And the Ocean Was Our Sky
No romance or no physical intimacy at all.
Closed door. No anatomical or crude language.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes
Tropes
Content warnings
Blurb
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Monster Calls comes a richly illustrated and lyrical tale, one that asks harrowing questions about power, loyalty, obsession, and the monsters we make of others. With harpoons strapped to their backs, the proud whales of Bathsheba's pod live for the hunt, fighting in the ongoing war against the world of men. When they attack a ship bobbing on the surface of the Abyss, they expect to find easy prey. Instead, they find the trail of a myth, a monster, perhaps the devil himself... As their relentless Captain leads the chase, they embark on a final, vengeful hunt, one that will forever change the worlds of both whales and men. With the lush, atmospheric art of Rovina Cai woven in throughout, this remarkable work by Patrick Ness turns the familiar tale of Moby Dick upside down and tells a story all its own with epic triumph and devastating fate.
Read it? Rate it
Night Music
Also built on grief and a widow's reckoning after a partner's death, but grounded and romantic rather than mythic and vengeful.
Tourist Season
Another story about obsessive vengeance and the monsters people become, but swapped for a spicy, darkly funny seaside romance with a happy ending.
The Heartbreak Sheriff
Keeps the hunt-for-a-killer tension and vengeance drive, though it trades mythic allegory for small-town suspense with an explicit central romance.
Her Private Avenger
Shares the relentless pursuit and revenge thread, but it's a spicier, faster contemporary thriller romance instead of a lyrical illustrated fable.
My Dreadful Darling
Also about inherited violence and an obsession that consumes both hunter and hunted, only far darker, sexually explicit, and campus-set.
Hollow
Same fixation on legacy, predators, and drowning imagery, delivered as an explicit stalker romance rather than a quiet illustrated parable.