Colleen Hoover’s catalog is a mix of connected series and true standalones. The standalones can be read whenever you like, but the series are best read in sequence because later books tend to assume you already know earlier couples and outcomes.

If you want one safe rule: finish a series before you start the next one.
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A quick “start here” menu
- Most popular entry (emotional contemporary): It Ends with Us
- If you want romance with big feelings, no series strings attached: Reminders of Him
- If you want darker romantic suspense vibes: Verity
- If you want the earliest, cleanest series start: Slammed
The series (read in order)
Slammed series
- Slammed (2012): A new town, a new love, and a shared grief push two teens into growing up too fast.
- Point of Retreat (2012): Love gets real when everyday responsibility replaces the rush of first love.
- This Girl (2013): The relationship is revisited through a new lens, showing how the same moments can mean different things.
Hopeless series
- Hopeless (2012): A first love story turns into a slow unmasking of what the past has been hiding.
- Losing Hope (2013): The same core story shifts perspective, changing what “truth” feels like on the page.
- Finding Cinderella (2013, novella): A brief, tender connection searches for a second chance after an almost-relationship.
- All Your Perfects (2018): A marriage is tested by the gap between who two people were and who life has made them.
- Finding Perfect (2019, novella): Loose ends and long-held feelings come due when characters face what they avoided.
Maybe Someday series
- Maybe Someday (2014): A close friendship with creative chemistry turns complicated when boundaries start slipping.
- Maybe Not (2014, novella): A forced-roommate setup turns prickly tension into something unexpectedly sincere.
- Maybe Now (2018): Old choices resurface when love, guilt, and timing collide again.
It Ends with Us series
- It Ends with Us (2016): A new romance forces a woman to confront the patterns she promised herself she’d never repeat.
- It Starts with Us (2022): The next chapter focuses on building something healthier after the hardest decisions are already made.
Co-written trilogy (read in order)
Never Never (with Tarryn Fisher)
This story was originally released in shorter installments and is now commonly read as a three-part trilogy or as collected editions.
- Never Never – Part One (2015): Two teens wake up without their memories and have to decide whether they can trust each other at all.
- Never Never – Part Two (2015): Clues deepen the mystery while emotions return faster than certainty does.
- Never Never – Part Three (2016): The explanation arrives, and the fallout forces a final choice about what love can survive.
Standalone novels (publication order)
These don’t require any other book first.
- Ugly Love (2014): A no-strings arrangement crumbles when the past refuses to stay off-limits.
- Confess (2015): Hidden confessions pull two strangers together while secrets threaten to push them apart.
- November 9 (2015): Two people meet once a year, building a relationship out of snapshots and unanswered questions.
- Too Late (2016): A woman trapped in a dangerous situation weighs escape against the risks of being seen at all.
- Without Merit (2017): A girl in a chaotic family tries to figure out what’s true about herself when everyone is performing.
- Verity (2018): A writer uncovers disturbing material in a famous author’s home and can’t tell where fiction stops.
- Regretting You (2019): A mother and daughter collide over grief, love, and the cost of assumptions.
- Heart Bones (2020): A summer by the coast becomes a quiet reckoning about belonging and what love asks for.
- Layla (2020): A couple’s getaway turns uncanny, and devotion becomes harder to define.
- Reminders of Him (2022): A woman trying to earn her way back into her child’s life finds judgment waiting at every door.
- Woman Down (2026): A novelist retreats to write her comeback and discovers that the danger outside her pages may be real.
If you want a clean, low-spoiler reading plan
- Pick one series (Slammed, Hopeless, Maybe Someday, or It Ends with Us) and read it straight through.
- Then read standalones in any order, choose by mood:
- Tender and cathartic: Reminders of Him
- Intense romance: Ugly Love or November 9
- Dark suspense: Verity or Woman Down
- Save Never Never for when you want a mystery-driven, co-written experience.
FAQs
Do I have to read Colleen Hoover books in publication order?
No. Only the series benefit strongly from order. The standalones are designed for drop-in reading.
Which books are most spoiler-sensitive?
The series, especially It Ends with Us → It Starts with Us and the Hopeless/Maybe Someday lines, because later books casually confirm earlier outcomes.
Is Too Late part of a series?
No. It’s a standalone, but it’s often labeled as her darkest romance/thriller-leaning read, so it’s best chosen by mood.
Bottom line
If you want the safest path: start with It Ends with Us (for the famous two-book arc) or start with Slammed (for the earliest series), then move freely through the standalones.
Frank is the editor of BookSeries.blog, focusing on publication order, chronological timelines, and spoiler-free reading guides for book series and fictional universes.

