Hafsah Faizal Books

Hafsah Faizal was a known name in the book world before she published a word. As the designer behind IceyDesigns and the blog IceyBooks, she spent years building author websites, book covers, and a devoted online following, which meant her debut arrived with an audience already waiting. We Hunt the Flame (2019) rewarded them: a New York Times bestseller, a TIME pick among the hundred best fantasy books of all time, and the arrival of one of the most visible Muslim American authors in YA fantasy. Faizal, a hijab-wearing designer turned novelist, has said she wrote it partly to see someone like herself on the shelf. She got there on craft.

Faizal writes lush, deliberate prose in worlds drawn from ancient Arabia rather than the usual medieval Europe, and it changes everything from the food to the honorifics to the shape of the magic. Her stories run on duty versus desire: assassins who hate what they have become, hunters pretending to be men because their country would rather starve than be fed by a girl, immortal crews pulling heists in gaslit cities. And she is a master of restraint in romance. Her couples circle each other for hundreds of pages, trading barbs and saving each other's lives, and when they finally touch it hits harder than most open-door scenes ever manage. Her worlds feel designed in the best sense, every detail chosen, which is no surprise given her background.

The Sands of Arawiya duology pairs Zafira, the Hunter who braves a cursed forest to feed her people, with Nasir, the Prince of Death sent to take the artifact she seeks and kill her. It concludes in We Free the Stars (2021), which sticks the landing emotionally in a way many duologies do not. Her second series, Blood and Tea, opens with A Tempest of Tea (2024): ringleader Arthie Casimir runs a teahouse that turns vampire den after dark, and when her establishment is threatened she assembles a crew to rob the city's elite. The sequel, A Steeping of Blood, arrived in September 2025 and closed the duology. Both series are complete, which matters if you are tired of waiting years between cliffhangers.

On our spice scale Faizal is a 1: charged glances, deferred touches, a kiss treated like an event with consequences. The tension is the product, and she knows it. Zafira and Nasir are a textbook enemies to lovers arc done with actual patience, while Blood and Tea layers banter-heavy found-crew dynamics over a vampire underworld that reads like Peaky Blinders at teatime. Neither series will scratch an explicit itch, and neither is trying to. If you are calibrating expectations coming off adult romantasy, think of her as the author you read for the ache rather than the payoff, and the ache is exquisite. Her fans reread the last fifty pages of We Free the Stars the way other readers reread favorite bonus chapters.

Romantasy readers should file her under yearning specialist. If your favorite part of any romance is the two hundred pages before the kiss, nobody currently writing YA fantasy does it better, and her aesthetic-heavy worlds are catnip for the same audience that made her design work popular. Her books also travel well between YA and adult readers, since the protagonists carry adult-sized responsibilities and the prose never talks down to anyone.

Start with We Hunt the Flame and finish the duology; it is her defining work and the reason people love her. Move to A Tempest of Tea when you want something faster and more caper-shaped. The two series share nothing but her voice, so either works as an entry point, but Arawiya is the one people mean when they say they love Hafsah Faizal.