Lexi Ryan Books

Lexi Ryan built her career the unglamorous way before BookTok ever found her. She spent roughly a decade as a successful self-published contemporary romance author, selling over a million copies across dozens of steamy small-town and sports romances and hitting the New York Times and USA Today lists. Then in 2021 she jumped genres with These Hollow Vows, her first fantasy, and it became the kind of phenomenon most authors never see: a BookTok fixture, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist, and the book that introduced her to an entirely new generation of readers.

That romance apprenticeship is exactly what makes her fantasy work. Ryan plots like a romance writer, meaning the emotional beats land on schedule and the tension between characters is engineered with real craft. Her heroine Abriella, called Brie, is a thief stealing to survive who ends up in the Court of the Fae to save her sister and gets caught between two princes from rival courts. The love triangle is the engine, not a subplot, and Ryan plays it with genuine misdirection: allegiances flip, both options feel viable, and the betrayals sting because she spent her contemporary years learning how to make readers care first and bleed second.

The series runs four books structured as two duets. These Hollow Vows (2021) and These Twisted Bonds (2022) complete Brie's story, taking the bargains, glamours and double-crosses of the first book to a genuinely satisfying resolution. Beneath These Cursed Stars (2024) and Between These Broken Hearts (2025) form a second duet set in the same world, continuing the story for the next generation of characters. Her contemporary backlist, including the Boys of Jackson Harbor and The Blackhawk Boys series, is still there for readers who want her voice without the wings.

Heat check: These Hollow Vows is YA-adjacent fantasy that runs warmer than most YA, roughly a 2 on our spice scale, with charged scenes that simmer more than they show. Her contemporary romance is a different animal entirely, a solid 4, so check which shelf you are pulling from before you lend one to a teenager.

For romantasy readers, Ryan hits a very specific sweet spot: the fae court intrigue of The Cruel Prince crossed with a real love triangle and forbidden love stakes, written by someone who actually knows how to write romance at the line level. If ACOTAR left you wanting court politics with more consistent pacing and a heroine with a thief's practical streak, this is the series people will keep handing you.

The love triangle deserves its own paragraph, because it is the most argued-about element of the series and the place where Ryan's romance background pays off hardest. Brie enters the fae courts to rescue her sister Jasalyn, and the two princes she lands between are not interchangeable flavors of handsome: they represent different courts, different kinds of power and different theories of what saving someone means. Ryan lets both relationships develop enough that readers built real camps around them, and the twists in book one genuinely rearrange the board rather than resetting it. Whether you finish the duet satisfied or furious, and readers have done both loudly, you will not accuse her of hedging. That willingness to commit to consequences is what separates These Hollow Vows from the pile of fae romances that promise danger and deliver mood boards.

Start with These Hollow Vows and read the first duet back to back, because book one ends on a cliffhanger that was widely and loudly complained about by people who had to wait a year. The second duet assumes knowledge of the first, so read in publication order. If you are not sure fae courts are your thing at all, take our book matchmaker quiz first and see where you land.