Books Like The Hunger Games for Adults Who Want Romance

If you want books like The Hunger Games for adults (with more romance), the closest matches are Dire Bound, Fourth Wing and Silver Elite: deadly trials, a rotten system, and a New Adult or adult romance that gets real room on the page. The rest of these ten are sorted by what you miss most: the arena, the rebellion, the girl, or the love story.

I rated The Hunger Games five out of five. I have read the whole series, both prequels included.

The Hunger Games was the third big franchise of my teens, after Harry Potter and Twilight (if you don't count Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings). I remember us writing a song about Effie Trinket and Haymitch, making our own mockingjay pins out of clay, and queueing for the books and the films. It was the first book I read that was more dystopian than fantasy. The first three floored me, and now that I've read the prequels as an adult, I'm just as impressed.

A lot of lists on this topic are mostly young adult books. Some of those belong here, so I kept them, and marked the age category and how much love story there is on every entry. If you want the wider map first, start with what dystopian romantasy is.

If you miss the arena

The trials, the countdown, and counting who is left. I am writing a book with deadly trials in it, so I am in no position to mock the trope. There is a longer list of romantasy books with deadly trials.

Dire Bound by Sable Sorensen

Meryn is a street fighter from the poor end of a kingdom that has been at war for five hundred years. When her sister is taken, she enlists, and enlisting means the Bonding Trials: a brutal selection in which recruits either bond with a direwolf or do not come back. It was self-published in early 2025, then picked up by Hachette's Requited imprint. The sequel, Fury Bound, is out.

On paper it sits beside Fourth Wing: military training, a bonded creature, an instructor you should not want. What ties it to The Hunger Games is the set-up: a girl from the bottom of the heap, and a sister as the reason she walks in at all. The romance is a slow burn, and the book is New Adult, so nobody has to pretend the leads are sixteen.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Violet Sorrengail trained to be a scribe. Her mother, a general, sends her to the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College instead, where cadets die on the way in, die in training, and die at Threshing, the day the dragons choose. One of the people watching her most closely is Xaden Riorson, the son of a rebel leader her mother had executed.

This is the pick for readers who want the body count of the arena and a romance that takes up half the room. It is New Adult, and the love story is a central plot line. The rebellion is there too, sitting under the school story from the first book. If you have already been through it, I wrote about what to read after Fourth Wing.

Powerless by Lauren Roberts

In the kingdom of Ilya, people with powers are Elites and people without are Ordinaries, who are hunted or banished. Paedyn Gray is an Ordinary passing as a Psychic. After she saves Prince Kai, she is pulled into the Purging Trials, an annual competition between Elites that she has no business surviving.

Of everything here, this has the most direct Hunger Games skeleton: a girl with no power, a contest built for people who have it, and a lie she has to keep up the whole way through. It is young adult, and I am saying so because the title of this post promised adults. The forbidden romance carries a great deal of the book. More in this vein: books like Powerless.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena Sardothien is an assassin serving a sentence in the Endovier slave camp. The crown prince offers her a way out: compete against thieves and killers for the post of King's Champion, and win her freedom after. Inside the castle she grows close to both the prince, Dorian, and the captain of the guard, Chaol, while darker things come to light in the castle itself.

Book one is a competition novel with a castle around it. It is young adult, and the romance has to share the page with the contest and with two possible love interests. I have read book one; the rest of the eight-book series is on my TBR, so I will not make promises on its behalf. Book one suits readers who want a contest first and are happy to let the love story take its time.

Dustling isn’t out yet, but you can read Chapter One free.

If you miss the rebellion

If what stayed with you was the districts and the cost of winning, start here.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Post-apocalyptic Chicago is split into five factions, each built around one virtue. At sixteen Beatrice Prior leaves the faction she was born into for Dauntless, renames herself Tris, and goes through an initiation designed to cut the weak. She also learns she is Divergent, which means she fits no single box, and that the people in charge would prefer she did not exist.

It is young adult, published in 2011, three years after The Hunger Games. The romance is with her instructor, Four, and it runs alongside the plot instead of replacing it. It is here because it starts with a test and ends up being about who built the test.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

On my TBR. Darrow is a Red, a miner at the bottom of a society ranked by colour, on Mars. After his wife Eo is executed, a rebel group remakes him as a Gold, the ruling caste, and sends him into the Institute, an elite school where the students are set against each other for real.

It is on this list for the premise, which is close to the Games turned inside out: someone from the lowest caste passing as one of the rulers. I have not read it yet, so on the romance I am going by descriptions of the book: love is the motive and a later thread, and the main event is the uprising. Six books are out, and the final one, Red God, had no publication date when I checked.

If you miss the girl who never asked to be a symbol

Katniss volunteered to save her sister. Everything after that was done to her. These two heroines are also turned into something by other people.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

On my TBR. Juliette Ferrars is seventeen and her touch is lethal. She has been locked away for it, until The Reestablishment, the regime running what is left of the world, decides she would make a useful weapon. Two men stand close to her: Adam, a soldier, and Warner, the commander who wants to use her.

It is young adult, with a love triangle built into the premise. It is on this list for that premise: a girl the state treats as a weapon.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

On my TBR, along with its sequel, Heavenly Tyrant. In Huaxia, giant mechas called Chrysalises are flown by male pilots and powered by the girls paired with them, who usually die of it. Wu Zetian signs up to avenge her sister. She survives, which nobody planned for, and becomes an Iron Widow.

It is published as young adult. The romance is polyamorous: there is no triangle to resolve, because the three of them end up together.

If you miss the love story

Some readers get through three books of war and come away thinking mostly about a boy with bread (no judgement). These two are adult books where the romance is the spine. For the patient, there is also a list of slow burn romantasy books.

Silver Elite by Dani Francis

On my TBR, with the sequel Broken Dove, which is now out. A biotoxin has left part of the population Modified, with psychic abilities and veins that turn silver when they use them. They are hunted and sent to labour camps. Wren Darlington is one of them, hiding it, and ends up inside the regime's elite military training programme while working for the Uprising. Her commanding officer, Cross Redden, is the General's son.

This is the nearest thing on the list to a straight answer for "Hunger Games for adults, romantasy please". It is dystopia first, published for adults, with a forbidden romance at the centre.

Alchemised by SenLinYu

On my TBR. Helena Marino was an alchemist on the losing side of a war. She wakes as a prisoner with her memories gone, held by Kaine Ferron under the orders of the necromancer who won. The second half of the book goes back to what she forgot.

Going by its content notes, it is the darkest book here: it contains graphic sexual violence, captivity and reproductive coercion, so check them before you start. It is on this list because it is a gothic romance set in the aftermath of a war, which is where The Hunger Games ends.

A book that is not out yet

It is my own. Dustling is a New Adult dystopian romantasy, the first book of the Age of Serpent series, and I am still drafting it. It has no release date. The short version: in a realm ravaged by magic, where the elite hold the power and everyone else pays for it, a young woman is thrown into a deadly set of ordeals and has to choose between sparking an uprising and giving in to the forces tearing her world apart. Slow burn, enemies to lovers, hidden powers, found family. I pitch it as Red Queen meets Fourth Wing, with Handmaid's Tale edges.

Questions readers ask

Is there an adult version of The Hunger Games? There is no single adult twin, but Silver Elite comes closest for dystopia with an adult romance, and Dire Bound and Fourth Wing are the closest New Adult books with deadly trials. Red Rising is the nearest match for the rebellion, with far less romance.

What should I read after Sunrise on the Reaping? Sunrise on the Reaping, the second prequel, follows Haymitch through the fiftieth Games. If you want that same weight, try Red Rising or Alchemised. If you want something to put you back together, go for Dire Bound or Fourth Wing, where the trials come with a love story.

Is The Hunger Games young adult? Yes. It was published as young adult in 2008 and Katniss is sixteen. Plenty of adults read it, which is why so many of us now look for the same stakes with older characters.

Which books like The Hunger Games have the most romance? Fourth Wing, Silver Elite, Powerless and Shatter Me give the romance the most room. Red Rising gives it the least.

So tell me: which part of Panem did you never quite get over? The arena, the rebellion, the girl, or the boy with the bread?