No Spice but Real Stakes: Clean YA Fantasy That Isn’t Boring

When I tell people I write clean YA fantasy, I can almost see them mentally shelving my books under light and fluffy. That’s because for a lot of readers, clean equals low or no stakes.

Now, I don’t want to throw any shade on cozy fantasy. There are definitely times I want my own reading to feel more like a warm hug than a plunge off a cliff in the dark. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I tend to favor heart-pounding when picking something off my TBR.

Even though you’ll find lots of adventure, moments of dangerous peril, and the occasional death in my stories, what you won’t find is a single scene that tells a teenage girl her heart should overrule her survival instincts.

And that’s on purpose.

Clean Doesn’t Mean Low-Stakes

While I want to create heart-pounding moments of danger on the page, I never want anyone to swoon over what should scare them.

At this point it’s almost a cliché, isn’t it? The impossibly hot guy flying so many red flags he looks like a one-man UN Convention, but our plucky heroine—smart, savvy, maybe even dangerous in her own right—inexplicably ignores every self-preservation instinct she has. Intensity gets swapped for actual love, and danger is dialed up to equal swoon, so that every bad behavior is romanticized.

The Trope I Refuse to Write

I realize this is “just fiction.” But I’ve also taught high school for a lot of years, and I’ve volunteered with women rebuilding their lives after being in precarious situations. I’ve seen where “he’s dangerous, but I can’t stay away” actually leads—and there’s no swoony happily-ever-after waiting at the end of it.

So when I write a love interest, I’m not just avoiding a tired cliché. I’m refusing to hand anyone a story that tells them red flags are romantic.

I hate this trope so much that I built a character around it in the final book of my YA Alice in Wonderland trilogy, Jabberwock’s Crown. Indigo is impossibly handsome, arrogant, and a fae prince—particularly gifted in magical fae charm, the ability to persuade someone against their better judgment. He uses it on my protagonist, Alice, to try to make her besotted with him, even though she’s not interested. Sure, he’s helpful—when it serves him. I set out to invert the trope, but I didn’t realize his magic is the trope with its mask off. Having Alice shut him down—hard—was a lot of fun to write, and so many of my readers enjoyed it too.

What I Write Instead

Meanwhile, the actual love interest, Chess, is a fan favorite. He’s no golden retriever, but despite being a rogue, he has a heart of gold. Readers love his clever, snarky banter—and the fact that he can shift into an oversized black cat with attitude.

Alice and Chess’s relationship, though swoony, never goes past kissing—and it’s healthy. The butterflies don’t come from red flags. They come from being genuinely valued for who she is. And while Chess comes to Alice’s rescue more than once, she saves him too. Neither of them is a prize to be won; they’re fleshed-out people with their own paths to walk and wounds to heal.

So while darkness does lurk in my books, it’s the kind you want to overcome or fight—not the kind you want to sigh over. For me, no spice doesn’t mean flavorless.

I purposely write my heroines as both strong and kind, and my love interests as worth rooting for. Because while the story might be fiction, characters take up real space in our minds and hearts. They let us experience things we haven’t in real life—including the many ways love actually shows up. And I want my stories to reflect what real love looks like.