Below is the complete list of Ana Huang’s If Love books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of If Love Books
About If Love
A year abroad can change the course of a person’s life, particularly when an unexpected romance develops into something neither partner is prepared to lose. Ana Huang explores this experience in the If Love series, a four-book contemporary romance collection published in 2020. Following a connected group of friends through first love, painful separations, professional ambitions, and second chances, the novels examine how relationships evolve as young adults confront responsibilities beyond university life.
The series begins in Shanghai, where American college students have gathered for a year of studying abroad. Away from familiar surroundings, they form friendships, discover new interests, and experience relationships that challenge their expectations about the future. The international setting provides an important backdrop for stories involving cultural differences, personal independence, and the uncertainty of returning home.
At the centre of If We Ever Meet Again is Farrah Lin, an aspiring interior designer who hopes her time abroad will include the romantic adventure she has always imagined. Her expectations become complicated when she meets Blake Ryan, a confident former football star whose approach to relationships differs dramatically from her own.
Farrah believes in lasting love, while Blake has little interest in serious romantic commitments. Despite their contrasting personalities, their friendship gradually develops into an intense attraction. Their circumstances, however, place a deadline on the relationship, and personal complications threaten to separate them before they can establish a future together.
Their story continues in If the Sun Never Sets, set five years after their original romance ended. Farrah has established herself as a freelance interior designer, while Blake has become a successful businessman operating a growing sports bar empire.
When Blake unexpectedly becomes one of Farrah’s clients, their reunion forces both to confront painful memories and unresolved feelings. Although Blake regrets the decisions that destroyed their relationship, Farrah is reluctant to risk another heartbreak.
The passage of time gives their second-chance romance a different emotional foundation. Both characters have developed professionally, but success has not necessarily resolved the insecurities and regrets influencing their personal lives. Rebuilding their relationship requires more than revisiting the attraction they once shared.
The third novel, If Love Had a Price, shifts attention to Kris Zhang and Nate Reynolds. Kris comes from a wealthy family and is determined to prevent her father from marrying a woman she believes is interested primarily in his money.
To interfere with the engagement, she offers Nate, a struggling actor, a substantial payment to seduce her prospective stepmother. Their arrangement begins as a calculated transaction, but unexpected attraction complicates their original intentions.
Kris and Nate’s relationship introduces questions about wealth, social expectations, and the assumptions people make about those from different economic backgrounds. Their contrasting circumstances create obstacles that cannot be resolved through financial arrangements or physical attraction alone.
If We Were Perfect follows Olivia Tang and Sammy Yu, former lovers whose relationship ended despite their strong feelings for one another. Olivia is an ambitious professional with carefully established plans for her career and personal future, while Sammy operates a bakery and maintains close ties with his family.
When flooding damages Olivia’s apartment, she reluctantly accepts temporary accommodation in Sammy’s home. Their renewed proximity brings unresolved disagreements to the surface, alongside feelings neither has successfully forgotten.
Their story examines the difficulties of balancing career ambitions with romantic commitment, particularly when two people have contrasting expectations about success, family, and independence.
Although the novels share characters and social connections, their narrative structures differ. Farrah and Blake’s romance develops across two books, while Kris and Nate’s story and Olivia and Sammy’s relationship are self-contained. The third novel also takes place chronologically between the events of the first two, creating an overlap between the characters’ experiences.
Compared with Huang’s later Twisted and Kings of Sin novels, If Love has a lighter romantic atmosphere and a stronger emphasis on the transition from university life into adulthood. It is also written in third-person narration, unlike the first-person perspective characteristic of her subsequent major series.
Across its connected relationships, If Love examines the distance between romantic expectations and the compromises required to sustain a partnership. Its characters discover that attraction alone cannot overcome differences in ambition, trust, or emotional readiness. Through their experiences, Huang portrays love as something shaped not only by powerful feelings, but also by timing, maturity, forgiveness, and the willingness to grow alongside another person.