The Witch Collector

"The book centres around our main character, Raina, who is thinking that when the witch collector comes this year, she’s going to kill him. The last time he came, he took her sister. They take witches because they need to use their magic. All of her plans go awry, and she ends up having to travel with him through a wintry landscape of the frost kingdom – and much like in The Bridge Kingdom , he ends up being actually kind-of nice. Her sister’s alive and okay, living a great life. And Raina has all of these secret powers – again, secret! –abilities that she’s been keeping hidden, untapped. The witch collector knows more than he’s letting on about who she is, what power she has, and he’s keeping secrets too about his actual identity. They’re trying to get through this snow kingdom, to get to her sister and defeat the Frost King. I love a good fantasy set in snow because there’s so much scope for body heat tropes – that’s a great way to force proximity when you have two people who hate each other. That’s actually in A River of Golden Bones as well. You’ve got two begrudging characters who are fighting, but when it’s really cold outside, you’re still going to cuddle up for warmth… I love looking for how characters are forced together, and for the romantic walls – the blocks that keep them away. For me, you can’t have the same romantic walls more than once or twice – you need a new escalating reason why they can’t be together as they become more emotionally attached to each other. Then usually around three quarters of the way through, they’re committed, but something physically tears them apart. I’m always interested when I read a really unique new one, where people come up with some new reason why two people can’t be together, and I think – “Ooh that’s good! I like that one!” I think sometimes, especially with romance, romance readers like the formula of romance – they just want your own unique spin on how you do it. If you didn’t have them fall in love by the end of the book, they’d be thinking, “What are you doing?” It was so hard to whittle it down to five. It depends how close you stay to romantasy… There’s other books, like The Night Circus , which is more magical realism , but you could include that. And The Priory of the Orange Tree – it feels more fantasy dominant, even though there is a romance subplot through it; I don’t know that someone who likes these five books would necessarily make an easy jump over to that, because it is heavier on the world building. For romantasy you’ve got people like Scarlett St. Clair – King of Battle and Blood is great; Raven Kennedy; and Sarah J. Maas and Jennifer L. Armantrout are the queens of the genre. Elise Kova is amazing… I’m probably forgetting a million people! I feel like a lot of us are reaching for escapism right now, to fall into a new fantasy world and to fall in love. It would be great to see more romance-led fantasy series out there. There would be an absolutely ravenous audience for it that, as of now, is still untapped. (We can’t all watch the one obligatory kissing scene over and over—give us the whole story!). There still seems to be a common misconception that fantasy is liked mostly by a male audience and therefore needs to cater more towards them. I think once Hollywood realizes how profitable the romantasy genre is, it will start a new wave of shows, or at least that’s my hope. I’d love to see any one of these five books adapted into a movie or show."