Buried Love Books in Order

This two book sequence, built around Marek and Lilah, leans hard into gothic atmosphere. The stories unfold in a medieval world of islands, monasteries, remote castles, and northern forests, where family history is dangerous and beauty often hides something predatory. If you like fantasy that feels closer to dark folklore than epic questing, this is the kind of mood these books deliver.

Marek starts with a shock. A young carpenter living on a Mediterranean island learns that his father has hidden the truth about his mother, and possibly about the rest of his bloodline too. What begins as a search for answers turns into a journey north, toward a castle cut off from ordinary life. There, Marek is pulled between curiosity and revulsion as he meets people who seem refined on the surface but carry a very different hunger underneath.

The danger here is rarely loud at first.

That is a good way to think about the series as a whole. Liviero is more interested in temptation, secrecy, and uneasy attraction than in nonstop battles. Her characters are often young, isolated, and trying to work out who they can trust. The tension comes from discovery: hidden heritage, half told stories, strange gifts, and the fear that the truth about your past may also decide your future.

Lilah picks up those ideas through a different protagonist. Left on monastery steps as a baby, Lilah grows up not knowing who she is. When her gift for healing makes other people suspicious, she is forced out into a harsher world at a very young age. The book follows her through exile, first love, betrayal, and another encounter with the same dark web of buried history that shapes Marek. By the time she reaches a remote castle in the Hungarian forests, the question is no longer just where she came from, but what kind of life she can claim for herself.

Setting matters a lot here. The sea, the cold forests, the monastery walls, and the isolated castles all help create a sense that the characters are cut off from safety and ordinary rules. People in these books live close to superstition, religion, illness, and old legend, so the supernatural elements do not feel dropped in from nowhere. They feel woven into daily life, which makes the books read more like dark fairy tales for teen and adult readers than modern paranormal fantasy.

Read them in order if you can. Lilah grows out of the same world, themes, and buried secrets that Marek introduces, so the atmosphere and mythology land more fully that way. Overall, expect gothic fantasy with a medieval backdrop, emotional stakes, and a steady question running through both books: when the truth finally surfaces, will it set these characters free, or pull them deeper into the dark?