The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy: Book 1 of the Dearly Beloathed Duology

By Brigitte Knightley

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Loyalties are tested in this slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy following an assassin and a healer forced to work together to cure a fatal disease, all while resisting the urge to kill each other--or, worse, fall in love.

This stunning hardcover features a cover with foil, beautifully designed endpapers, and a black-and-white interior map

When Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, falls ill, he realizes he needs the expertise of a very specific healer. As fate would have it, that healer belongs to an enemy faction, the Haelan Order.

Aurienne Fairhrim and her fellow Haelan are inundated by sick children suffering from an outbreak of a long-forgotten Pox. Unable to get the funding needed to launch an immunization program, the Haelan Order is desperate for money - so desperate that when Osric breaks into their headquarters to bribe Aurienne to heal him, she is forced to accept.

As Osric and Aurienne work together to solve not only his illness but the mysterious reoccurrence of the Pox, they find themselves ardently denying their attraction which only fuels the tension between them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593819454
• ISBN13: 9780593819456
• Release Date: July 2025
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Hilariously entertaining!

This is a wonderfully hilarious novel of two experts in completely polar fields (assassin and healer) needing to work together to achieve their goals (not dying of rot in his magic and getting funding for immunizing sick kids) with much death, yes quite potty humor of names of meeting places, laugh out loud insults, and a slow realization that they might mean more to each other than they want to be. I laughed hard so many times and was thoroughly entertained with the dance (of death!) between Osric and Aurienne as they travel via waystone from place to place to cure Osric as well as the growing mystery of the pox that is killing so many children. I also would love to have a critique cricket to stow somewhere at someone's house. It would be hilarious! I am also quite impressed by how awesome of an assassin that Osric is (4o guys with just a shoelace) but I also admire the genius of Aurienne both in finagling an impossible cure for Osric, and her dedication of healing and finding out how to stop the pox. I really need the next book now and it better have all the answers and even more banter between these two awesome characters! I would not call this high or great reading but it is thoroughly entertaining and I really had fun laughing my way through this!