Welcome to your ultimate guide to the Solaria Universe—the world of the Twisted Sisters, Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valente. If you haven't started this yet, get ready, because this ultimately life-changing, spicy, fae-shifter universe is about to take you on the craziest, spiciest, and emotional damaging adventure of your entire life.
Today, I’m walking you through the three reading orders you can choose from for this massive world, what series are involved, how spicy they actually are, and we are absolutely debunking some completely wild rumors I always see on Booktok. Let's dive in!
What is the Solaria Universe?
This world is actually made up of three completed series that are all deeply connected. You're going to see character crossovers, origin stories, and cameos all over the place.
1. Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac
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The Vibe: Dark academia, mystery, reverse harem. (Meaning: one girl, multiple male love interests at the same time on the page, and yes—she ends up with multiple partners!)
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The Story: Chronologically, this takes place 5 years before Zodiac Academy at a neighboring school called Aurora Academy. It follows Elise, a vampire-shifter whose brother was unalived. She gets into the academy to investigate four super-powerful male suspects, and it turns into this amazing reluctant-allies-to-lovers mystery plotline.
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Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. It’s a slow burn, so it won't hit you in the face right out of the gate in book one, but collectively? There is a lot of spice here, and I'd say the spice is a little bit heavier than the plot.
2. Zodiac Academy
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The Vibe: Bully romance, Academy setting, high fantasy, high stakes.
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The Story: This takes place after Ruthless Boys at Zodiac Academy. It follows twin sisters—Gemini twins—who are thrown into this brutal magical world where Fae can shift into mystical beasts and control elemental magic (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). It's a brutal world where there is no place for the weak. It is a bully romance, especially books 1, 2, and 3. Book one is going to be the hardest to get through, and as readers, we are not supposed to like anyone at first. The authors did that on purpose to emotionally manipulate us so we can go on this insane character journey. The true enemies to lovers is the reader and Seth iykyk.
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Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. This is a very slow burn, so prepare to be frustrated! But exponentially, the spice increases from book four until the end. Book eight was just insane.
3. Darkmore Penitentiary
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The Vibe: Orange is the New Black but make it magical.
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The Story: This series jumps into the future after Zodiac Academy and takes place inside a supernatural prison. It follows Rosalie—who we actually met as a little kid back in Ruthless Boys—and a bunch of male main characters you've met earlier in the journey. It's another reverse harem, and it's incredibly fun.
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Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️.5. Super similar vibes to Ruthless Boys, just packed with action and grit.
4. Sins of the Zodiac (Completing in Spring 2027)
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The Vibe: Fourth Wing military college meets high-stakes survival.
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The Story: This series takes place in the same world as Solaria, but it jumps way into the future following the events of the core books. The Fae society has completely devolved, and we follow a whole new cast of characters at a brutal military college where Fae go to train, fight, and survive. It focuses way more on a traditional enemies-to-lovers dynamic rather than a reverse harem setup, making it a totally different vibe for this universe!
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Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. It delivers the signature Twisted Sisters tension, but because the society is falling apart and the stakes are life-or-death, the plot and the action take center stage alongside a fantastic slow-burn romance.
My Personal Favorite Reading Order: Ultimate Emotional Damage
Stick with me, because this order might look a little bit crazy to you, but I promise it is worth it. This order is designed for ultimate emotional damage, character growth, and shock value. Most importantly, it is the only order that is completely spoiler-free.
If you read chronologically, a major plot point and romance outcome from Ruthless Boys is completely spoiled the second you hit book four of Zodiac Academy. Trust me on this:
Start right here. These books do a fantastic job of building the world, explaining the magic system, and setting up the overarching conflict.
You’ll hit a huge cliffhanger at the end of ZA Book 3, but I need you to pause and read all 5 books of Ruthless Boys straight through. In ZA, you hear about a new professor coming named Gabriel, but you don't officially meet him until ZA Book 4. In Book 4, he straight-up reveals who he ends up with. Read Ruthless Boys first so you can actually experience his romance without it being ruined! (And if you don't love Ruthless Boys at the start, stick with it. I didn't either, but it's so worth it).
👉If you loved Ruthless boys then grab some of my favorite merch here to show your love!
Read ZA Book 4 (Shadow Princess)—which is my absolute favorite because of how angry and sad it made me. Then, I’m going to ask you to do something super hard: go back in time. Read novella 0.5 (Origins of an Academy Bully) and novella 1.5 (The Awakening As Told by the Boys). Everyone complains about doing this, but a massive moment happens in Book 4, and reading these origin stories right after is designed to hammer in the emotional damage and make you feel even worse. It's part of the process! After that, you can safely read the Foxy Tales anthology.
Read Book 5, then pick up the bonus collection Live and Let Lionel just to read chapters 5.5 (Seth on the Moon) and 5.6 (Knight). Do not look at the rest of that book yet! Move on through Books 6 and 7. When you get to Books 8 and 8.5, I highly, highly recommend doing a tandem read because those events are happening at the exact same time.
Now you can finish the rest of the Live and Let Lionel bonus stories, dive into the grand finale in Zodiac Academy Book 9, and finally, jump 5 years into the future to read Darkmore Penitentiary.
👉 If you love Sin's craziness then you're going to LOVE this Darkmore Penitentiary Collection.
6. Sins of the Zodiac: Completing Spring 2027!
You used to be good to read this series without reading Zodiac Academy first, but as of the latest book in the series, Cinder Vale, reading Zodiac Academy is a must!!! You can read this series anytime after you finish the main Zodiac Academy books!
(Note: If you like things perfectly organized, you can just read them straight chronologically: Ruthless Boys, then ZA 0.5, then Books 1-9 moving straight through the timelines. And if you're unhinged, you can do publication order, which has you bouncing back and forth between books mid-series—which I really only recommend for a reread!)
Let's Clear Up the Rumors: Solaria FAQs
I need to address some of the wild things I see people saying about this series online, because I honestly wonder if we are reading the same books!
"Is there SA or non-con material in the bully romance?" No, this is just not true. A bully romance or enemies-to-lovers trope has very uncomfortable, intense elements, but they do not involve the romance, and they do not involve the main characters. People say they DNF'd book one because of grape, and there is absolutely zero grape when it comes to our main characters or the plot in the first half of this series. Mild spoiler here just to prepare you: in book seven, the big bad villain (who we all collectively hate) does have an on-page non-con scene. It is not meant to be sexy, it is not romanticized, it's meant to make you uncomfortable. If you're worried about it, look up the page number and skip it—it won't hurt your reading experience! But that is the only scene in the entire universe.
"Is Zodiac Academy Young Adult?" I literally see multiple Goodreads reviews calling this YA, and I genuinely want to know: did you actually read the series? This is an 18+ adult series. It has hundreds of pages of explicit, open-door, spicy material. The confusion only happens because it has the word "Academy" in it, but they are all college-aged adults, and Darkmore is literally a prison. Let's collectively tell people to stop spreading that rumor!
"Is it an anthology?" No! People think it doesn't matter what order you read them in because it's an anthology. An anthology means a collection of standalone stories in the same world. Zodiac Academy is one single, continuous, linear story from Book 1 to Book 9. If you read them out of order, it will literally make absolutely no sense. Don't do that to yourself!
What questions do you still have about the Solaria universe?
If you want to watch me yap about the solaria universe watch my full video breaking everything down here!