The Dark Lord's Guide to Dating (and Other War Crimes)
Guides to Villainy and Love • Book 1
by Tiffany Hunt
Why You'll Love This
He kidnapped her for a political marriage — she showed up with demands, and now he has no idea who's actually in charge.
- Great if you want: enemies-to-lovers chaos with a heroine who refuses to cooperate
- The experience: fast, irreverent, and gleefully unhinged — never takes itself seriously
- The writing: Hunt leans hard into comic timing — the banter lands like a punchline, not a trope
- Skip if: forced-marriage premises are a hard stop for you regardless of tone
About This Book
What happens when the realm's most feared Dark Lord kidnaps the one woman who refuses to be afraid of him? Kazimir Blackrose expects a trembling bride. He gets Arabella — someone who has already survived one prison and has exactly zero patience for another. What unfolds between them is less a love story and more a negotiation between two people who are terrible for each other in all the most compelling ways. Beneath the chaos and sharp banter, Hunt is asking something genuinely interesting: what do power, autonomy, and complicity look like when the lines between villain and victim keep shifting?
Hunt writes with a pace that makes 500-plus pages disappear faster than they should, and her dialogue has real teeth — the kind where you reread exchanges just to appreciate the timing. The structure leans into romantic tension without softening the darker edges that give the story its actual stakes. This isn't fantasy that uses villainy as window dressing; the moral ambiguity is load-bearing. Readers who want their romance with genuine friction and their fantasy with genuine wit will find this first installment in the Guides to Villainy and Love series difficult to set down.