Thirty titles readers actually finished and reviewed — pulled from 15,600+ trope-tagged titles (104,000+ trope tags), ordered by review count, not opinion.
Short answer: the most-read enemies to lovers books right now are Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros), A Court of Thorns and Roses (Sarah J. Maas), Twisted Love (Ana Huang), The Deal (Elle Kennedy) and Haunting Adeline (H. D. Carlton). The full list below is ranked by how many readers actually reviewed each book — not by anyone’s favourites.
Every book here is tagged with the enemies-to-lovers trope in PlotProse’s book dataset, which covers 15,600+ trope-tagged titles. We ranked them by reader review count, showed the star rating beside each one, and dropped anything under 500 reviews so the list reflects sustained readership rather than a launch spike. The 30 books below have 4,923,549 reader reviews between them and average 4.46 stars.
That is the honest framing: this is a popularity-and-satisfaction ranking, not a critic’s list. A book high on it is one a very large number of people read and rated well.
| # | Book | Author | Stars | Reader reviews | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1) | Rebecca Yarros | 4.8 | 501,911 | — |
| 2 | Iron Flame (The Empyrean Book 2) | Rebecca Yarros | 4.7 | 415,380 | romantasy |
| 3 | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas | 4.6 | 329,272 | — |
| 4 | A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses Book 5) | Sarah J. Maas | 4.8 | 258,186 | — |
| 5 | The Inmate: A gripping psychological thriller | Freida McFadden | 4.4 | 250,069 | psychological thriller |
| 6 | Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy Book 1) | Callie Hart | 4.6 | 239,907 | — |
| 7 | Throne of Glass | Sarah J. Maas | 4.4 | 182,645 | — |
| 8 | Haunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse Duet Book 1) | H. D. Carlton | 4.4 | 169,785 | — |
| 9 | House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City Book 1) | Sarah J. Maas | 4.7 | 157,808 | — |
| 10 | Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass Book 4) | Sarah J. Maas | 4.8 | 155,103 | steamy · romantasy |
| 11 | Twisted Love | Ana Huang | 4.2 | 147,531 | explicit · contemporary |
| 12 | The Deal (Off-Campus Book 1) | Elle Kennedy | 4.4 | 143,408 | steamy · contemporary |
| 13 | Flawless: A Small Town Enemies to Lovers Romance | Elsie Silver | 4.3 | 139,710 | — |
| 14 | Mile High (Windy City Series Book 1) | Liz Tomforde | 4.3 | 127,850 | — |
| 15 | The Ritual: A Dark College Romance | Shantel Tessier | 4.4 | 126,855 | spicy · dark romance |
| 16 | The Risk (Mindf*ck Series #1) | S.T. Abby | 4.4 | 121,747 | explicit · dark romance |
| 17 | Yours Truly | Abby Jimenez | 4.5 | 116,701 | — |
| 18 | Zodiac Academy: The Awakening | Caroline Peckham | 4.2 | 116,653 | — |
| 19 | Zodiac Academy 2: Ruthless Fae | Caroline Peckham | 4.5 | 115,620 | steamy · romantasy |
| 20 | King of Wrath (Kings of Sin Book 1) | Ana Huang | 4.3 | 115,551 | — |
| 21 | Wild Love (Rose Hill Book 1) | Elsie Silver | 4.3 | 111,535 | spicy · contemporary |
| 22 | Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass Book 6) | Sarah J. Maas | 4.6 | 110,696 | — |
| 23 | Zodiac Academy 3: The Reckoning | Caroline Peckham | 4.6 | 108,016 | — |
| 24 | Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King Book 2) | Rachel Gillig | 4.6 | 100,665 | — |
| 25 | One Dark Window (The Shepherd King Book 1) | Rachel Gillig | 4.5 | 98,974 | — |
| 26 | Hooked (Never After Series) | Emily McIntire | 4.3 | 96,799 | spicy · dark romance |
| 27 | Gild (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 1) | Raven Kennedy | 4.0 | 93,465 | dark · romantasy |
| 28 | The Love Hypothesis | Ali Hazelwood | 4.5 | 93,077 | sweet · contemporary |
| 29 | Rewind It Back (Windy City Series Book 5) | Liz Tomforde | 4.6 | 89,388 | — |
| 30 | Den of Vipers | K.A Knight | 4.2 | 89,242 | explicit · dark romance |
Star ratings and review counts are the figures recorded in our dataset at the last refresh and move over time. “Notes” shows heat level and subgenre where our data records them — blank means we hold no confident value, not that the book is mild.
Writing one instead of reading one? The companion guide is how to write enemies to lovers — the beats, the mistakes, and how to earn the turn. Or check what the trope is doing in the market on the live romance tropes list →
Enemies to lovers spans the whole heat range, which is why “is it spicy?” has no single answer. At the explicit end sit titles like Twisted Love and The Risk; the romantasy entries such as Fourth Wing and the Throne of Glass books run warmer than sweet but far below dark romance; and plenty of small-town contemporaries keep the door mostly closed. Where our dataset holds a confident heat level it is shown in the table. If spice is the deciding factor for you, our spicy books guide explains the levels properly.
Enemies to lovers is one of the most-requested tropes in romance because the hostility does structural work no other setup gives you for free: the characters already have reasons to be in each other’s way, already speak to each other with heat, and already have something to forgive. Every softening has to be paid for. That is why a reader who loves this trope will follow it across subgenres — fantasy, hockey romance, mafia, small-town — and why the list above spans all of them.
PlotProse is built by Coral Hart, a romance author and teacher with 14+ years in publishing, and everything on this page leans on two things we actually count: her recorded teaching, and a live romance market dataset. These are the counts as of 2 September 2026, taken straight from our databases — not estimates.
Compared with a Goodreads listopia or a “best enemies to lovers books” blog round-up, this page is built from trope tags applied to individual books and from real reader-review counts — and we show you the counts instead of asking you to trust the order.
Counts verified 2026-09-02 against the PlotProse training database (coral-db/stats) and the romance market dataset (app_book_tropes, book_blurb_analysis, book_hook_mentions, book_metrics_history, book_track). We update them when we recount, not when it suits a headline.Ranked by how many readers actually reviewed them, the most-read enemies-to-lovers titles are Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Twisted Love by Ana Huang, The Deal by Elle Kennedy and Haunting Adeline by H. D. Carlton. The full ranked list on this page is drawn from 15,600+ trope-tagged titles (104,000+ trope tags), ordered by review count rather than opinion.
Two characters begin as genuine antagonists - rivals, opponents, or people who have actually harmed each other - and the story converts that hostility into love. The appeal is that the hatred has to be earned back before it can turn, so the payoff feels bought rather than given. It is one of the most-requested tropes in romance across every subgenre.
It varies enormously. The trope spans sweet, closed-door romances and explicit dark romance. On this list the heat levels range from steamy through spicy to explicit where our data records them - Twisted Love and The Risk sit at the explicit end, while plenty of romantasy entries are far milder. Check the notes column before you buy.
If you read fantasy, start with Fourth Wing or A Court of Thorns and Roses. For contemporary, The Deal or Twisted Love. For small-town romance, Flawless by Elsie Silver. For dark romance, Haunting Adeline - but check content warnings first, because that end of the trope is genuinely dark.
By reader engagement, not editorial opinion. Each book is tagged with the enemies-to-lovers trope in PlotProse's book dataset, and the list is ordered by the number of reader reviews the title has accumulated, with its star rating shown beside it. Books with fewer than 500 reviews are excluded so the ranking reflects sustained readership rather than a launch spike.
Short, practical notes from Coral Hart on tropes, structure and what romance readers are actually buying.
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