Once again, I’m bringing you a trope that can be a little… dodgy, but when it’s not done in a icky way, forced proximity can be great for creating tension and angsty longing or fun banter.
Forced Proximity is a bit loosey goosey in definition but generally it’s any situation that forces our main characters in close proximity together for a lot of the plot, which can range from dark romance, mafia style, kidnapped by the broody walking red flag and kept in his mansion until they fall in love, to romantasy style forced to be training partners at some training academy.
My rec lists don’t come with loads of chit chat, it’ll just be a straight list for you to go off and read more about the books yourself. This is a mix of fantasy and romance that I have sourced from different rec videos across Tiktok, Instagram etc.
This was an odd one to research, because what I usually do when I haven’t read enough books in a trope list to recommend, is watch through a bunch of rec videos and write down the ones I see across several videos, so I’m not getting recs based on one person’s opinion… but honestly everyone had something different. I found a good few that were in several people’s lists in the end, so hopefully they do fit the trope.
If I’ve read the book, there will be a link to my review.
- A Not so Meet Cute
- Serpent and the Wings of Night – Crowns of Nyaxia
- Act Your Age Eve Brown
- On Wings of Blood
- A Court of Silver Flames – ACOTAR series
- The Hating Game
- Twisted Games – Twisted series
- Lilac
- Bride
- Daughter of No Other Worlds
- Strawberry Patch Pancake House – Dream Harbour series
- Phantasma
- The Right Move
- The Invisible Life of Addie Larue
- Funny Story
- Hawke
- The American Roomate Experiment
- Flawless
- Still Beating
- The Spanish Love Deception
Looking for more book recs lists that follow your favourite trope? Check out the Book trope rec list category!
Antonia Bernardin 