If You Loved Lightlark and The Selection, Meet The Courting of Kingdoms

I’ve pitched The Courting of Kingdoms by R. K. Sampson as Lightlark meets The Selection, but why? Here is a deep dive for fans of these books, so you know if my first romantasy release is right for your reading appetite.

Firstly, if you haven’t read the two main comp titles, let me give you a summary of these well-loved books.

A Quick Look at the Comp Titles

Lightlark by Alex Aster: Every 100 years, the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game that only the rulers of six realms are invited to play. The invitation is a summons—a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. The Centennial offers the six rulers one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. Each ruler has something to hide. Each realm’s curse is uniquely wicked. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die.

^ This is an excerpt from the book’s blurb, but the main juice of the story comes from the main character Isla Crown. She is the leader of Wildling, temptresses destined to eat the heart of who they fall in love with.

What is really fun about the series is the love triangle element, battle of good vs evil and the grey in between, and how the prophecy can be interpreted from multiple angles. Of course, there are also plot twists, which are my favorite part of fantasy novels.

Lightlark is book one of a four book series, with a fifth companion book showing the POVs of both love interests.

The Selection by Kiera Cass is a YA fantasy classic and, honestly, my most re-read series. I’ve gone back to it over a dozen times and it never gets old. Think dystopian caste system meets Bachelor Nation: thirty-five women are randomly selected from across the kingdom to compete for the hand of Prince Maxon. America Singer doesn’t want to be there, but the competition’s stipend could feed her family for a year, and she has reasons to put distance between herself and home. Of course, feelings are never simple. If you love slow-burn royal romance, love triangles, and that giddy re-readable quality, The Selection delivers every time.

If you read The Selection as the books came out, you may not have realized the author released sequels! The series went from three to five, showing the love story of Prince Maxon’s daughter.

For Fans of Lightlark

The love triangle in The Courting of Kingdoms, between Madeline Parch and two brother princes, Dredrick (heir) and Reignold (spare), carries some of the same light-and-dark energy as Isla’s triangle with Grim and Oro. Each love interest meets a need for the main heroine, making the choice and chemistry between them hard to reconcile.

Prophecies play a big role in both books with their layered meanings, and both have a ticking clock—meet the conditions before the curse becomes irreversible or lose everything they fought for.

The prophecy was my favorite part of writing TCOK, and you can read that prophecy and how it came together on my blog.

The cost of immortality is a factor for both TCOK and Lightlark. In Lightlark, magic sustains immortality and rulers remain at their prime, but they can still be killed. In The Courting of Kingdoms, immortality locked in the moment the Ageless Blight began, regardless of what state you were in. If you were pregnant when the curse started, you are still pregnant a thousand years later. That kind of detail is part of why TCOK is adult romantasy rather than YA. The darkness runs deeper, and the stakes feel lived-in and real.

Instead of each realm carrying its own unique curse, TCOK has one shared curse where ordinary wounds may heal, but mortal wounds do not. Citizens can exist in a state of effective death, throats slit and bodies broken, kept alive but hollowed out until their soul is stolen and they grow cruel. It creates a world where survival itself is complicated.

If you are a fan of Doctor Who and the plot of the spin-off, Torchwood, you may also love TCOK, as the season covering Miracle Day has similar complexities with immortality.

For Fans of The Selection

In The Selection, thirty-five women are randomly chosen to compete for Prince Maxon. In The Courting of Kingdoms, thirty women are chosen because they meet the criteria of a prophecy. In both cases, they’re ordinary citizens and not royals, and that fish-out-of-water dynamic is very much part of the story and adjusting to royal life. Can these women handle being a queen? Love and responsibility do not always match up, but they have to for the royal family.

America Singer tells Prince Maxon they’ll be friends in the competition, while secretly still tangled up with her first love Aspen when he reenters her life. Madeline Parch tells Prince Reignold the same thing, that they’ll be friends, and then begins a secret relationship with his brother. In both stories, feelings shift and complicate in ways neither of them planned.

The Selection series, as it continues, show a subplot of rewriting history. There’s a small echo of that in TCOK, where royal portraits and history books have been recalled and replaced over the thousand years of the curse, and the citizens are none the wiser.

If you loved the side characters in The Selection, you’ll find familiar energy in TCOK. Eudora shares Celeste’s larger-than-life presence and secret heart of gold (one of my favorite tropes). Marlee echoes Eliza, a kind standout competitor who doesn’t end up with the prince but becomes one of the most important people in the main character’s life.

So, Is The Courting of Kingdoms for You?

The Courting of Kingdoms by R. K. Sampson is its own story, and you don’t need to have read Lightlark or The Selection to enjoy this novel. But… if you loved the complex love triangle of Lightlark, it’s dark world-building, and prophecy element as well as the competition-driven romance in The Selection with class dynamics, strong side characters, and slow-burn feelings, The Courting of Kingdoms‘ romantasy weaves those same threads into something new.