Assistant to the Villain — Assistant and the Villain, Book One

A Day Job in the Villain’s Lair

Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Assistant to the Villain has one of the most purely charming premises in recent fantasy: it is a workplace comedy set in an evil lair. Evie Sage needs work to support her ailing father and young sister, and the realm’s most feared figure — known simply as The Villain — happens to be hiring a personal assistant. So Evie takes the job, and the novel proceeds to mine enormous comedy from the gap between the man’s terrifying reputation and the mundane realities of his operation: payroll, paperwork, henchmen with feelings, a suggestion box, and a boss who is far less monstrous than the kingdom believes.

The concept began as a wildly popular TikTok skit series before becoming a book, and that origin is written into its DNA. Assistant to the Villain is episodic, quippy, and built for delight rather than depth — and on those terms it is a treat.

Comedy First

What sets this book apart from the romantasy pack is that it is genuinely, consistently funny. Maehrer plays the office-comedy-meets-dark-fantasy juxtaposition for everything it is worth: the absurdity of villainous bureaucracy, the deadpan banter between Evie and her glowering employer, the ensemble of lair employees who treat working for the realm’s bogeyman as just another job with difficult management. The humour is the main event, and it gives the book a buoyancy that the genre’s heavier, angstier entries often lack.

The Slow Burn Between Boss and Assistant

The romance — between bright, irrepressible Evie and the cold, deeply private Villain — is a classic grumpy-sunshine, boss-and-assistant slow burn, and it is built almost entirely on banter and small thawing moments rather than spice. Watching the most feared man in the realm be quietly disarmed by his relentlessly competent, relentlessly cheerful assistant is the book’s central pleasure. It is sweet, low-heat, and patient: the relationship is mostly tension and longing here, with the genuine romance reserved for later in the series.

Cozy by Design

It is important to know what Assistant to the Villain is not. It is not a plot-driven epic, and it is not built on intricate worldbuilding. The kingdom, the magic, and the larger conflict are sketched lightly, in service of the comedy and the characters. There is a mystery thread and a creeping sense of larger danger that surfaces toward the end, but for most of its length the book is content to be cozy, episodic, and warm — a hangout novel set somewhere unexpectedly delightful. Readers who need a tightly engineered plot will find it thin; readers who want charm and comfort will find it perfectly calibrated.

A Found Family of Henchmen

One of the book’s quiet strengths is its ensemble. The lair’s employees — from the grumpy to the goofy — form a found-family workplace that gives the story heart beyond the central couple. Evie’s warmth reorganises the social world around her, and the sense of a misfit community rallying around its secretly soft-hearted boss is a big part of why the book inspires such affection. It is the kind of setting readers want to return to, which is exactly what a series needs.

Knowing Your Mood

The best way to approach Assistant to the Villain is as a palate cleanser. Between the darker, more emotionally punishing entries on the romantasy shelf — the war novels, the captivity narratives, the brutal tournaments — this is the light, funny, low-stakes book you reach for when you want to be charmed rather than wrecked. Judged against epics it will seem slight; judged as cozy comfort comedy, it is a standout, and its viral popularity reflects how well it scratches that specific itch.

The Verdict

Assistant to the Villain is romantasy in its sunniest register: a quick, witty, feel-good comedy about working for the bad guy and slowly discovering he is not so bad after all. It trades stakes and worldbuilding for laughs and warmth, and it makes that trade gladly. For readers in the mood for lighthearted banter and a sweet slow burn, it is hard to resist — and the sequel, Apprentice to the Villain, waits to deepen the romance the first book so charmingly sets up.

From Viral Skit to Bestseller

Assistant to the Villain has one of the more unusual origin stories in recent fantasy publishing. Maehrer first developed the premise as a serialised comedy on TikTok, performing short skits in which an upbeat assistant deadpanned her way through the absurdities of working for a fearsome villain. The series amassed a huge following, and the book grew directly out of that audience’s appetite — which is why it reads the way it does. Its episodic structure, its punchy comic timing, and its reliance on character chemistry over intricate plotting are all inheritances from its short-form origins, and they are the source of both its charm and its limitations. The skit-to-novel pipeline gives the book an unusually clear sense of its own appeal: it knows it is funny, it knows its banter is the draw, and it never overreaches. For readers, that self-awareness is part of the pleasure — there is no pretension here, just a well-executed comic premise extended to satisfying length. It is also a sign of how thoroughly social media now shapes what gets published, and Assistant to the Villain is one of the most likeable products of that new pipeline.

Our rating: 4.0/5 — A funny, cozy, banter-forward workplace-comedy romantasy that delivers pure charm — the perfect lighthearted palate cleanser for the genre.

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