Heavenly Bodies (2022), Imani Erriu’s debut novel, is the first installment in the Heavenly Bodies fantasy romance, or romantasy, series. Initially self-published, the book became an international bestseller and a viral sensation on TikTok, leading to a traditional publishing deal with Random House. The novel blends mythology, magic, and an enemies-to-lovers romance. Elara Bellereve, the heir to the throne of Asteria (the Kingdom of Night), is captured by soldiers from the rival kingdom Helios (the Kingdom of Light) after the cruel god Ariete murders Elara’s parents. She is forced into an alliance with Helios’s prince, Lorenzo “Enzo” D’Oro, who must train Elara as a weapon to kill the very god with whom she is prophesied to fall in love.

The novel uses its high-stakes fantasy world—a continent ruled by 12 capricious, zodiac-themed deities called Stars—to explore complex themes. The central conflict between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Night provides a framework for examining The Political Manipulation of Good and Evil, as the supposedly benevolent light kingdom is revealed to be a tyrannical regime. As Elara and Lorenzo’s relationship evolves from animosity to a deep, soul-level bond, the story delves into Defying Prophecy and Rewriting Fate. Their individual and shared journeys also focus on Healing Trauma to Reclaim Power, as both characters must confront past abuse and grief to unlock their full magical potential and challenge the corrupt celestial order.

This guide refers to the 2025 Random House Canada edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, and death.

Plot Summary

Elara Bellereve, a young woman from the kingdom of Asteria with the power to walk through dreams and create illusions, awakens bound and hooded in a moving wagon. She remembers fragments of her 18th birthday celebration ball, where the Star Ariete, a powerful celestial being worshipped as a god, murdered Elara’s parents and she was urged to run. Her captors are Helion soldiers led by General Leonardo Acardi. They take her across the border into the enemy kingdom of Helios after bribing their way past the border guards. When the wagon stops in the capital city of Sol, Elara uses her magick, a supernatural ability tied to her kingdom’s power system, to become invisible and escapes into the bustling streets.

Her freedom is short-lived. City guards corner her, and a scarred city guard attempts to assault her. In response, Elara unleashes powerful nightmare illusions that show the guards their worst fears, incapacitating them. With her magick depleted, she is recaptured by Leonardo and brought to the Palace of Light. There, she is presented to King Idris D’Oro and his son, Prince Lorenzo “Enzo” D’Oro. Idris reveals he knows Ariete, the King of Stars and the most powerful of the celestial beings, targeted her family after a prophecy linked Elara’s fate to his. Idris proposes an alliance: He wants to kill Ariete and needs Elara to be his weapon. He assigns Enzo as her trainer.

Elara is given luxurious quarters and disguised by Merissa, a kind glamourer (a magic user capable of altering appearances through illusion) from Aphrodea. At a royal banquet, Elara is seated beside Enzo, where they trade insults and establish an unfriendly dynamic. Enzo reveals he possesses the three powers of Helios—light, fire, and a form of lie-detection—and threatens to uncover her secrets. The next day, Enzo takes her to a secluded grove for training. He cruelly claims her parents murdered his mother, which started the war between their kingdoms. When he attacks her with his Light magick, pinning her and constricting her throat, it triggers a childhood trauma. Enraged, Elara unconsciously summons a tangible nightmare monster that physically wounds Enzo, who refuses to train her further.

King Idris forces Enzo to resume training. He takes Elara to an oracle named Isra to unblock her third power, shadowmancing, or the ability to manipulate shadow as a physical and magical force, which has been dormant since a Helion soldier attacked her as a child. During the reading, a mysterious silver power within Elara causes a magical storm, which is only stopped when a wisp of her shadow combines with Enzo’s light. Isra has a vision that their combined powers can create a weapon to kill a Star. She also reveals Elara’s full prophecy, “You will fall in love with the King of Stars, and it will kill you both” (95). To force Elara to confront her trauma, Enzo takes her to a cliff and threatens to ride their horse off it unless she confesses what happened. She tells him about the childhood attack.

Over the following weeks, Enzo helps Elara overcome her fear of the Light, and their relationship softens. They return to the cliff to fully unblock her shadows. Elara goads him into pushing her off, and he jumps after her. As they fall, her shadowmancing power awakens, creating a shadow lion that saves them both. Soon after, Elara attempts to run away, still destabilized after unlocking her shadow power, but is intercepted by Leyon, the patron Star of Helios. Enzo intervenes, lying to protect her. He tells her she is free to go, but she chooses to stay. Their bond deepens when Elara dreamwalks into Enzo’s nightmare, comforting him and learning about the abuse he suffers from his father and his guilt over killing 333 Asterians.

At the Feast of Leyon, Enzo confesses that he faked the infamous Borderland Fires massacre, having secretly saved the Asterian villagers. After drinking ambrosia, a magical substance associated with the Stars that induces visions and heightened perception, Elara has a cryptic vision of two thrones, red flames, and a blade plunged into a stone heart. Later, after Elara tells him about the assault by the city guards, Enzo has Barric and the others publicly executed by fire. Horrified, Elara runs from him, but he finds her, and they reconcile.

Elara learns that her best friend Sofia is being held captive by Ariete in Asteria, prompting her to defy Idris and travel with Enzo in secret to Asteria for the coronation ball of “King” Lukas—her former betrothed who betrayed her family to Ariete on her birthday. Disguised among the court, they discover Lukas has aligned himself with Ariete. In a confrontation within the palace, Ariete captures Elara and infects her with his venom, leaving her paralyzed while the Star Gem attempts to extract information from her mind. With the covert help of Eli, Enzo bargains with the Stars to aid Elara’s survival while orchestrating her escape. Elara briefly reunites with Sofia in the dungeons, but their escape fails, and Elara is recaptured. At the opera house, Ariete stages a brutal performance reenacting Elara’s life, culminating in Sofia’s execution, which devastates Elara. She escapes using illusion of herself dying and reunites with Enzo at the Bridge of Tears, where he takes vengeance on Lukas. During their flight across Lake Astra, a siren attack nearly kills Enzo, triggering a surge of silver power within Elara that saves them both. In the aftermath, Enzo cares for her through the lingering effects of the venom, remaining at her side as she recovers over several weeks. He eventually shows her his secret art studio, where he sculpts with his Light magick to process his trauma.

While Enzo teaches Elara to sculpt, they combine their Light and Shadow powers in an intimate magical act, unintentionally creating a shard of duskglass, a rare substance formed from combined light and shadow, capable of killing a Star. Isra identifies it and proposes a plan to reveal that Elara is alive at the summer solstice celebration in Aphrodea to lure Ariete into a trap. At a secluded cove, Enzo and Elara admit their feelings for each other. He promises to court her properly and, after sleeping in a chair beside her during her recovery, begins sharing her bed to protect her from nightmares.

The group travels to Aphrodea via a magical mirror called a soverin, a portal that allows royal bloodlines to travel instantly between kingdoms. At the solstice celebration, Elara performs a seductive dance for Enzo as part of a local tradition, culminating in her revealing her identity to the assembled courts and declaring war on Ariete. Afterward, Enzo leads her to a rooftop in the clouds where they share their first real kiss. They are interrupted by the Stars Torra and Eli, who reveal they secretly oppose Ariete. Merissa arrives and is revealed to be Torra’s part-mortal daughter. Back in Helios for a solstice soiree, Elara and Enzo give in to their passion. He gives her his crown, which she later learns is a traditional Helion betrothal gesture. After an interruption by King Idris leaves her overwhelmed by her duty to her war-torn kingdom and feeling betrayed by Enzo, Elara ends their romance and returns his crown.

Days later, Elara meets the living mythas, an ancient, semi-divine creature tied to forgotten magic, named Celine, who reveals that their powers come from ancient beings called Celestes, not the Stars. Celine warns her not to give the duskglass to Enzo. Soon after, Ariete arrives at the palace. In the throne room, Enzo seemingly betrays Elara, handing a blade to Ariete in exchange for the throne. Elara is imprisoned and mentally tortured by Gem, the Star of trickery. In her cell, a mental breakdown leads to a dreamscape journey where she confronts her shadow self, unlocking her full power. She realizes that Enzo did not betray her; it was Gem in a glamour. Elara kills the goddess with the real duskglass blade.

Elara finds the real Enzo locked in the lucirium (a hidden chamber used for stargazing and magical study of the Stars) with an injured Idris. The king reveals he orchestrated Elara’s entire life based on a prophecy from Enzo’s mother. Enraged, Enzo kills his father. The final battle against Ariete takes place on the palace rooftop. During the fight, Ariete fatally stabs Enzo. As he dies, he gives Elara a piece of his Light, and a shared dreamwalk reveals they first met as children in a dream.

Suddenly, Merissa stabs a grief-stricken Elara with the duskglass dagger, killing her. This act breaks an ancient curse the Stars once placed on Elara, and she is reborn as her true self, a Celeste known as the Moon. In the void between life and death, Merissa reveals that Elara and Enzo are the original Celestial pair—the Moon and the Sun—ancient soulmates cursed by the Stars to be reborn as mortals, separated and made to forget one another. Elara uses her awakened power to pull Enzo into her dreamscape, where she briefly revives him and restores his memories of their true identities. Ariete steals Enzo’s spiritual tether (the link anchoring a soul to its physical body) and escapes, leaving Enzo’s body in a coma. Elara uses her new power to save his body from death.

Five days later, a moon hangs in the sky. Torra explains the prophecy’s true meaning, the “King of Stars” referred not to Ariete, but to the Sun, Enzo. Now on the Helion throne, Elara refuses coronation in either kingdom until Enzo awakens, but she maintains power. She vows to find the other lost Celestes and make the Stars fall.