Dark romance is usually something I enjoy with my teeth clenched and my nervous system on high alert. I really love the really dark end of the genre, but let’s be honest, it’s a head-first dive into emotional damage. Navessa Allen’s Into Darkness series hits completely differently. It’s kinky, obsessive, and unapologetically filthy, but it’s also funny, playful, and weirdly comforting. This is dark romance you can sink into without bracing for emotional devastation, and that’s exactly why it’s become my new happy place.
I came to Lights Out after a year of reading some genuinely brutal dark romance, and instead of feeling underwhelmed, I found myself relieved. The stakes are lower, the banter is sharper, the characters are allowed to be ridiculous, and the books lean into kink and obsession without drowning in misery. That balance carries through Caught Up, making this series (so far at least) less about enduring darkness and more about enjoying it.
If you’re curious, or want a soft(ish) entry point into dark romance novels, Into Darkness is a series well worth picking up. Navessa Allen basically went ‘let’s go dark, but make it really funny., and I’m so here for it.
Lights Out – When You Accidentally Manifest The Thirst Trap
Lights Out is the book that kicks the Into Darkness series off, and it does so with chaos, kink, and a surprising amount of humour. We meet Aly Cappellucci, a trauma nurse whose life revolves around work, control, and very little else, and Josh Hammond, the masked, tattooed man she’s been obsessing over online. One drunken lapse in judgement later, Aly’s fantasy steps straight out of the internet and into her bedroom.
Their chemistry is immediate and electric. The dynamic between them is playful, charged, and often laugh-out-loud funny, even as it leans into stalking, obsession, and fear-based kink. Lights Out wears its taboo tropes proudly: masked fantasies, breaking and entering, knife play, morally grey choices, and a cat-and-mouse energy that drives the entire book.
Tonally, this is the most playful entry in the series. Despite the dark romance label, Lights Out often reads like a perverse rom-com, balancing high-heat scenes with sharp banter and moments of unexpected softness. The spice is graphic and plentiful, the focus firmly on Aly and Josh’s relationship rather than a tightly wound external plot.
There are criminal elements and violent threats circling the edges of the story, including a mafia subplot that briefly takes centre stage, but the heart of the book is always the connection between the two leads. As an opener to the series, Lights Out is designed to be accessible, entertaining, and easy to sink into, setting up themes of obsession, power, and moral ambiguity without immediately plunging the reader into the deepest end of darkness.
It’s a bold, unhinged, and highly readable starting point that establishes the tone and world of Into Darkness, even if later books are where the series truly leans into escalation.
Caught Up – Kink Club Heat & Second-Chance Feels
Next up is Caught Up, and yes, I ordered this the second I finished Lights Out.
If Lights Out kicks the door in with chaos and MaskTok-fuelled fantasy, Caught Up is where Into Darkness proves it can do obsession with a little more emotional gravity. The tone is still ‘dark romance lite’ but this one swaps internet-thirst traps for a warm and welcoming kink club, and stranger danger for second-chance tension and the kind of history that makes every interaction loaded.
And not just because they’re giving the MMC blue balls.
This time, we’re with Lauren ‘Lo’ Marchetti, a successful cam girl and part-owner of a kink club, and Nico ‘Junior’ Trocci, the mafia heir who’s spent years trying and failing to stay away from Lauren. They had a brief, torrid romance as teenagers before being ripped apart by controlling mafia fathers.
This book runs on everything that never got resolved and it’s delicious.
The longing, the anger, the guilt, the betrayal, the rage, and the very inconvenient fact that the chemistry never cooled.
Structurally, it’s similar to Lights Out in one key way: the romance is the engine. The plot mostly acts as scaffolding for the push-pull between Lauren and Junior. The mafia side stays more in the background than the premise might suggest and the ‘mask kink’ energy is non-existent, despite the biker helmet on the cover.
If looking for high-stakes criminal drama, this still isn’t that.
It’s mafia-adjacent, but the mafia world is used more as pressure and context than as an action-driven storyline.
Where Caught Up really levels up is the spice.
And oooooh, mama does it deliver.
The kink-club setting lets Allen explore dynamics that feel more varied and more intentionally built into the relationship, with voyeurism, exhibitionism, and negotiated power exchange threaded through the tension between them.
The heat is the point: obsession finally getting a place to land.
It’s still funny, still filthy, still compulsively readable, but it adds a thicker layer of emotional history to the formula. Honestly, I loved this book (though it’s not without its flaws) even more than Lights Out.
It won’t satisfy a plot-hungry reader, but if what you want is kink, chemistry, and second-chance obsession with lower external stakes, it absolutely hits.
Game On – It’s Tyler’s Turn
Game On isn’t even out yet, and I’m already unreasonably invested. This is book three in the Into Darkness series, and it’s Tyler’s story. Yes, that Tyler. The brooding, angry roommate energy that’s been simmering in the background since Lights Out finally gets centre stage, and everything about this setup suggests Allen is about to let him off the leash.
The premise is pure trope chaos. Tyler Neumann has spent years hunting for his absent father with the intention of ruining him. Enter Stella McCormick (briefly glimpsed right at the end of Caught Up), a wealthy heiress who represents everything Tyler despises.
Through a combination of bad luck, bad decisions, and a little blackmail, the two are forced into a fake relationship that looks suspiciously like enemies-to-lovers with zero chill.
Tonally, this feels like a swing back toward Lights Out’s sharper, funnier energy after the more emotionally grounded Caught Up. I’m struggling to envision a world where Tyler takes any relationship seriously, so I suspect the emphasis will be on banter, power games, and mutual antagonism tipping into obsession.
Because it wouldn’t be an Into Darkness book without deep-seated obsession.
Brat play seems inevitable, so expect taunting, provocation, and sexual tension that just keeps escalating because neither of them knows when to stop pushing buttons.
The trope stack is unapologetic: enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, forced proximity, moral greyness, and just enough danger circling the edges to keep things messy without turning the series grim. Based on the blurbs and early chatter, Game On looks poised to fully embrace the dark rom-com lane that made Lights Out such a compulsive read, while letting Tyler be rougher, angrier, and more openly unhinged than his predecessors. Josh is very much a golden retriever despite appearances. And Junior’s darkness is never truly on-page.
I suspect Tyler will be a different animal.
March 31, 2026 cannot come fast enough.
Why The Into Darkness Series Hits All The Right Spots
What makes the Into Darkness series work isn’t that it’s the darkest thing on the shelf. It’s that it knows exactly what kind of dark romance it wants to be and never pretends otherwise. These books aren’t about relentless external danger, escalating violence, or suffering for suffering’s sake. They’re about obsession, kink, and emotional payoff, delivered with humour and just enough edge to keep things interesting.
Across the series so far, Allen consistently prioritises chemistry over plot. The romance is always the engine. External stakes exist, but they’re deliberately kept low, acting as pressure rather than spectacle. If you need tightly wound crime plots or genuinely terrifying consequences, this probably won’t hit. If what you want is dark romance that feels indulgent rather than exhausting, this is very much its lane.
Humour does a lot of the heavy lifting. Lights Out leans hardest into chaos and banter, Caught Up adds emotional history and hotter, more intentional kink, and Game On looks set to swing back toward feral energy with a sharper edge. The series never loses sight of being entertaining, even when it brushes up against taboo territory.
The men are another big part of the appeal. They’re morally grey, obsessive, and deeply flawed, but they’re not emotionless voids. Each book centres a hero who is allowed to be vulnerable, to fuck up, and to change. The darkness is there, but it’s always paired with growth and a clear emotional arc, which makes the payoff land.
Most importantly, Into Darkness is comfort dark romance. It’s filthy, funny, and compulsively readable without demanding that you emotionally brace yourself before every chapter. You can binge these books, enjoy the kink, laugh at the unhinged moments, and still walk away feeling oddly soothed rather than wrecked.
If you’re dark-romance curious, burnt out on misery, or just want obsession and spice with a sense of humour, this series is an easy recommendation. Just don’t come in expecting brutality. Come for the kink, stay for the chemistry, and accept that sometimes enjoying the darkness is more fun than enduring it.
4.28 Average
