Books featuring extremely possessive, obsessed, and jealous heroes follow male protagonists who exhibit intense and sometimes overbearing emotions toward the heroines. This type of character is deeply protective, sometimes to the point of being controlling or domineering.
Are you being overprotective of her/him? When we control other people, it’s not because we control them. It’s because we control ourselves and the risk of being hurt and betrayed. That makes us manifest these tendencies of suffocating over protecting the partner in our lives. You’re doing it because you’re scared, and your heart is on the line.
Possessive hero romance books offer a rollercoaster of emotions, from passion and love to anger and jealousy. These stories can be very satisfying for readers who crave intense relationship dynamics.
15 Books With Extremely Possessive Obsessed And Jealous Heroes
As human being, jealousy, possessiveness, and obsession are very common in the relationship. When we love someone, we fear losing or betraying. So, we show the possessiveness to overcome this fear. But some men are obsessed and possessive and always want to control their wife/girlfriend.
The obsessive nature of the relationships means there’s a lot on the line for the characters, leading to high-stakes drama and conflict that can be gripping. Authors focus deeply on character backstories, traumas, and motivations to create strong emotions. This can result in multifaceted, intriguing characters.
I will discuss 15 books with possessive, obsessed, and jealous heroes. Many of these novels involve character development, where the possessive hero learns to trust or overcome past traumas. This journey can be rewarding to read. Let’s go!
| Name | Storyline | Tropes |
|---|---|---|
| The Maddest Obsession by Danielle Lori | A brooding Russian mobster finds an unexpected, intense connection with a spirited American woman. | Mafia romance, Opposites attract, Dark romance, Forbidden love, Possessive hero, Tortured hero, Cultural clash. |
| Little Dove by Layla Frost | An age gap captor-captive romance. | BDSM, angst, alpha-hero, dark. |
| Feral Sins by Suzanne Wright | A dominant alpha and a defiant she-wolf fake a mating for political advantage. | Fated mates, Enemies to lovers, Fake relationship, Alpha hero, Strong heroine, Pack politics, Paranormal elements (werewolves). |
| The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne | A notorious criminal seeks revenge and reconnection with his childhood love. | Second chance romance, Dark hero with a tortured past, Revenge-driven plot, Hidden identity, Class differences, Tragic backstory, Victorian setting. |
| A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole | An immortal Scottish werewolf claims a reluctant vampire Valkyrie as his destined mate, leading to passion and conflict. | Fated mates, Opposites attract, Alpha man, Tortured hero, Paranormal elements (werewolves, Valkyries, vampires), Kidnapping/captive romance, Cultural clash. |
| Forget Me Not by Q. B. Tyler | A love story between a protective alpha hero and strong heroine. | Second-chance, angst, marriage-in-trouble, cheating, smut, amnesia. |
| The Risk by S.T. Abby | A traumatized woman seeks revenge while falling for an unsuspecting FBI agent. | Revenge plot, dark romance, secrets and double lives, enemies to lovers, law enforcement romance, tortured heroine, emotional trauma. |
| The Forbidden Man by Karina Halle | A younger woman falls for an older, off-limits soccer coach, navigating their intense attraction amidst personal and professional challenges. | Age gap, Forbidden romance, Sports romance (soccer), Emotional baggage, Family dynamics, Strong heroine, Temptation and resistance. |
| Then Came You by Lisa Kleypas | A headstrong heiress is determined to rescue her sister from a dangerous bet but ends up clashing with and falling for the enigmatic man who holds the wager. | Enemies to lovers, Kidnapping/captive romance, Tortured hero, Strong-willed heroine, Class differences, Redemption and transformation, Regency setting. |
| 40-Love by Olivia Dade | A confident older woman and a younger, anxious tennis coach find romance and self-acceptance during a resort vacation. | Age gap, Vacation romance, Opposites attract, Body positivity, Second chances, Slow burn, Warm and humorous. |
| Winds of the Storm by Beverly Jenkins | An ambitious schoolteacher and a former spy battle personal demons and external threats while navigating a passionate love affair in post-Civil War America. | Historical setting (Reconstruction era), Strong-willed heroine, Tortured hero, Social issues, Enemies to lovers, Adventure and danger, Cultural and racial dynamics. |
| Office Hours by Katrina Jackson | A college professor and her department chair embark on a passionate, clandestine relationship amidst the backdrop of academic life. | Forbidden romance, academic setting, workplace romance, power dynamics, secret relationship. |
| Transcendence by Shay Savage | A modern woman is transported back in time and meets a prehistoric caveman, leading to a unique bond that transcends language and time. | Time travel, prehistoric setting, language barrier, fish out of water, opposites attract. |
| The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez | A grieving woman finds solace and an unexpected connection when she inadvertently adopts a musician’s lost dog. | Second chance at love, celebrity romance, long-distance relationship, healing after loss, pets bringing people together. |
| On the Way to the Wedding by Julia Quinn | In the final installment of the Bridgerton series, Gregory Bridgerton believes he’s found his soulmate, but destiny may have another plan. | Friends-to-lovers, unrequited love, love triangles, historical romance, society match-making. |
1. The Maddest Obsession (Made)
This is Book Two in the Made series, and we are following Gianna and Christian in this one. Now, this is a mafia romance, and Gianna is twice widowed. She has been through a lot in her life. She’s not treated well, especially her first husband, and she’s a little tired. Then you have Christian. He is crooked-fed, and he lives by his own rules. He doesn’t let anyone tell him what to do, and he’s got this three-time rule.
So he’ll sleep with a woman three times, then he’s done with her. He doesn’t want anything else to do with it. No one has been able to break that whole three-rule thing until Gianna. Gianna and Christian have circled each other for years, and the push and pull between these two characters were amazing. They are very much total opposites, but they work so well.
Author: Danielle Lori
Average Rating: 4.7/5
Category: Romantic Suspense
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
2. Little Dove
The hero in this book is the mafia, but the book’s mafia aspect isn’t discussed very much. At the beginning of this book, Maximo and his men go to Juliet’s house. There, they go to deal with her father and kill her father, and they don’t know that Juliet is there. She was hiding in a closet, so she witnessed all of this.
Maximo takes her to his home, where he will provide for her. So, Juliet has struggled her whole life. Her father didn’t treat her very well, and the men her father was mixed up with were very unpleasant to her. So she’s thrust into this life with Maximo, which is luxurious and opposite from everything she’s ever known.
At the beginning of this book, she is 17, but nothing happens until she turns 18. Nothing happens between them until she ages, and Maximo wants to take care of her. Also, he is one of the most powerful men in Vegas, and she’s a little terrified. But they slowly develop this relationship that turns into very much daddy kink.
Author: Layla Frost
Average Rating: 4.4/5
Category: Contemporary College Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
3. Feral Sins (The Phoenix Pack)
This is a werewolf-shifter romance. In this book, we follow Taryn Warner, a latent wolf shifter. She has been unable to shift into her wolf form, and her father has tried. Her father is trying to marry her to this man whom she wants nothing to do. So she runs to Trey to ally with him. She’s like, if we pretend to be mates, my father can’t ignore that and won’t make me marry this other guy. In return, I will help you become aligned with more Pack in the community. Trey has started his Pack.
It is the first book in the Phoenix Pack, so Trey is the alpha of his Pack. He doesn’t have many alliances with other Pack in the community. But obviously, it isn’t pretending they fall in love. Trey is so reluctant because his wolf feels things for Taryn. Then Taryn is so snarky, and she puts him in his place. Trey is an alpha wolf. He’s very alpha, possessive, and aggressive when anyone comes near her.
Author: Suzanne Wright
Average Rating: 4.4/5
Category: Paranormal Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
4. The Highwayman: To Tempt a Highlander Series
This historical romance is the first book in the Victorian Rebels series. It opens up with Farah and Dorian, who are very young and in an orphanage. They develop a beautiful friendship to help each other get through this awful time they’re going through. Moreover, they promise each other that they will love each other forever. Eventually, they do get separated.
Years later, Farah is now working for the Scotland Yard, and that job brings her in contact with some very unsavory characters. One of them happens to be Dorian Blackwell. Dorian is ruthless and very feared. When he and Farah meet, he immediately feels her. He has all the dark urges inside him but tries to keep them at bay to protect Farah. But he feels so much passion and is very obsessed with her. This one does deal with a lot of heavy topics. But the love story here is so beautiful.
Author: Kerrigan Byrne
Average Rating: 4.5/5
Category: Victorian Historical Romance
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle | MP3 CD
5. A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark)
This one is also the first book in a series. We follow Lachlain and Emmaline in this book, and Lachlain is a werewolf. So, he is very powerful and has been locked up for decades. The only thing that helps him escape is his mate. So he’s in this dungeon underground, smells Emmaline, his mate, and breaks through his chains. He gets out, and he goes and searches this city for his mate. She is the least the last person he would ever expect when he finds her.
Emmaline is a vampire, his mortal enemy, and she’s also very fragile and gentle. Also, he again is the last person he ever expected to mate with. Lachlain wants revenge on the people who imprisoned him, and he plans to accomplish that through Emmaline. In addition, he is very possessive when someone gets near their mate.
Author: Kresley Cole
Average Rating: 4.5/5
Category: Fantasy Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
6. Forget Me Not
This is an amnesia romance, but it’s contemporary and marriage-in-trouble. We are dropped in the story when our hero and heroine are months out from their divorce. They haven’t been living together. Then, the hero gets into a car accident and loses his memory of the past two years. So, in his mind, they are still madly head over heels in love with each other.
Bennett is confused about why she’s acting standoffish and uninterested in him. But he is the one who cheated on her. There’s also a trigger warning for miscarriage and fertility issues in here. It is integral to the storyline, and he’s obsessed with her. Bennett was utterly overprotected and madly in love with her.
Author: Q. B. Tyler
Average Rating: 4.3/5
Category: Multicultural Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
7. The Risk
If you like Criminal Minds, you’ll love this because Logan Bennett is an FBI profiler. So he works with one, hunting down serial killers and understanding who they are as people and criminals. Our heroine, Lana, is great at profiling, but she’s a serial killer hunting down men who wronged her in her past. So something bad happened in our past. We don’t fully understand what it is yet.
Lana is hunting all the men down and brutally torturing and murdering them. She’s doing it because of what they did to her. The agent, the criminal profiler, sees her at a coffee shop and gives her his card. She likes him, and he is smitten. There’s this other case he’s working on that’s intertwining with the relationship, but he’s obsessed and possessive with her.
Author: S.T. Abby
Average Rating: 4.7/5
Category: Contemporary Romance Fiction
Available: Paperback | Kindle
8. The Forbidden Man
This one is an age-gap romance. Thalia Blackwood recently divorced her husband, who was a soccer coach. She was a physical trainer for the soccer team. Also, she ends up moving to Madrid to work for their soccer team. The hero is one of the soccer players. He’s in his twenties, and he is immediately like her. Moreover, he is so adamant that he finds her attractive. Thalia hesitates because her job’s on the line, and they aren’t allowed to date team members.
Author: Karina Halle
Average Rating: 4.6/5
Category: Multicultural & Interracial Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
9. Then Came You (The Gamblers of Craven’s)
This is book one in the series Dreaming of You as book two. It is Lily and Alex’s story, which is about enemies lovers. So they detested each other. Alex cannot stand Lily. He’s engaged to her sister. He lost his betrothed before she was in a riding accident and broke her neck on the way down. So, he is terrified of falling in love again. Alex is ready to settle down with someone pleasant and grows old.
Lily is in love with our other friend, Zachary. So she’s trying to plot a way for Zachary and Penelope to get together. You never want to get married. She wants her freedom. Her family ostracized her, and she has a lot of personalities, and Alex cannot stand her. But then he becomes obsessed with her and doesn’t even want her as a mistress.
Author: Lisa Kleypas
Average Rating: 4.5/5
Category: Viking Historical Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
10. 40-Love (There’s Something About Marysburg)
Our heroine, Tess, is a plus-size woman in the ocean in her bikini, and a wave comes by and takes her top off. So she’s horrified and trying to get a principal job. A young guy is on the beach, and she waves him down. He is the tennis trainer at the club, and he is younger than her.
Tess is adamant that they shouldn’t be together, much more so than the forbidden man. She thinks he is too immature and young and hangs out with all these young people. Also, she was obsessed with her age gap. It would never work outside of here. She has a job to go back to. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing with his life. At one point, Tess got her period, and he was trying his best to help her with it.
Author: Olivia Dade
Average Rating: 4.2/5
Category: Sports Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
11. Winds of the Storm (Le Veq Family)
This is a spy romance. So our heroine, Zahra, rescues our hero at the beginning of the book, and she is a famous spy. She saved his life because he was kidnapped, and they never saw each other again. Then, she works at a brothel as a madam and always wears a veil over her face in public. She’s working on trying to get information from the enemy side. They meet, and he’s instantly attracted to her, and he does end up figuring out who she is.
Zahra is adamant that they can’t be together, and he is much more willing to sacrifice things for the relationship than she is. She doesn’t think they’ll ever be able to be together. So the story goes from there, and it’s sweet. Zahra tried their best not to fall for him. She knows who he is. Then, she slowly started to accept that they could have a future together.
Author: Beverly Jenkins
Average Rating: 4.8/5
Category: American Historical Romance
Available: Mass Market Paperback | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
12. Office Hours
Deja Evans and Alejandro Mendoza are both professors. Deja is severely overworked, and she has so many classes to do. We have this other professor she’s always had a crush on, and they figure out they like each other. Also, it goes from there. Alejandro is unafraid to say he likes her, and they go out together. Also, they’re exhausted working together. Try this one if you want an office romance in a college setting.
Author: Katrina Jackson
Average Rating: 4.3/5
Category: Multicultural Romances
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
13. Transcendence
This one is a caveman romance. Elizabeth travels back to the caveman days, and Ehd immediately likes her. He is so obsessed with and protective of her that he tries to make her happy. They can’t communicate because he doesn’t speak English, and she can’t communicate with language. But Elizabeth is trying to deal with that. She time-traveled back to the caveman era.
Author: Shay Savage
Average Rating: 4.5/5
Category: Historical Erotica
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
14. The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone)
Sloan Monroe loses her fiance, and she is devastated and grief-stricken. Then she finds a dog and tries to find who it belongs. It belongs to Jason, and he is on tour with his band, and someone was watching his dog. So he wants his dog back, but they text each other. It’s epistolary. They get to know each other through text, then they meet.
Sloan has a lot to overcome because she is still grief-stricken over losing her fiance, but he is patient and in love with her. That does play into the relationship, whether they can make it work while he’s on tour and traveling.
Author: Abby Jimenez
Average Rating: 4.7/5
Category: Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
15. On the Way to the Wedding (Bridgertons)
This is the last book in the Bridgerton series. Gregory Bridgerton is a little child in the show and the first book. But it is time for his romance because he’s seen all his siblings fall in love. He is the opposite of his brothers. So he falls in love at first sight with a woman. He’s never talked to her. So he enlists the help of her best friend. Mandy’s best friend is Lucinda or Lucy, and her mind is in love with someone else.
It’s about Lucy and Gregory’s romance. In the prologue, though, we get that Gregory is trying to break up a wedding, and we don’t know whose wedding it is. It’s so good because he becomes smitten by the end and will do anything to have this woman marry him. There is a lot of conflict and drama, but he is possessive with her.
Author: Julia Quinn
Average Rating: 4.6/5
Category: Regency Romances
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
5 Dark Possessive Romance Books
Dark possessive romance novels explore intense, sometimes dangerous relationships with elements of obsession, passion, and sometimes dubious consent. Here are five titles in that genre:
Corrupt by Penelope Douglas: A revenge story fueled by passion and obsession. The main characters face their shared dark past, leading to a toxic and electrifying romance.
Monster in His Eyes by J.M. Darhower: This story revolves around a college student who falls for a mysterious man, only to discover he has dark secrets and intentions that tie back to her past.
Captive in the Dark by CJ Roberts: A dark tale of a young woman who gets kidnapped and her complicated relationship with her captor.
Tears of Tess by Pepper Winters: Tess is kidnapped and sold, leading her into a world of dark desires and a relationship with a man who believes he has a claim over her.
Debt Inheritance by Pepper Winters: A young woman learns she’s been “inherited” by a mysterious man due to a centuries-old debt. Their relationship is fraught with tension, dark desires, and possessiveness.
5 High School Possessive Romance Books
High school settings add extra intensity to romance stories due to adolescence’s turbulent emotions and drama. Here are five high school-set romance books where possessiveness is a key theme:
Bully by Penelope Douglas: The first book in the ‘Fall Away’ series. Tate, the protagonist, experiences love, hate, and a complicated relationship with her former friend turned tormentor, Jared.
Fear Me by B.B. Reid: Keiran is the school’s known bad boy, and his eyes are set on Lake, claiming her for reasons she doesn’t understand. It’s a dark high school romance.
Boys of Brayshaw High by Meagan Brandy: Raven is the new girl in town and catches the attention of the powerful Brayshaw boys, leading to a lot of drama and possessiveness.
The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley: Amber and Liam share a deep bond stemming from a shared trauma. Liam is very protective and possessive of Amber, especially given their histories.
Stepbrother Dearest by Penelope Ward: Greta and Elec’s relationship is complicated due to their new familial ties and Elec’s initial hostility, which hides deeper feelings.
These books span various subgenres, from contemporary to historical to paranormal. This variety ensures there’s something for everyone.
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