Butcher & Blackbird: The Ruinous Love Trilogy - Paperback

Thriller romance books with a body count: in Butcher & Blackbird, two serial killers who only hunt other murderers fall for each other.

Sloane and Rowan meet as rivals and end up as friends, then as something more, while their yearly contest takes them across the country.

It reads as a dark romantic comedy. Expect jokes next to body counts, and a slow burn that readers say pays off in the epilogue.

Content notes

Graphic violence is central to the plot, and both leads are morally gray. The chemistry runs hot.

The rest of the trilogy

This is book one of Ruinous Love, followed by Leather and Lark and then Scythe and Sparrow.

From the publisher

#1 New York Times bestselling series and USA Today Bestseller "I want to ruin her so that she's mine, my beautiful disaster. My wild creature.

My goddess of chaos." The viral TikTok friends-to-lovers dark romantic comedy full of murder, chaos, and sizzling chemistry - unlike anything you've read before. When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, they find something elusive - the friendship of two like-minded, pitch-black souls who just happen to enjoy killing other serial killers.

From small-town West Virginia to upscale California, and from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.

But as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love. Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves? Or have they finally met their match?

Tropes: Golden retriever x black cat / He falls first / Touch him/her and die / Friends to lovers / Forced proximity / One bed