Between Two Kings

Straube cranks the spice to maximum and never lets up—there is a scene in essentially every chapter, and some readers will be skimming by the halfway point. Tem is trapped between her basilisk husband Caspen and the human king Leo, and the infidelity is baked into the premise rather than treated as a twist. The bittersweet ending hits hard with a major character death. Come prepared for unhinged monster romance with real consequences, not a cozy love triangle.