely altered my brain chemistry. I can no longer do books that just mosey along through the plot. I need adrenaline. Fear. Edge-of-my-seat tension. I love dark-to-inky-black romance that has chipped razorblades and jagged shards of broken glass for edges. The darker the better. Now, that being said, I did read a few books that really brought me right up to the line of what I can handle reading. Lauren Biel…. I’m looking at you for this over the book Along for the Ride. Like… Sweet mother of unholy demon babies… 🤣
I’ve also found that I. Fucking. LOVE reverse harem in dark contemporary romance. I’m not a huge fan of the trope in the fantasy genre, but in dark contemporary, there is something about it that works. For me, it’s not about it having a ton of extra spice or anything like that. I mean, of course it usually does but that’s not why I like it so much. With RH stories, rather than putting all of the “perfect partner” expectations on one single MMC, you get multiple guys who all meet different needs of the FMC (of her personality, not just sexually). That’s not to say I’m abandoning one-on-one romances. Absolutely not. However, a lot of the books shown below are reverse harem / why choose. I found one of Eva Ashwood’s Detroit gangland series last year and my whole reading world got flipped upside down. I went HAM on her bookshelf and once I’d burned through all she had to offer, I immediately went on the hunt for authors who have a similar vibe.
You all know I love Shantel Tessier like I love cake but I set out with this challenge to find more authors who can deliver the same knockout punch her books have. And I am happy to report I’ve found some fuckin’ killers so far this year. Lucy Smoke. Angel Lawson and Samantha Rue. Eva Ashwood. Callie Rose. Lauren Biel. Nicole Blanchard. Each one of those names is now on my one-click list. No questions asked, I will read any new releases they put out.
Below are the dark romance books I’ve read so far this year (my fantasy reading challenge is separate). All graphics are hyperlinked, either to their Goodreads page or to the final review posted on my blog. If the graphic says ‘review‘ on it but the link goes to the Goodreads page, that means a full blog review is coming soon. As final reviews are posted on my blog, the hyperlinks in this post will be updated. If the graphic does not include the word ‘review’ on it, then there will not be a full blog review. This means I enjoyed the read but won’t be writing a full blog review. Please also note that this list does not include DNFed reads. If I DNF a read, I remove it from my Goodreads shelf entirely. I’m not out here to bash fellow writers so I don’t see a point in making a DNF list.
Of course, I’m not done reading for the year so this list will grow. You can peek at all of my dark romance reads for the year by visiting my 2025 Goodreads Challenge bookshelf. If you’re looking for the books that absolutely floored me, check out my Dark Romance Must Reads bookshelf (only the first-in-series is added for series/trilogies).
Are you participating in the Goodreads Challenge this year? How are you doing on your goal? What have been some of your favorite reads this year? Comment below to let me know!
P.S. ~ I will be posting my round up of fantasy reads as a separate post as soon as I reach my 2025 Goodreads Challenge goal for the paranormal/fantasy side of my bookshelf.
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[…] In my 2025 Goodreads Challenge blog post last month, I mentioned that I went headfirst down a reverse harem/why choose rabbit hole on the dark romance side of the Kindle Unlimited stacks. I had tried reverse harem on the fantasy side of things in the past and it just sort of fell flat for me. I have to admit now that it was probably more about the specific choice of books because I’ve read a few series recently that are really good RH fantasy but they’ve all been shifters or omegaverse (the Slate City Omega series by Devyn Sinclair, the Feral Shifters series by Callie Rose, the The Bonding Trials duet by Evelyn Flood, the Runaway Omega series by Harper Wylde). I need to find some good RH fantasy that branches outside of those two arenas (maybe some vampires or demons…). […]