Kaye has always known the world was weirder than most people admitted. Living on the road with her rock-star mother, she's seen things. But finding herself tangled in the Seelie Court's dangerous games is something else entirely. Holly Black's Tithe is the ancestor of every dark fae YA that came after it.
Clean but dark — this is YA urban fantasy, not romance.
Skip if you dislike:
Moods: Dark Gritty Atmospheric Unsettling
Tropes: Fae Morally Grey Urban Fantasy Found in the In-Between
No — different series in the same author's extended fae universe. Tithe is older and darker in tone.
There's a romantic thread, but it's primarily dark urban fantasy.
Tithe and Ironside are the strongest — Valiant is a companion novel with a new protagonist.
Every Sort By Cravings guide is written after a full read-through — not scraped from publisher blurbs or Amazon summaries. We map tropes directly from the text, cross-reference BookTok and Goodreads reader reactions across 500+ community posts, and calibrate heat ratings against reader consensus before publishing. Mood tags, spice numbers, and “skip if” notes reflect actual reading experience. Read our editorial standards.
