12 Books With Villains As Main Characters

Because sometimes it’s more fun to root for the villain.

Forget gleaming swords and golden crowns. Set aside the wide-eyed heroes and their moral certainties. These stories plunge you into the minds of those who manipulate, deceive, destroy—and make you love them for it. In these pages, you walk hand in hand with monsters and marvels, antiheroes and tyrants, each burning the world for reasons that might just make sense.

Here are 12 deliciously dark books that flip the narrative and ask: What if the villain is the one worth following?

1. Vicious by V.E. Schwab

🖤 Superpowers. Super grudges. Zero remorse.
Victor Vale and Eli Ever are former friends turned enemies—both brilliant, both dangerous. One thinks he’s a hero. The other knows he’s not. But that’s never stopped him before. This is a slow-burn vendetta laced with pain, power, and philosophical grit.

🩸 Why read it: Because you’ll find yourself rooting for a man who buries his enemies alive.

2. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

🗡️ Blood-soaked vengeance never read so poetically.
Jorg Ancrath is a prince and a murderer, a teenager with a haunted soul and a savage mind. His journey is as much about power as it is about survival—and the choices he makes will make you flinch and admire.

🔥 Why read it: You’ll question your morals as you watch him burn kingdoms to the ground.

3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

💋 Meet Amy Dunne. Beautiful, brilliant, terrifying.
Amy isn’t your typical fantasy villain—but make no mistake, she is the villain. And she’s magnificent. A mind as sharp as glass and twice as deadly. Her story twists like a knife—and you’ll be gasping with every revelation.

🧠 Why read it: Because watching her dismantle a life is pure literary seduction.

4. The Young Elites by Marie Lu

🌑 Some rise into the light. Others fall into shadow.
Adelina Amouteru starts as a scarred girl seeking belonging. She ends as a villain who will make you weep. Her descent is seductive and tragic, driven by pain, power, and a desire to never be helpless again.

🕷️ Why read it: A villain origin story that’s both haunting and heartbreakingly human.

5. Jade City by Fonda Lee

💚 Power. Loyalty. Greed. Welcome to the Green Bone clans.
While the Kauls fight for their family’s honor, the true power players often cross into morally gray territory. The line between hero and villain blurs as you fall in love with people who’ll slit throats for the right cause.

💎 Why read it: Every move is brutal. Every motive is understandable. Every character feels like a potential villain.

6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

📚 Murder isn’t always the end. Sometimes, it’s just the beginning.
An elite group of classics students commit an unspeakable act—and then spend the rest of the book unraveling under its weight. These are not good people. But they’re compelling, intellectual, and disturbingly relatable.

🗝️ Why read it: You’ll find beauty in their decay—and horror in their elegance.

7. Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata

📖 Absolute power corrupts… with terrifying efficiency.
Light Yagami finds a notebook that lets him kill with a name. His crusade begins with good intentions and spirals into madness, god-complexes, and manipulation. The villain isn’t hiding—he is the story.

💀 Why read it: It’s a masterclass in watching a genius unravel into something monstrous.

8. You by Caroline Kepnes

📦 He’s charming. He’s witty. He’s stalking you.
Joe Goldberg is a romantic—at least in his mind. In reality, he’s obsessive, delusional, and lethal. But here’s the terrifying part: his voice is so convincing, you start to believe him. Just a little.

🔪 Why read it: Because horror wears a smile—and sounds an awful lot like love.

9. The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

⚔️ Who needs heroes when the villains are this fun?
Glokta is a torturer with a broken body and a razor-sharp mind. He’s sarcastic, cynical, and somehow… deeply likable. In Abercrombie’s gritty world, everyone is a shade of villain—and you’ll eat up every dark twist.

🖋️ Why read it: For grimdark fantasy that makes you laugh while stabbing you in the gut.

10. Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender

👑 Revenge is a language she speaks fluently.
Sigourney Rose has clawed her way into an elite class that destroyed her people—and now, she’ll use magic and manipulation to take them all down. A colonial fantasy told through the eyes of a calculated avenger.

🌺 Why read it: It flips power structures on their head—and then sets them ablaze.

11. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

🎵 Ultraviolence, milk, and Beethoven.
Alex is a teenage sociopath whose taste for violence is rivaled only by his love for classical music. His story is disturbing, surreal, and shockingly lyrical. You may not sympathize—but you won’t forget.

🌀 Why read it: Because it dares you to care about someone you definitely shouldn’t.

12. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

🍷 The monster is polite, cultured, and unfathomably deadly.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter isn’t just a villain—he’s the villain. Intelligent, eloquent, and horrifyingly calm. He’s not the protagonist in the traditional sense, but he steals every scene—and your attention.

👁️ Why read it: Because evil has never sounded so refined.

🖤 Final Thought

Villains as main characters don’t just offer thrills—they challenge us. They blur the lines. They whisper, “What if you were in my shoes?” And sometimes, uncomfortably, we answer: I might have done the same.

Which dark-hearted character captivated you the most? Or is there a villain you love to love who deserves a place on this list? Let’s swap sinister favorites. 👁️‍🗨️📚