25 Books Where Stalking Is Apparently a Love Language

Look, I know your TBR is full.

Mine is too.

But shopping for books and reading them are two entirely different hobbies, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

And if you’ve somehow found yourself here looking for stalker romance novels, I’m going to assume we’re all comfortable admitting that our taste in fictional men occasionally leaves something to be desired.

Because these men have issues.

They watch through windows. They install cameras. They know schedules they absolutely should not know. They break into houses. They send deeply concerning gifts. And occasionally they wear masks, which apparently makes all of this significantly more acceptable to the dark romance community.

In real life? Police. Immediately.

In a book?

Well.

I’ve read a LOT of dark romance at this point, and Lights Out is still one of my favorite stalker romances. But there are plenty of ways to do the trope, and we’re not limiting ourselves to 25 variations of a masked man standing outside someone’s bedroom window.

We’ve got funny stalkers. Serial killers. Hockey players. Mafia men. Paranormal weirdness. Women doing some stalking of their own. And, naturally, several men who have decided that boundaries are really more of a suggestion.

Some of these are dark. Some are genuinely fucked up. Some are surprisingly funny. And some are on this list because everyone recommends them even though I have thoughts.

So check the trigger warnings, pick your particular brand of fictional red flag and remember:

If he does it on your Kindle, it’s dark romance. If he does it outside your house, call the cops.

Best Stalker Romance Novels

Okay, this is my favorite stalker romance.

And part of the reason is that Lights Out manages to be dark and kinky and completely inappropriate while also being genuinely funny.

Josh is absolutely a stalker. There is no creative interpretation of events required here. This man is breaking into Aly’s house, watching her, messing with her and generally doing a spectacular job of collecting behaviors that would warrant several phone calls to the police in real life.

But Josh and Aly’s dynamic is what makes the book work.

Aly isn’t just some terrified woman being chased around by a mysterious man while we’re expected to patiently wait for Stockholm syndrome to kick in. She has her own fantasies, her own kinks and considerably more agency than you might expect from the premise.

And Josh?

He’s an obsessive masked stalker who is somehow also kind of a dork.

I don’t know how Navessa Allen made that combination work, but she did.

There are much darker stalker romances on this list—and we’ll get to them—but if you want somewhere to start with the trope, Lights Out is ridiculously fun.

Just, you know.

Maybe don’t use it as a dating guide.

Read this if you like: masked men, dark comedy, kink, obsessive MMCs, surprisingly adorable stalkers and romances that would require several restraining orders in real life.

If Lights Out is my favorite stalker romance, Pretty Monster is my runner-up.

And these two books actually work really well back-to-back because they’re very different versions of the same general fantasy.

Pretty Monster isn’t nearly as funny as Lights Out. It’s darker, creepier and much more interested in the fact that having a strange man watch you through your windows would actually be terrifying.

Kyah knows someone is watching her. She knows he’s getting closer. And she knows that whatever is happening between them is probably not something she should be encouraging.

Unfortunately, knowing something is a terrible idea has never stopped a dark romance heroine before.

The attraction builds right alongside the fear as her stalker gets increasingly bold, and that’s really what I enjoyed about this one. He’s creepy. She’s freaked out. She’s also curious. And then curiosity starts winning decisions it absolutely should not be winning.

I didn’t find it quite as laugh-out-loud funny as Lights Out, but I still had a really good time reading it. If you want to move from Josh’s slightly ridiculous masked-man antics into something darker and more traditionally stalker-y, this is where I’d go next.

Read this if you like: masked men, voyeurism, dark obsession, breaking and entering, cat-and-mouse romance and women making increasingly questionable decisions about the strange man outside the window.

Finally, some representation for women who are also capable of being creepy on the internet.

Midnight Message is one of the newest books on this list, and I love the switch-up here because Mina is stalking him first.

And she’s not just casually checking his Instagram occasionally.

She knows his tattoos. She knows where his aunt vacations. She knows the layout of his house.

Girl.

But then Mina actually messages Leo, and it turns out our hockey player has been doing some research of his own. He knows things like her phone password, when her roommate forgets to lock the door and how deeply she sleeps.

So apparently they’ve found each other.

This is exactly the kind of book I wanted to add while updating this list because it gives us the obsessive stalking we’re here for without repeating the same masked-man-watches-woman-through-window setup.

Plus, hockey romance has officially wandered into our fictional restraining order era.

Read this if you like: hockey romance, mutual obsession, stalker x stalker, unhinged DMs, morally questionable behavior and women who are perfectly capable of being the red flag too.

We obviously cannot make a stalker romance list without talking about Haunting Adeline.

This is probably one of the most recognizable books in the entire genre, and a LOT of people absolutely love it.

I am not one of those people.

To be clear, I didn’t hate it. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars, and there were definitely things I enjoyed—Zade included. But after seeing this book recommended approximately seventeen billion times, I expected considerably more than I got.

The writing wasn’t as polished as I wanted it to be, Adeline wasn’t my favorite FMC and overall I thought it was wildly overhyped.

That said, if you’re looking for an actual stalker romance, this absolutely qualifies.

Zade watches Adeline, breaks into her home and becomes completely obsessed with her. The book goes considerably darker than Lights Out or Pretty Monster, too, and there are scenes between Zade and Adeline that I personally would not describe as consensual non-consent.

So check those trigger warnings. Seriously.

Also worth knowing: this is the first half of the Cat and Mouse Duet and ends on a cliffhanger. Hunting Adeline is book two, but it’s a very different story and isn’t really a stalker romance in the same way the first book is.

Do I think Haunting Adeline is the best stalker romance ever written?

No.

Do I think you can have a list of stalker romances without including it?

Also no.

Read this if you like: extremely dark romance, obsessive MMCs, gothic vibes, morally black heroes, cat-and-mouse dynamics and books that require you to actually read the trigger warnings.

Sheridan Anne is back because apparently Pretty Monster wasn’t enough stalking for one author.

And honestly, the premise alone got me with this one.

Instead of simply watching Oakley through a window or breaking into her house, her stalker is communicating with her through the bodies that end up on her autopsy table.

Which feels excessive.

But memorable.

Hide and Seek leans much harder into the thriller side of stalker romance, with Oakley trying to figure out who is behind the messages while he turns the whole thing into an increasingly dangerous game.

And because this is dark romance, naturally the person terrifying her also comes with sexual tension.

This is one of the newer additions to the list, and it’s exactly the kind I wanted in the update: still very obviously a stalker romance, but with a completely different setup from the books we’ve already covered.

Read this if you like: masked stalkers, forensic pathology, serial killers, cat-and-mouse games, dark romantic suspense and men who have found deeply inappropriate ways to flirt.

Hayden is not doing the whole admiring you quietly from afar thing.

This man commits.

Once he becomes interested in Calista, he wants to know where she is, what she’s doing and whether she’s safe—and his definition of “protecting her” involves a truly spectacular disregard for privacy.

Hence the cameras.

What makes Once You’re Mine a fun addition to this list is that Hayden sees himself as Calista’s protector. He’s a vigilante, he’s obsessive and he’s convinced that everything he’s doing is ultimately for her own good.

Calista has not necessarily signed off on this arrangement.

Obviously.

It gives us a slightly different flavor of stalker MMC because Hayden isn’t just watching her because he’s obsessed with her. In his mind, surveillance and protection have become basically the same thing.

Which is romantic exclusively because we’re reading fiction.

This is also the first book in the Possessing Her duet, so don’t go into it expecting everything to be neatly wrapped up by the last page.

Read this if you like: vigilantes, obsessive protectors, surveillance, morally gray men, possessive MMCs and fictional relationships that would be absolutely exhausting to explain to a therapist.

Okay, if you’re looking for the considerably more f*cked-up end of stalker romance, we’ve arrived.

Aero isn’t a cute little I saw you on Instagram and now I’m obsessed with you stalker.

He knows Briony. He watches her. He manipulates what’s happening around her. And he’s very intentionally trying to tear apart basically everything she believes about herself and the life she’s supposed to want.

Their relationship gets dark.

Like please actually read the trigger warnings dark.

But the religious element is what makes That Sik Luv stand out on a list like this. Briony has been raised in an intensely religious environment, and Aero’s obsession with her becomes tangled up with sex, shame, control, punishment and her increasingly complicated relationship with her faith.

It’s depraved, dramatic and absolutely not going to be for everyone.

But if you came here looking for dark romance and would like the word dark to be doing some actual work, here you go.

Read this if you like: religious trauma, obsessive stalkers, morally black MMCs, extremely dark romance, forbidden desire and books whose trigger-warning lists should be treated as required reading.

This is another ridiculously popular dark romance that I liked more than I loved.

And apparently I am developing a theme here.

Little Stranger has all the ingredients for something I should be completely obsessed with: foster siblings, enemies-to-lovers energy, revenge, a possessive MMC and a relationship that is wildly inappropriate from approximately seventeen different angles.

I did enjoy it.

But I also thought it felt rushed.

The book is pretty short—I finished it in around three hours—and there were places where I wanted considerably more explanation and character development. I had a hard time reading between the lines of Malachi and Olivia’s relationship sometimes, and neither of them ever became particularly relatable to me.

Which makes it sound like I hated the book.

I didn’t.

It’s messy, taboo and extremely easy to fly through. I just went into it after seeing people rave about it and expected a little more than I ultimately got.

There’s also a follow-up, Little Liar, if you finish this one and want to keep going.

Read this if you like: taboo romance, foster siblings, revenge, possessive MMCs, stalking, captivity and short dark romances you can inhale in an afternoon.

Raw has been around considerably longer than most of the books on this list, but Twitch walked so some of these other fictional stalkers could break into houses and install security cameras.

And Twitch is definitely not our sweet, secretly-a-dork Lights Out variety of stalker.

He’s dangerous, controlling and very deliberately watching Lexi before he properly enters her life. Once he does, their relationship doesn’t suddenly become normal just because they’re attracted to each other.

Not even a little bit.

This is one of those dark romances where the MMC is an actual antihero, rather than a basically nice guy who occasionally commits a felony because he’s protective. Twitch makes bad choices. Lexi knows he’s dangerous. Their relationship is messy as hell.

And that’s kind of the point.

If you want one of the older stalker romances that helped establish the obsessive, morally questionable MMCs filling our Kindles today, Raw is worth going back for.

Read this if you like: antiheroes, obsessive men, watching-from-the-shadows stalking, dangerous relationships, morally questionable choices and older-school dark romance.

Ah yes.

The classic love story:

Boy texts wrong number.
Girl responds.
Boy becomes completely obsessed with girl.

Romance.

The Pucking Wrong Number is where hockey romance collides with the kind of possessive MMC who hears the word “no” and apparently interprets it as “perhaps I should interfere with her life more aggressively.”

Lincoln starts out as a random stranger on Monroe’s phone, but once he becomes interested in her, he doesn’t do anything halfway. He’s possessive, controlling, obsessive and increasingly determined to make himself a permanent part of her life.

Whether Monroe has reached the same conclusion is somewhat less important to Lincoln.

It’s definitely different from Midnight Message, despite giving us our second hockey stalker. That one starts with a woman who’s already obsessing over a famous hockey player.

Here, the wrong-number meet-cute is basically just the universe accidentally giving an obsessive man her contact information.

Excellent work, universe.

Read this if you like: hockey romance, wrong-number meet-cutes, obsessive MMCs, possessiveness, morally questionable interference and men who take “I’m interested in you” several hundred steps too far.

Sometimes a man watches you through your bedroom window.

Sometimes you’re an FBI profiler and the serial killers you’re hunting decide you’re interesting enough to keep.

Everybody has problems.

Hunt Me Darling gives us a much more thriller-heavy version of the obsessive romance on this list, which I appreciate because by book eleven we’ve had quite enough men installing cameras in apartments.

Darling is actively investigating these men, and they’re just as interested in studying her as she is in studying them. That turns the whole thing into a much bigger cat-and-mouse game where the lines between hunter, target and attraction get increasingly messy.

Also, there are two of them.

Because apparently one dangerously obsessive man simply wasn’t enough.

This is the one I’d reach for if you want your dark romance mixed with serial killers, criminal profiling and considerably more suspense.

Read this if you like: serial killers, FBI profilers, why choose romance, cat-and-mouse games, dangerous obsession and women who really should not be attracted to the subjects of their investigations.

Okay, this is the kind of ridiculous setup I want from a newer stalker romance.

Scarlett wants to explore her fantasies without actually putting herself out there, so she creates a dating profile using someone else’s pictures.

Questionable decision #1.

Then she matches with her boss, Roman.

Questionable decision #2.

And instead of this remaining a relatively harmless anonymous online situation, Roman becomes obsessed with finding the woman he thinks he’s been talking to.

Excellent.

Now Scarlett has the fairly significant problem of being the person he’s actually connecting with while simultaneously watching him pursue a woman who technically doesn’t exist.

Love Me, Stalk Me is a fun addition to this list because the stalking grows out of an already messy situation instead of beginning with mysterious stranger sees beautiful woman and immediately starts lurking outside her house.

It’s still obsessive. It’s still dark. Everyone involved still needs to make substantially better decisions.

But at least we’re changing up the felonies.

Read this if you like: workplace romance, fake identities, obsessive bosses, online dating gone horribly wrong, stalking and heroines creating problems for themselves with absolutely spectacular efficiency.

I love when the FMC thinks she’s the one trying to get a man’s attention while the man in question is already approximately forty-seven steps further into the relationship.

Cassie thinks Hans is mysterious and uninterested.

Hans is neither.

He’s been watching her, keeping tabs on her and sneaking into her house while maintaining the outward appearance of being the aloof neighbor who barely notices she exists.

Sir.

Hans is also a nice change from some of our genuinely terrifying stalkers because there’s something almost absurdly domestic about parts of his obsession with Cassie.

Including her baking.

Cassie keeps leaving homemade treats for Hans. Hans keeps eating them despite the fairly important fact that Cassie is an absolutely terrible baker.

If that’s not devotion, I don’t know what is.

There’s plenty of violence and criminal activity surrounding them—Hans is very much not a normal suburban neighbor—but their actual dynamic gives this one a funnier, sweeter edge than you might expect.

Read this if you like: obsessed neighbors, mafia romance, protective MMCs, secret stalking, competent dangerous men and acts of love that apparently include eating truly terrible baked goods.

We have reached the serial-killer love-interest portion of today’s program.

Cole isn’t morally gray.

We’re several exits past gray.

He’s a successful artist, a psychopath and a serial killer who initially becomes interested in Mara because she’s connected to his rivalry with another killer.

Then interest turns into fascination.

Then fascination turns into obsession.

You know how this goes.

What makes There Are No Saints interesting on this list is that the stalking isn’t the entire plot. There’s a bigger psychological game happening around Mara, and Cole’s obsession with her gets tangled up with his rivalry, his violence and the increasingly inconvenient fact that he actually starts caring whether she survives.

Which, for Cole, is practically emotional growth.

This is also the first book in the Sinners Duet, so you’re signing up for two books rather than a tidy little standalone.

Read this if you like: serial-killer MMCs, artists, psychological games, obsession, morally black heroes and romances where “at least he’s interested in my work” has gone horribly off the rails.

If some of the books on this list have made you think, Okay, perhaps I’d like my fictional stalker with slightly fewer murders, this is your book.

Christian is still obsessive.

He’s still possessive.

And his understanding of appropriate boundaries could use some work.

But Twisted Lies sits on the more accessible end of stalker romance. Christian’s obsession with Stella comes wrapped inside fake dating, billionaire romance and the kind of hyper-competent protective MMC who would happily rearrange someone’s entire existence if he decided it was necessary.

Without mentioning it first, obviously.

Stella also has a separate stalker problem, because apparently one stalker per romance was simply not enough.

That gives the book an interesting dynamic: Christian’s own surveillance and obsession become tangled up with his determination to protect Stella from someone considerably less welcome.

It’s still possessive and morally questionable, but compared with our serial killers and home invaders, Christian is practically respectable.

Read this if you like: fake dating, billionaires, obsessive protectors, surveillance, possessive MMCs and stalker romance with a little less please check the basement for bodies energy.

Killian Carson is not misunderstood.

I feel like we should establish that immediately.

This isn’t one of those romances where everyone thinks the MMC is terrifying but secretly he’s a cinnamon roll who rescues puppies on weekends.

No. He is actually the problem.

Killian becomes fixated on Glyndon and proceeds to insert himself into her life with all the subtlety you’d expect from a man who doesn’t particularly care whether anyone approves of what he’s doing.

Which is none.

God of Malice also gives us a different setting from most of the books we’ve covered. We’re in the dark-academia/college world here, with wealthy families, rival groups, secrets and enough deeply dysfunctional young adults to keep several therapists employed indefinitely.

And this one is dark.

There are consent issues right from the beginning, so this is another book where I’m going to tell you to actually look at the trigger warnings instead of discovering them organically on page 20.

Killian is manipulative, possessive, obsessive and absolutely not going to be everybody’s idea of a romantic hero.

But if that’s precisely what you came here looking for?

Well.

Read this if you like: dark academia, obsessive MMCs, morally black heroes, college romance, manipulation, possessiveness and men who are red flags rather than merely carrying them.

A serial-killing priest inspired by The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Sometimes I really don’t need much more information than that.

Crossed is part of Emily McIntire’s Never After series, which takes familiar stories and turns them into standalone dark romances. This time we’re playing with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, except Cade is considerably hotter and somehow considerably worse at the whole priest thing.

His attraction to Amaya quickly turns obsessive, which presents a slight problem when you’ve devoted your life to God.

Although, frankly, the serial killing suggests we may have already had some professional difficulties.

What I like about having Crossed on this list is that it gives us obsession without repeating the exact same stalker setup. Cade watches Amaya and becomes increasingly fixated on her, but we’ve also got religion, guilt, murder and a man trying to reconcile what he thinks he’s supposed to be with what he actually wants.

Spoiler: restraint is not his strongest skill.

Read this if you like: forbidden romance, priests, serial killers, dark retellings, obsessive MMCs, religious guilt and men making spectacularly poor choices in the name of desire.

Apparently Avina St. Graves gets two spots on this list because she understands that there are multiple ways to make obsession deeply concerning.

Unlike Midnight Message, in Skin of a Sinner, Roman and Isabella already have history.

A lot of it.

They grew up together, and Roman was intensely protective of Isabella long before either of them was old enough to call whatever was happening between them a romance. When he eventually comes back into her life, that attachment hasn’t disappeared.

It’s gotten worse.

Naturally.

Roman is possessive, violent and completely convinced that Isabella belongs with him. But because their relationship is rooted in childhood, this has a very different feel from our I saw her once and decided she’s mine stalkers.

There’s history underneath the obsession.

And that makes the whole relationship messier, because Roman isn’t some mysterious stranger Isabella can simply identify as dangerous and avoid. He’s someone she loved, trusted and lost—and now he’s back as a considerably more dangerous version of the boy she remembers.

Read this if you like: childhood friends, second chances, obsessive protectors, possessive MMCs, morally black men and relationships where “we’ve known each other forever” is considerably less reassuring than usual.

Finally, a stalker romance for the festive season.

Because nothing says Christmas quite like discovering the hot man you’re flirting with already knows way more about you than you’ve actually told him.

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping takes the cozy Christmas-romance setup and gives it a deeply inappropriate dark-romance makeover. We’ve got holiday festivities, attraction and all the usual seasonal trappings.

We also have a man secretly watching a woman.

You know.

Hallmark, but make it a felony.

This isn’t the book I’d pick if you want the darkest, most disturbing stalker on the list. That’s actually part of why I like having it here. Not every fictional restraining order needs to involve serial killers, kidnapping and a twelve-page trigger-warning list.

Sometimes you just want a possessive stalker with your Christmas lights.

Read this if you like: holiday romance, secret stalkers, possessive MMCs, Christmas with a dark-romance twist and festive stories that would never make it onto the Hallmark Channel.

Apparently Morgan Bridges looked at Once You’re Mine and decided she had more stalking to contribute to society.

Fine by me.

Depraved Devotion brings us back to the more traditional version of the trope: secret identity, surveillance, obsession and a man who knows considerably more about the woman he’s watching than she knows about him.

But there’s history underneath what’s happening here, and his fixation on Lainey is tangled up with revenge.

Which is rarely a sign that a relationship is starting from a healthy place.

This one is newer than most of the books on our list, which is one of the reasons I wanted it in the update. It gives us all the classic someone is watching me stalker-romance energy without relying entirely on the same handful of books that have been circulating on dark-romance lists for years.

Is mysterious surveillance an appropriate foundation for a relationship?

Probably not.

Are we twenty books into this list and pretending we care?

Also probably not.

Read this if you like: secret stalkers, revenge, obsessive MMCs, surveillance, dark romance and men who have been planning the relationship considerably longer than the woman involved.

This is another one for anyone who enjoys discovering that the charming romantic hero has actually been deeply concerning the entire time.

Hallie doesn’t initially realize the extent of what she’s dealing with. But her new relationship isn’t nearly as accidental as she thinks, and the deeper she gets, the clearer it becomes that obsession was involved long before she understood what was happening.

I like having books like Obsession mixed into this list because sometimes the fun isn’t knowing from page one that the dude lurking behind the curtains is the love interest.

Sometimes you want the stalking and manipulation hidden underneath something that initially looks much more like a normal romance.

Well.

“Normal.”

We’re still on this list.

This one also gets darker than its setup might initially suggest, so don’t let the seemingly straightforward romance fool you into skipping the trigger warnings.

Read this if you like: secret obsession, manipulation, possessive MMCs, hidden agendas, dark romance and discovering that the meet-cute was considerably less cute than advertised.

We have officially left “maybe he’s just overly protective” territory.

These men are dangerous.

Better Run takes the stalking and obsession we’re here for and throws them into a much more extreme why-choose setup involving kidnapping, violence and two men who are very much not pretending to be decent human beings.

Quinn isn’t dealing with some mysterious admirer leaving roses on her doorstep.

She’s dealing with predators.

And because this is dark romance, the answer to surely she’s not going to become romantically involved with them is obviously:

Girl, look at the list you’re reading.

This is definitely one for the readers who want their stalker romances pushed toward the genuinely fucked-up end of the spectrum. If your preferred MMC is secretly a sweetheart underneath all the surveillance, perhaps continue scrolling.

Jesse and Lucas are not your men.

Read this if you like: why choose romance, kidnapping, dangerous MMCs, extreme obsession, cat-and-mouse games and dark romance that has absolutely no interest in pretending the red flags are pink.

At this point in the list, we’ve had serial killers, kidnappers, vigilantes and enough home surveillance to make me reconsider every Wi-Fi-connected device I own.

So here’s something a little softer.

Stalk Me Softly takes the obsessive-stalker setup and makes it considerably more comforting than terrifying. Selena’s mysterious admirer is still watching her and involving himself in her life without anything resembling appropriate permission.

He’s just being weirdly sweet about it.

And honestly, I appreciate the variety.

This is the kind of book for someone who likes the fantasy of an obsessive man knowing everything about you and quietly taking care of problems, but doesn’t necessarily need him to leave a corpse on the front porch to demonstrate his commitment.

Is it healthy?

No.

Is that why we’re here?

Also no.

Read this if you like: softer dark romance, secret admirers, protective stalkers, caretaking, possessive MMCs and obsession with significantly fewer serial killers.

We have had a lot of human men behaving like monsters on this list.

It seems only fair that we eventually include an actual monster.

Honeysuckles takes the obsessive stalking we’re here for and drops it into paranormal romance, with a creature who has been fixated on Honey since their first encounter years earlier.

And this is not Beauty and the Beast.

We’re not dealing with a slightly furry prince who needs someone to teach him about love.

The paranormal element gets weird. The romance gets dark. And the obsession has been brewing for a very long time.

It’s a great option if you like the stalker trope but you’re getting a little tired of masked men, billionaires and serial killers and would instead like to ask yourself, “Okay, but what if he wasn’t entirely human?”

Apparently there’s a book for everybody.

Read this if you like: monster romance, paranormal dark romance, long-term obsession, possessive creatures, childhood encounters and stalkers who present entirely new logistical problems for the restraining-order process.

Okay, this is a much better way to finish this list.

Because after 24 books about women accidentally acquiring stalkers, Shay basically goes out looking for her own dark-romance hero.

And she gets one.

The problem—or benefit, depending on why you’ve made it this far down the list—is that her new masked man isn’t simply role-playing the obsessive stalker thing.

He’s actually obsessive.

He’s hacking her phone, sneaking into her life and generally taking Shay’s book-boyfriend fantasies considerably more literally than any reasonable person would.

There’s also something delightfully ridiculous about ending our stalker-romance list with a heroine who has presumably read books exactly like the other 24 books on this list and thought:

Yeah, actually. I’ll have one of those.

To Have and to Stalk is a 2026 release, it’s deliberately playing with the dark-romance-reader fantasy, and it gives us another lighter, funnier stalker after several books involving serial killers, kidnapping and men who desperately need prison.

A fitting end to our fictional restraining order era.

Read this if you like: masked men, dark rom-coms, bookish FMCs, obsessive stalkers, hacked phones, kink and heroines who have read the warnings and would like the red flag anyway.

So, What Should You Read Next?

Okay, you’ve got 25 stalker romance novels and presumably only so many hours in the day.

So where should you actually start?

If you’re new to stalker romance, start with Lights Out. It’s still my favorite on this list, and you get all the stalking, masks and questionable behavior without immediately throwing yourself into the deepest, darkest end of the genre.

If you want something darker and creepier, go with Pretty Monster. It’s my runner-up and has much more of that there is literally a man watching me through my window and why am I attracted to him? energy.

If you want mutual obsession, pick Midnight Message. Mina is already doing some frankly impressive stalking of her own before she discovers Leo has been keeping tabs on her too.

If you want something seriously f*cked up, That Sik Luv is waiting for you. Read the trigger warnings. I’m not kidding.

If you want hockey with your restraining order, try The Pucking Wrong Number.

If you want serial killers, go with There Are No Saints or Hunt Me Darling.

And if you’d prefer your stalker romance to be funny and completely aware of what genre it’s in, try To Have and to Stalk.

But if you’re asking me to choose just one?

Lights Out.

Josh remains my favorite fictional reason to call the police.

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