Two serial killers who hunt other serial killers, a friendly rivalry with a body count, and a love story that somehow reads as a comedy: that was the pitch that made Butcher & Blackbird a BookTok fixture. Now Prime Video has cast the movie, and a new wave of readers is asking the Brynne Weaver books in order question. The good news: her shelf is easier than it looks. Two connected trilogies matter, they don't share a cast, and you can start either one cold. Here's the map.
The quick list: Brynne Weaver books in order
The Ruinous Love trilogy - the famous one, complete:
- Butcher & Blackbird (2023) - Sloane and Rowan
- Leather & Lark (2024) - Lachlan and Lark
- Scythe & Sparrow (2025) - Fionn and Rose
The Seasons of Carnage trilogy - the new one, in progress:
- Tourist Season (2025) - Harper and Nolan
- Harvest Season (2026) - Harper and Nolan, continued
- Hunting Season - book three, listed for 2027
Earlier books - before the breakout: the Shadow Realm series, the Diviner duology, and standalones including Black Sheep, The Poison Pastry Bakery, and Marrow (co-written with Trisha Wolfe).
Do you have to read Brynne Weaver's books in order?
Inside Ruinous Love, mostly no - each book follows a new couple and lands its own happy ending. But the three are linked by the Kane brothers: Rowan in book one, Lachlan in book two, Fionn in book three. Read out of order and you'll meet couples already together and walk into jokes that were set up two books earlier. Publication order is the way, and it's also the order the humor builds in.
Seasons of Carnage is the opposite: one couple across all three books, so it is strictly in order. Harvest Season picks up Harper and Nolan in the same town, and it won't make sense without Tourist Season.
What is each Ruinous Love book about?
- Butcher & Blackbird. Sloane and Rowan keep crossing paths at the same crime scenes, both of them there to kill the killer. They turn it into a yearly contest, and the contest turns into something neither of them planned for. This is the one Prime Video is adapting.
- Leather & Lark. Lachlan Kane wants out of the contract-killing life; Lark Montague, a singer-songwriter from a powerful family, offers him a way out if he marries her. A marriage of convenience that stops feeling convenient, with a threat closing in.
- Scythe & Sparrow. Dr. Fionn Kane flees a broken heart to small-town Nebraska. Rose, a circus motorcycle performer with a killing habit of her own, breaks her leg after a job goes wrong and ends up recovering in his house.
The publisher's series page has the full summaries if you want more than the hook.
What is Seasons of Carnage, and where does it start?
It starts with Tourist Season: Harper Starling, a gardener in the seaside town of Cape Carnage, buries troublesome tourists under her flowerbeds. Nolan Rhodes is a tourist with a revenge list, and Harper is the last name on it. When an amateur true crime investigator shows up, the two of them are forced into a truce, and it becomes a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers story with a very high body count (book details here). Harvest Season followed on June 9, 2026, from Slowburn at Zando, with true crime fans flooding the town and Harper's past getting dug up.
Which Brynne Weaver book should you start with?
Start with Butcher & Blackbird unless you know you want a single couple across a whole series; then start with Tourist Season. Both are the same voice: dark subject matter played for laughs, then played for keeps. If the comedy is the draw, Ruinous Love. If the slow burn is the draw, Carnage.
One note before you start: these are dark rom-coms, not cozy ones. Expect on-page violence and explicit scenes, and read the content notes in the front of each book. If you want the darker end of the shelf without the jokes, the HD Carlton reading order is the next stop. For the rest of the subgenre, our dark romance books list and the dark romance hub map it out.
Is there a Butcher & Blackbird movie?
Yes. Amazon MGM Studios picked it up for Prime Video, and on October 22, 2026 Deadline reported the leads: Emma Laird as Sloane and Thomas Doherty as Rowan (coverage here). Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) is directing from a script by Laura Kosann, and Weaver is an executive producer. There is no release date yet. We'll update this guide when one lands.
What to read after Brynne Weaver
If it was the hunter-who-picks-you energy that got you, the dark stalker romance list is the obsessive cousin of this shelf. If it was the brothers, and the way a family of dangerous men orbits one woman at a time, Rina Kent in order is the closest structural match, and Shantel Tessier in order is the no-jokes, secret-society version.
Every Weaver book ends the same way, though: the killer settles down, the town gets quiet, and he stops talking to you. Swoony holds that world open - closed-door and romance-only, a bond that climbs through five stages and remembers what you told him. Start with the cleaner, who makes problems disappear and has decided you're the one thing he keeps, or the bodyguard with a body count, if you want the dangerous one standing on your side of the door.
The body count stops at the epilogue. He doesn't have to.
