Alizeh hides in plain sight as a servant, keeping the secret that she is heir to a lost magical kingdom and the subject of a prophecy she wants no part of. Kamran is the crown prince, bound to protect his grandfather's throne. He does not know who she truly is, and the truth could destroy them both.
Evangeline Fox believes in true love until she learns that the boy she loves is about to marry her stepsister. Desperate, she makes a bargain with Jacks, a charming, dangerous young man known as a Fate. Their deal pulls her into a world of magic and curses, where every promise has a price and every wish can go wrong.
Elspeth has kept the Nightmare hidden in her mind for years: an ancient spirit who grants her power while slowly taking her body. When she meets Ravyn, the king's nephew, they set out to gather twelve magical cards that may cure the kingdom. Their alliance deepens as the price of magic closes in.
Catalia works as a soothsayer in a travelling circus, hiding the power that once made her a pawn of the gods. Griffin, a warlord desperate to save his people, recognises her magic and carries her off to his kingdom. On the long road there, loathing turns into a bond neither of them wanted and neither can deny.
Yelena is given a choice: die for her crime, or become the Commander's food taster and risk poison at every meal. Her trainer is the assassin Valek, guarded and dangerous, and working beside him builds a trust neither expected. Then she learns her own past may be more deadly than any poison.
Luella was raised to be an ordinary healer, not the human bride the Elf King demands. When he comes to claim her, she is taken to Midscape, where her touch can wake the sleeping land. Trapped with a cold, distant husband, she must find a way home or accept a destiny she never wanted.
After her mother's death, Kennedy Waters is pulled into a world of ghosts and demons when she learns her family belonged to the Legion, a secret society sworn to fight them. With three brothers as her allies, she must help close a threat that killed her mother and is still hunting her.
Neurosurgeon Rowan Mayfair rescues a drowned contractor, Michael Curry, and brings him back to life. The near-death experience leaves Michael with psychic powers that draw him to New Orleans and to Rowan, whose wealthy, secretive family is a dynasty of witches watched over by a seductive ghost named Lasher.
Yadriel, a trans boy, wants his traditional family to accept him as a brujo. When his initiation goes wrong he raises the ghost of a murdered classmate, and together they search for answers while Yadriel hides the truth from everyone he loves.
Auren has been King Midas's gilded favourite for years, kept in a golden cage and told she is safe there. Cruelty and control shape every part of her life, and she believes she has no other choice. Then a new king arrives at the castle, and the cracks in her golden world begin to widen.
Feyre survived Amarantha's trials, but the cost has left her breaking. On her wedding day Rhysand takes her to the Night Court, where she learns to use her new powers while a war with Hybern gathers. Trust grows between them as old loyalties and a dangerous bargain pull her in different directions.
Florence Day is a ghostwriter for a romance novelist, grieving her father and unable to finish her latest book. When her new editor dies, his ghost appears at her family's funeral home, asking for her help. Returning to her hometown, Florence must reckon with grief, her family's strange gift, and a love story she never planned.
A collection of Edith Wharton's ghost stories, written across her career and gathered in one volume. Old houses, railway carriages and country estates hold grudges, apparitions return with unfinished business, and the supernatural creeps into the lives of people who insist they do not believe in it.
Nesta Archeron has survived war and transformation, but she cannot forgive herself for what she lost or forget what she did. Sent to train with Cassian in the House of Wind, she is forced to face her anger, her grief and the bond between them while a new threat gathers in the mortal lands.
Hart is a lonely marshal who hunts the undead; Mercy runs her family's funeral home and finds Hart insufferable. After a bitter week, each writes an anonymous letter to a stranger, and a warm correspondence begins without either knowing who is on the other end. Meanwhile, real life keeps forcing them together.
Talasyn has known nothing but the Hurricane Wars: raised as an orphan in a nation under siege by the Night Empire, she hides her light magic and fights alongside its soldiers. Alaric is the empire's crown prince and her sworn enemy on the battlefield. When a greater threat and a royal marriage alliance force them together, the two must work side by side, and their powers answer to each other in ways no one can explain.
Wallace Price was a cold, demanding lawyer until the day he died. At a strange tea shop between life and death, he meets Hugo, the gentle ferryman who helps the dead move on. As Wallace lingers, he begins to care for Hugo and the shop's found family, and to wonder whether a second chance is possible.
After her father is killed in Mexico's war of independence, Beatriz marries a widower and moves to his country estate. The housekeeper burns copal and chalks signs on the doorways, and Beatriz begins to fear that her husband's first wife never left.
In a city that has conquered and enslaved a neighbouring people, the general's daughter Kestrel buys a defiant young slave named Arin on a whim. He is far more than he seems, and as rebellion stirs in the streets, Kestrel finds her loyalty to her family pulling against everything she feels for him.
In post-war England, a country doctor is drawn into the fading life of a once-grand family living in a decaying mansion. Strange events unsettle the house and its residents, and suspicion falls in every direction. An unnerving story about class, decline and things that may not be ghosts.
A young governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house and soon notices figures watching from the grounds and the tower. She becomes convinced the children are being influenced by something from beyond the grave, though no one else confirms what she sees.
A young London lawyer is sent to a remote house to sort the papers of a dead client. In the town nearby he meets an unfriendly silence, a sea mist that cuts him off, and a woman dressed in black whose appearances are followed by the deaths of children.
A bookseller's daughter is summoned by a reclusive author who has never told the truth about her life. As the old woman finally recounts her childhood at a crumbling country house, the listener realises the story hides one more secret. A gothic tale about stories, sisters and the gaps between them.
Alessandra will do anything to gain power, including marry the young king and then kill him. The Shadow King, feared and rumoured to have killed his own family, is the perfect target. But court intrigue and unexpected feelings complicate her cold plan, and someone is hunting them both.
Start with “This Woven Kingdom”, “Once Upon a Broken Heart”, “One Dark Window”: they are the closest to “Belladonna” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Belladonna” these are Romantasy, Gothic, Gothic Manor), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “This Woven Kingdom”, “Once Upon a Broken Heart”, “One Dark Window”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
