Below is the complete list of Sara Cate’s Beautiful (Sara Cate) books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Beautiful (Sara Cate) Books
About Beautiful (Sara Cate)
Sara Cate’s Beautiful series is a two-book contemporary romance sequence built around the Thorn sisters and relationships defined by significant age gaps, social boundaries, and the temptation to pursue someone who appears completely off-limits. Originally published in 2020, Beautiful Monster and Beautiful Sinner tell separate love stories with different settings and couples, but the family connection between Sunny and Cadence Thorn gives the books a clear continuity. Both are adult romances that lean heavily into forbidden attraction, emotional isolation, and characters questioning the lives they have been expected to accept.
Beautiful Monster introduces Sunny Thorn and Alexander Caldwell. Alexander is a wealthy older playboy who has purchased an enormous suburban house in an attempt to create something resembling stability. His new home backs onto a property occupied by women who quickly notice their attractive neighbor, but it is Sunny who captures his attention.
Sunny is young, artistic, and desperate to become independent from a difficult home environment. She needs money to leave, which leads her to accept a job painting a mural in Alexander’s pool house. The arrangement gives them regular access to each other while emphasizing everything that makes a relationship between them problematic. Alexander knows the age difference is substantial and understands that pursuing Sunny could have consequences for both of them. Knowing that does little to diminish his attraction.
The novel uses the contrast between Alexander’s wealth and Sunny’s desire for independence to give the age-gap romance more than a purely physical obstacle. Alexander appears to possess everything Sunny lacks—money, freedom, and control over his own life—yet his settled exterior conceals loneliness and dissatisfaction. Sunny, despite being younger and financially dependent, has ambitions and a sense of possibility that challenge the life he has been living.
Beautiful Sinner shifts the focus to Sunny’s older sister, Cadence Thorn, and moves the story far from the suburban setting of the first book. Cadence is traveling abroad when circumstances leave her stranded and dependent on the kindness of strangers. She finds refuge with Callum Moore, an older man whose attraction to her presents an unusually serious complication: Callum is a Catholic priest.
Callum has built his identity around faith and the vows attached to his vocation. Allowing Cadence somewhere to stay is an act he can easily justify; becoming increasingly fascinated by her is not. Their relationship develops around the conflict between personal desire and religious obligation, with Callum forced to consider whether resisting Cadence represents devotion to the life he chose or fear of admitting that his life has changed.
Cadence arrives with insecurities of her own. Living in comparison with Sunny and struggling to determine what she wants from adulthood give her journey an element of self-discovery separate from the forbidden romance. The result is a different kind of imbalance from Beautiful Monster: where Sunny and Alexander confront age, money, and social judgment, Cadence and Callum confront age alongside religious vows and the expectations of a community built around his position.
Both novels are written as complete romances, so the Beautiful series does not require the same strict continuity as Cate’s more elaborate interconnected worlds. Publication order nevertheless works best because Beautiful Monster establishes the Thorn family before Beautiful Sinner gives Cadence her own story. Together, the two books form a compact exploration of one of Cate’s recurring interests: people discovering that the relationship they most want is often the one that requires them to question the rules governing the rest of their lives.