Enemies To Lovers is one type of reverse romance where two characters are enemies at first, and as the story goes on, they fall in love with each other. This is one of the most popular tropes among young adults (YA). It is known as reverse psychological romance or a relationship against the other in psychology. It makes a story very exciting to read.
15 Young Adult Enemies To Lovers Books (YA Romance)
Most of the relationships start with hating or bullying each other. This type of relationship is so strong because both couples know each other’s negative behavior and accept it. Now I will review 15 young adult enemies to lovers books for you. Let’s go!
1. The Bridge Kingdom
This book follows a girl (Lara) who has been training her whole life to kill off the king of a rival kingdom. Lara marries him all with the plot to kill him, and he has no idea. There are sub tropes under enemies to lovers, where one of them is pretending to be in a relationship with the other to get close to them or kill them.
The angst that it gives is on another level. King Aren has 13 daughters, and no one knows about these daughters. Everybody thinks he has one daughter. Everybody thinks this daughter is being raised in secret so no one can assassinate her not to give her a rift between these two kingdoms building an alliance through this marriage.
Lara knows he’s roughly her age, and he got to be king after his parents died. So she gets sent into the kingdom to infiltrate them and her whole life. She has been told that the Bridge Kingdom is terrible, that they control their lives, and that her country suffers from the rich kingdom. So she believes these people are demons. This book has a lot of fun banter with slow-burn enemies to lovers romance between these two characters.
Author: Danielle L. Jensen
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Coming of Age Fantasy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
2. Mating the Huntress (Monsters and Mates)
This is a paranormal romance about a werewolf and a werewolf hunter. So our heroine (Chastity) is a werewolf hunter, and she is ready to get her first kill. She wants to prove to her family that she can be a hunter. This very attractive werewolf in town has been flirting with her. Also, she allows him (Luke) to ask her on a date and uses this date as an opportunity to go and kill him.
Luke is very blissfully unaware. He is in love with her head over heels because she is his mate. So not only do we have the enemies to lovers trying to murder his aspect, but we also have faded mates. Luke doesn’t understand a lot of human traits. So he’s very blissfully unaware of a lot of stuff going on.
Author: Talia Hibbert
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Paranormal Erotica
Available: Paperback | Kindle
3. Lady Sophia’s Lover (Bow Street Series)
This is a historical romance about a girl (Sophia) whose brother was sent to prison, and he was either executed or died in prison. So Sophia has set out on a mission to get revenge on the lawyer who sent her brother to prison. She applies to be his (Ross Cannon) assistant starts a little life flirtation and romance with him to get close to him and destroy his life.
So it’s a little bit less extreme because she’s not like trying to kill him. But it still has enemies on one side because Ross has no clue who she is and doesn’t like him.
Author: Lisa Kleypas
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Victorian Historical Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
4. Phoenix Unbound (Fallen Empire)
This one’s a little bit more on the mutual enemies-to-lovers side than these other ones, but it’s still more one-sided. So this is a fantasy romance about a gladiator and a witch. The Gladiator kidnaps the witch to take her (Gilene) home to reclaim his (Azarion) status as a clan leader. But for some reason, he needed her to help him get his rightful place back as leader of the clan.
So Azarion kidnapped Gilene, and they journeyed to his homeland. Since he kidnapped her, she does not like him. She’s upset about it, but he doesn’t have a problem with her. He wants her and finds her attractive. So it’s still more one-sided, even though they’re working against each other the whole book. It is because she’s trying to escape, and he’s trying to keep her.
Author: Grace Draven
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Fantasy Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
5. A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles)
This is a fantasy romance, a similar plot where a guy (Griffin) is a warlord. He kidnaps the main character because she (Catalia) is a clairvoyant and can tell when people are lying, and that’s a useful skill. So he uses this magical rope to tether them together, and the rope can’t be broken. So the whole book, they’re tied together with this rope, and she is so pissed off about it.
You can imagine the number of things that happen because they’re tied together with the entire book. So these will not necessarily hate each other. They got off on the wrong foot. Some miscommunication caused them to have bad impressions of each other. So they consider each other rivals in that aspect. But there’s no deep-rooted hate. None of them have done anything terrible to the other.
Author: Amanda Bouchet
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Greco-Roman Myth & Legend Fantasy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
6. Well Met
This is about a girl who is participating in a rent fair. When she goes to sign up for the rent fair, she gets a bad first impression of the guy who runs the fair, and they immediately don’t hit it off. They’re very different. But during the fair, they play characters since they’re working it. Her character is a tavern wench, and his character is a pirate captain.
So while they’re acting in the fair, they’re flirting with each other and have great banter, and they kiss. Once the fair’s over, they’re back to like not getting along. The Rent Faire vibe is one of the most fun settings in enemies to lovers romance.
Author: Jen DeLuca
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
7. The Unhoneymooners
This one is about two people who were the maid of honor and the best man at a wedding. Everyone at the wedding other than them got sick and got food poisoning. So the bride and groom gift them with this honeymoon to Hawaii.
They end up going on this honeymoon together, but they don’t like each other. They had a bad first impression, and they didn’t get along from that point. So they have to go on this honeymoon and pretend to be a couple. It is one of the best enemies to lovers relationship novels I have ever read.
Author: Christina Lauren
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Humorous American Literature
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
8. From Lukov with Love
We’re following two professional ice skaters. Lukov is the main character’s best friend’s brother, and he’s the best male ice skater. He does pair skating, and his partner got injured. So he needs a new partner, and he asks the main character to be his new partner. Moreover, she’s very reluctant to do it because she dislikes him.
They end up having to be hair skating partners, even though they don’t get along. There was such a drawn-out, slow-burn tension. So, you get to see them go from rivals not liking each other to friends, then to lovers.
Author: Mariana Zapata
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
9. The Simple Wild
This follows a girl (Calla Fletcher) who is a lifestyle fashion blogger, and she has had an estranged relationship with her father her whole life. She finds out that he is dying, so she travels to Alaska to see him before he dies. She gets picked up by a guy (Jonah) at the airport in a rugged, lumberjack Alaskan wilderness. She’s standing there fashionista ready for an Instagram photoshoot, and they don’t hit it off.
They’re so different, and they immediately don’t like each other. Jonah tries to make her life hard like he is not very nice to her. He does things that make her life so much harder, and they don’t get along. Then, throughout the book, they start to learn more about each other and realize that they had the wrong first impressions of each other. The Snowden trope is where they get snowed in somewhere and stuck, and they can’t leave.
Author: K.A. Tucker
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Women’s Domestic Life Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
10. Vicious (Sinners of Saint)
Emilia and Vicious are characters who genuinely hate each other, or one or both of them have done bad, unforgivable things to the other. They want the toxic. So this is about two characters who did not get along in high school. Vicious was very rich, coming from a wealthy family, and Emilia’s family worked for them. Her mother was the maid, and the father was the groundskeeper. Also, they lived in the servant’s area of the house or on the property.
There was a misunderstanding and miscommunication, which caused Vicious to hate the girl. He made it his life’s mission in high school to make her life miserable. Towards the end of high school, he ran her out of town, and Emilia moved away. She never looked back, and now it’s ten years later, she is now taking care of her sister, who has some medical problems. She lost her job there. They have no money for rent, and she ends up running into this guy.
Vicious finds out about her financial situation and offers her a job to be his assistant. So she is very reluctant about it because of how horrible he was to her in high school and how he ruined her life and made her leave town. But Emilia is desperate for money, so she takes a job, and now she’s working as his assistant. There’s a lot of hatred and animosity between both of them. So, there’s a lot of history and drama between them where you get to see unique enemies to lovers romance.
Author: V. E. Schwab
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Paranormal & Urban Fantasy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Audio CD
11. Violent Delights (White Monarch)
This is a cartel romance, so the cartel boss’s daughter is the main character. When Natalia was young, her father had a rival cartel boss murdered and then took in that guy’s two sons and raised them. They worked for him. When she was young, she walked in on the older sons standing over her mother’s dead body, and he held her at gunpoint and used her to escape. It’s always been very traumatizing to her.
Natalia has nightmares about it. Then he comes back into their lives. For some reason, her father has forgiven him and believes that he’s not the one that killed her mom. Moreover, she’s very suspicious about it because she still believes that he’s the one that killed her mom. After all, she walked in on them. But she’s also dating his brother. So there are many layers of complexity and drama, and hatred.
Author: Jessica Hawkins
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Family Saga Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
12. Hate to Want You (Forbidden Hearts)
This follows two families who have been connected and close for many generations. The grandfathers started this big business together. Every generation has been very close and the main character and the guy dated in high school. They were high school sweethearts and in love. Then something tragic happened. There was an accident where his mother and her father died. In addition, this caused a huge rift between the two families.
Secrets came out that caused everybody to start hating each other. The couple broke up like he broke her heart, and there was a fire, and somebody else died. There were a lot of backstories, drama, history, and horrible things between these two families. The girl ran away from her home. But every day on her birthday for ten years, she would text the guy her coordinates, and they would meet up and have one night together. Then, they do not speak for the other 364 days of the year.
At the start of the book, she moves back home, and suddenly, she has to confront all the stuff that happened in the past. They still profited after everything that went down, and her family lost everything.
Author: Alisha Rai
Average Customer Review: (4.2 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Multicultural & Interracial Romance
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle | MP3 CD
13. Bad Boys Break Hearts (The Boys)
It follows a girl (Aurora) who goes to college, and when she’s there, she meets this boy (Mascen Wade), who she remembers from her childhood as her best friend. When she was younger, she ended up having to move away, so she lost touch with him. But when they meet again on-campus years later, they don’t get along after communicating with each other.
In fact, Mascen is very mean towards her, and Aurora doesn’t know why. So the story unfolds in that way, very typical YA enemies to lovers. There isn’t anything super new or super original about this plot.
Author: Micalea Smeltzer
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports College Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
14. Talon (Ashes & Embers)
It is a part of the Ashes of Ember series. However, you do not have to read this whole series to read this book. It can 100 percent be read as a stand-alone, so keep that in mind. This book follows two people who end up being a part of a social experiment where they list things about themselves. Then they get paired with somebody to get married.
It’s a bunch of psychologists taking notes and seeing their interactions. So, it’s for an experiment. They don’t have anything in common, and they do not get along at all whatsoever. It’s not necessarily the enemies to lovers where they’re mean to each other, but there’s no romance happening until a little bit later into the book. So for that reason, it falls under the enemies to lovers trope.
Author: Carian Cole
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
15. Mr Masters (Mr. Series)
This book is about a girl (Brielle) who moves to the UK to become a live-In nanny, and she thinks that she’s going to work for a single mother. She realizes that a single father and his two kids moved from Australia when she gets there. It’s not like she’s going to let that tear her plans, so she does end up moving in. But she does not get along well with this man, and she has a very rough, rocky start to her job.
Brielle has to decide what to do with that. The book goes like that, and they live together. It has that enemies to lovers situation where they don’t get along initially, but it starts to evolve, or they start to like each other. There’s a lot of good tension in this book.
Author: T L Swan
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Family Life Fiction
Available: Paperback | Kindle
Read More Similar Books: 7 Slow Burn Enemies To Lovers Books
Table of Contents
