Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge
Riot Recommendation

Riot Recommendation: 14 of Your Favorite Stories of Forbidden Love

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

The Harbinger Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, published by Inkyard Press.

Half-angel Trinity and her bonded gargoyle protector, Zayne, have been working with demons to stop the apocalypse while avoiding falling in love. The Harbinger is coming . . . but who or what is it? All of humankind may fall if Trinity and Zayne can’t win the race against time as dark forces gather. Don’t miss Rage and Ruin, book two in the fantastical Harbinger trilogy from #1 New York Times Bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout.

Love is such a many-splendored thing. That is, until the object of your affection is married, your sworn enemy, or a person who doesn’t like cheese. There is something so compelling about these tales, and that’s why asked you for your favorite stories of forbidden love! You shared those with us and we can’t wait to dive in Because if reading about forbidden love is wrong, we don’t want to be right.

Damage by Josephine Hart

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Priest by Sierra Simone

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh