Finished Ruthless Rival? Meet your next match.
You're not looking for just any book. You want that exact dark feeling again. We compatibility-checked 12 books and found your matches.
Finished Ruthless Rival and immediately needed more? Same. The dark pull of this book doesn't come around every day, but we've spent hours finding reads that capture exactly what made L.J. Shen's writing hit so hard. Not surface-level genre matches — we're talking mood, trope, and vibe alignment. The kind of books that actually fill the void.
12 Books Matched to Ruthless Rival
More enemies energy
Matches that share Ruthless Rival's spicy energy
Your #1 Match — We'd swipe right for you
Based on mood alignment, spice compatibility, and trope DNA.
Zodiac Academy: The Reckoning by Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti — 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ 4/5 spice, 598 pages
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Quick answers before your next match
Based on mood, trope, and pacing analysis, the most similar books to Ruthless Rival include Zodiac Academy: The Reckoning, Brutal Prince, Empire of Hate. Each matches on specific elements like dark and steamy that made Ruthless Rival resonate with readers.
We recommend starting with Zodiac Academy: The Reckoning by Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti — it shares Ruthless Rival's core Dark energy while bringing something fresh to the table.
Ruthless Rival is a standalone novel. You can jump right in without reading anything else first.
Ruthless Rival has a spice level of 4/5. The recommendations on this page range across spice levels — each one is labeled so you can find your comfort zone.
Yes — several recommendations on this page have lower spice levels while keeping the same Dark energy. Look for the ❄️ or 🌶️ (1/5) tags.
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Every Sort By Cravings profile is written after a full read-through — not scraped from publisher blurbs. We cross-reference BookTok discussions, Goodreads reviews, and 500+ reader reactions before publishing any mood tag, spice rating, or compatibility note. Read our editorial standards.