Methodology
How we rate
This library is a shelf I keep beside the serial, not a scrape of someone else’s list. Two numbers do the browsing. Everything else is a flag I was willing to write down, or a blank I refused to invent.
Spice is the heat of the sex. Darkness is the weather of the book. They are not a moral score, and they are not an average of strangers’ stars. If I have not read a scene list, the warning note says shelf, which means the flag describes the lane. Specific means I am confident about that title.
Spice, 1 to 5
- 1 · EmbersClosed door, or almost.
- 2 · WarmHeat you can feel. Little detail.
- 3 · HotOpen door. The scene stays.
- 4 · ExplicitOn-page sex, clearly written.
- 5 · ScorchingFrequent, graphic, the point of many chapters.
Darkness, 1 to 5
- 1 · MoodyDread and bad decisions. The lights stay on.
- 2 · GreyHe is not good. The book still leaves you air.
- 3 · DarkHarm is part of the romance, not a footnote.
- 4 · PitchBleak on purpose. Comfort is not the job.
- 5 · No lightThe book is not interested in pulling the punch.
Content warnings
On a book page the warnings are closed until you tap them. They sit in three bands so you can open the hard stop without reading the rest.
- GraphicNon-consent, assault, torture, gore, trafficking, dubious consent, suicide, self-harm, degradation, and the sexual flags that belong beside them. Open this before you buy.
- ModerateStalking, captivity, violence, murder, abuse, bullying, obsession, and the rest of the harm that makes a book dark rather than merely explicit.
- MinorGrief, power gaps, kink as a general flag, politics, magic. Present, and usually not the reason a reader leaves.
The warning page for a title shows the same bands in the open, because that is the page you came to see. The dark romance trigger warnings list is the index.
Endings
HEA means the romantic pair, or the why-choose group, is together and the book is not withholding that fact for the sequel. Happy for now means together, without a forever speech. Cliffhanger means the door is still open. If none of those words appear, I did not mark it. Unmarked is not a third category. I would rather leave God of Malice and The Ritual blank than invent a last page.
Kindle Unlimited, series, and why choose
Kindle Unlimited on this site is a shelf note for indie authors who usually enrol, plus a title I marked by hand. It is not a live look at Amazon. Confirm there before you assume you can borrow it. Authors I know are trad-published stay off that flag.
Standalone means the catalogue has no series name, and the book is not the Patreon serial. Series means it has one. Couple means the book is not tagged why choose. I do not promote a triangle into a group because the comments argued about it.
Tropes carry a darkness level too: the average of the books wearing that tag, rounded, on the trope page and in the A to Z glossary. One strange book does not rewrite the definition.
Questions readers actually ask
Are the spice and darkness scores the same thing?
No. Spice is how explicit the sex is. Darkness is how bleak, cruel, or harmful the romance is willing to be. A book can be scorching and only morally grey, or no-light and almost closed-door.
Do you copy star ratings or publisher blurbs?
No. Shelf notes are written here. Outbound links go to search pages on Goodreads, Romance.io, StoryGraph, and Amazon. We do not paste their reviews or their stars.
Why is an ending or Kindle Unlimited flag missing?
Because we left it blank. A missing HEA flag is not a sad ending. A missing Kindle Unlimited flag is not proof the book is excluded. We mark those only when we are willing to, and Amazon still has to confirm a borrow.