Finished Fourth Wing and immediately started grieving? Here are 8 romantasy books with the same dragons-danger-devotion energy to fill the Violet-and-Xaden-shaped hole in your heart.
Contents
The Fourth Wing Hangover Is Real
There's a very specific kind of book hangover that comes from finishing Fourth Wing. You loved the danger, the banter, the relight signets, the way Xaden Riorson said an entire paragraph with one eyebrow. And now you're staring at your shelf wondering what could possibly measure up.
We've read through the genre to find books that scratch the same itch — high-stakes military academies, morally grey love interests, found family forged under pressure, and romance that develops because of the danger, not despite it. Here are eight to add to your cart immediately.
If You Want More Dragons
Iron Flame and the rest of the Empyrean series. Obvious, but worth saying: if you haven't finished the series Fourth Wing started, do that first. The stakes only escalate.
A Fire in the Flesh by Amanda Bouchet. Dragon-adjacent world-building with a warrior heroine who refuses to be anyone's damsel, plus a slow-burn dynamic with a battle-scarred hero that rewards patient readers.
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross. Less dragon-forward, more war-and-magic, but it shares Fourth Wing's DNA of romance blooming in the middle of an active conflict, with letters replacing battlefield banter.
If You Want the Academy Setting
Sixth Wive$ meets war college energy is hard to replicate, but A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid comes close — an architecture student at a rival, secretive academy gets tangled with a reclusive, difficult love interest while unraveling a decades-old literary mystery. Slower burn, gorgeously written.
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. A secret society embedded in a university setting, complete with a magic system, factions, and a romance that develops through shared danger rather than meet-cutes. A great pick if you want the academy claustrophobia without the medieval setting.
If You Want the Morally Grey Love Interest
The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen. Xaden fans will recognize the type immediately: a hero who is dangerous to everyone except the heroine, and even then, only sometimes. The political intrigue here is tighter and more twisty than Fourth Wing's, which makes for a satisfying change of pace.
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. If what you actually wanted from Fourth Wing was "powerful, secretive man slowly reveals he's been protecting the heroine the whole time," this is the gold standard the genre keeps trying to replicate.
If You Want the Found-Family Squad
Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson. Lower spice, higher whimsy, but the bond between the heroine and her ragtag allies mirrors the found-family energy of Violet's wingmates — people who start as strangers and become the ones you'd die for.
The Honest Take
No book will be Fourth Wing exactly — that lightning-in-a-bottle mix of pacing, voice, and stakes is genuinely hard to replicate, which is part of why the book became such a phenomenon in the first place. But each of these leans into a different piece of what made it work: the danger, the banter, the slow reveal of a guarded love interest's softer side, or the found family forged in the middle of a war none of them chose.
Read them in whatever order calls to you, but keep a box of tissues nearby regardless — romantasy authors have collectively decided that emotional devastation is a design feature, not a bug.
