Spooky Season Just Turned into Smutty Season
⚠️ Trigger Warning & Note on Mental Health: Dark romance features heavy themes, dubious/non-consensual dynamics, explicit content, violence, and intense power exchanges. Please check full content warnings before diving in. Also, a quick note: reading dark romance is purely a fictional escape for me—prioritizing mental health, emotional safety, and healthy boundaries always comes first, both on and off the page!
It’s confession time. Do I have a big pile of books that I should be reading? Do I have new friends that suggest that I read something else? Yes and also yes. That is how this series and book one have ended up on my Kindle and in my ears since I read this immersively in two days. No one reading this judge me.
Now, let’s talk about The Ritual by Shantel Tessier.
As someone who doesn’t inhale dark romance the way I did back in college, I absolutely loved this. The last dark romance I picked up was Priest on vacation back in July, but after this? I might need to put down my thrillers and dive straight into the rest of the series. Spooky season reads might just turn into smutty season, and I’m not mad about it.
The Ritual follows Ryat and Blakely, two students at Barrington University—a prestigious college in Pennsylvania. Barrington is home to the Lords, an exclusive secret society that prepares its male members to become the next generation of powerful, untouchable elites. Although the Lordship is Ryat’s birthright, he still has to undergo a ruthless initiation and a series of trials to prove his unwavering loyalty to the brotherhood. In a Lord’s senior year, he is rewarded for his devotion with a Chosen—enter Blakely.
I vow. You vow. We vow.
Blakely has her own ritual to participate in, and once we cross the threshold into the House of Lords, things get deliciously twisty and don’t right themselves until the very end.
This book truly has it all: Lies. Revenge. Manipulation. Murder. Suspense. Steam.
And oh, the steam—it is off the charts. The Ritual delivers some of the hottest scenes I’ve read in a long time, and the chemistry between our main characters is electric. Given their unique circumstances, I loved that their connection was a fast burn where neither Ryat nor Blakely tried to overplay or deny their feelings before they naturally developed. It felt surprisingly realistic within the high-stakes world they were navigating.
I could keep going, but I don’t want to give anything away. So, I’ll say this instead: I vow to take book recommendations from my friends more often and lose sleep. Because not only was the steam on point, but the plot was plotting. 4 stars because I reserve the right to leave room for improvement for book two, which I already have on my kindle!
