Twisted Heathens

A young woman is locked away in a maximum-security facility and then transferred to Blackwood Institute, an experimental psychiatric program that houses the dangerous and disturbed. The program runs three years and is meant to rehabilitate her. She has no interest in it. Her only plan is to die before it ends.

Four other patients stand in the way. Each carries damage of their own, and none of them will let her go through with it. Out of that refusal grows a found-family bond between the five, which turns into a why-choose romance with her at the center.

This is a dark reverse harem romance, the first book in the Blackwood Institute series. The relationships sit against the institute's mysteries, which begin to unravel as the story goes on.

The content is heavy. Self-harm, suicide, sexual assault and violence recur throughout, and the author's own content note flags them.

The book ends on a cliffhanger. The trilogy continues with Sacrificial Sinners and Desecrated Saints, so the question of whether she stays alive is only partly answered here.