I’ve begun to discover that Reddit is a great place to discover unhinged dark romance recommendations for books that are often overlooked or never found by the BookTok set.
The Man Upstairs by Jade West is a book that I stumbled upon on r/darkromance, one of the Reddit reading communities I follow. It’s a very taboo age-gap romance, with an eighteen-year-old girl and the disgraced Oxford English professor thirty years her senior, who lives in the flat upstairs.
Everyone in the apartment building has warned Rosie to stay away from the man upstairs. So like the good girl she is, she listens. Until one night, when she has nowhere else to turn.
Julian, the infamous man upstairs, saves her, and for the first time in her life, she finds someone wanting to take care of her. Rosie wants more, though, and so does Julian. The problem is he won’t let a man like himself, disgraced and self-loathing, sully a girl like Rosie. She’s only eighteen, and he’s forty-eight, with certain predilections for younger women.
Rosie is different. She’s sweet, innocent, and vulnerable. Giving in to his desires would be so wrong, but Rosie is determined to show Julian that she’s not as innocent as she seems.
Usually, age-gap romances have certain character dynamics, but in The Man Upstairs, the characters don’t follow the typical norms. Rosie is helpless and truly vulnerable, and Julian is a bit of a mess, where most age-gap heroes have a certain confident self-assuredness. It all adds to the taboo, especially in the beginning, where it does feel quite creepy that these two characters would be spending time together.
One of my main issues with this book is that I did not find Julian to be an appealing hero. I can get on board with all kinds of taboo, but this hero doesn’t seem to warrant Rosie’s admiration. His personality is all about his kinks, with the rest of him decidedly rather blah. His particular brand of self-hatred is a detractor, especially in the first half of the book.
The naughty spice is clearly the main event in this book. It’s something BDSM adjacent, and certainly embraces kink, but there are no safe words or any of the typical structure of a BDSM relationship. It is extremely kinky, and for folks who like to read about these kinks, it’s super hot.
The Man Upstairs features an extremely casual writing style, marked by lots of dramatic all-caps, and it’s lengthy, although I think that’s partially due to ebook formatting. The story itself moves fast, with quick chapters and dual perspectives.
The plot entirely surrounds the relationship and its trials and tribulations, which isn’t unusual for a book with these tropes. It’s psychologically dark, but in a way that feels only partially intentional.
If you like taboo age gaps, I would recommend checking out books by Q.B. Tyler, who handles the trope in a more artful and appealing way. On the other hand, if you’re just looking for some erotica and don’t necessarily need a convincing story with it, then this book will do just fine.
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