What to Read After Daughter of Smoke and Bone — 6 Books for Laini Taylor Fans
Laini Taylor builds worlds the way other authors write sentences — with attention to beauty at the smallest scale. Daughter of Smoke and Bone introduced Karou, wish-trader's daughter and art student, and the angel she should not love — and delivered one of YA fantasy's most achingly written impossible romances. If you finished it wanting more of that prose, that mythology, and that sense of a romance made complicated by something deeper than circumstance, these six books are your next reads.
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Days of Blood and Starlight
by Laini Taylor
The direct sequel: after the ending of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, both Karou and Akiva must choose between love and war — and both choose war. Taylor's second volume is darker and more epic than the first, expanding the chimaera world and the angelic hierarchy, with two characters whose paths are bent away from each other at the worst possible moment.
WarImpossible RomanceMythologyDual POV🌶 Cozy - 2
Strange the Dreamer
by Laini Taylor
Taylor's standalone novel (with sequel Muse of Nightmares) follows a librarian obsessed with a lost city who finally finds his way inside — and into a world of gods, monsters, and a girl born of nightmare. All Taylor's hallmarks — lush prose, impossible romance, worlds where beauty and horror coexist — are here in full force.
Lost CityMythologySlow BurnLyrical Prose🌶 Cozy - 3
An Ember in the Ashes
by Sabaa Tahir
A scholar and a soldier navigate opposite sides of a brutal empire, pulled toward each other across an impossible divide. Tahir shares Taylor's gift for building romance from genuine ethical conflict — these are people who should not be together for reasons more profound than circumstance — and the world-building has the same mythological depth.
Dual POVForbidden RomanceEmpireMythology🌶 Cozy - 4
Caraval
by Stephanie Garber
Two sisters attend a mysterious performance where the audience participates — and discovers that the game may be real. Garber's atmospheric YA fantasy shares Taylor's gift for prose that makes the fantastical feel both beautiful and threatening, with a romance that emerges from circumstances designed to disorient.
Mystery GameAtmosphericSlow BurnSisters🌶 Cozy - 5
The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern
Two rival magicians are bound in a competition they don't understand, played out in an impossible black-and-white circus that appears without warning. Morgenstern's atmospheric prose and the sense of magic as something dangerous and beautiful sits squarely in the same register as Taylor's best writing.
AtmosphericRivals to LoversMagicLiterary Fantasy🌶 Cozy - 6
Shadow and Bone
by Leigh Bardugo
A mapmaker discovers she possesses a rare power — and finds herself caught between the consuming authority figure who wants to use it and the boy she grew up with. Bardugo's Grishaverse shares Taylor's taste for richly realized mythologies and morally complex love interests whose danger is part of their appeal.
Magic SystemChosen OneEnemies to LoversHidden Power🌶 Cozy