Below is the complete list of Jenn McKinlay’s Museum of Literature Romance books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Museum of Literature Romance Books
- Royal Valentine (2022)
Royal Valentine was published in 2022 and is listed as book #1 in the Museum of Literature Romance series. - The Attraction Distraction (2022)
Published in 2022, The Attraction Distraction is listed as book #2 in the Museum of Literature Romance series. 
About Museum of Literature Romance
Jenn McKinlay’s Museum of Literature Romance series is a trio of romantic-comedy novellas connected by a fictional literary museum and the librarians, archivists, and scholars who work there. Rather than following one couple through a continuous storyline, each installment gives a different museum employee a self-contained romance, moving from New York to England, Greece, and Maine. Books, manuscripts, exhibitions, and literary history provide the common framework, while the stories use familiar romantic devices such as hidden identity, second chances, professional rivalry, and forced proximity.
Royal Valentine introduces Molly Graham, registrar at the Museum of Literature and a woman deeply skeptical of romantic fairy tales. During a Valentine’s Day gala celebrating a Jane Austen exhibition, she meets a reserved British professor who introduces himself as Albert George. Their shared preference for escaping social attention leads to a relationship that appears unexpectedly serious until Albert disappears.
Molly later travels to England to return items borrowed from the Whitmore Estate and discovers that Albert George never existed in quite the form she believed. The man she knew is actually James Albert George Insley Whitmore, known as Jamie, an aristocrat and heir to an earldom. The revelation turns their romance into a question of trust rather than simple attraction. Jamie may still want Molly, but she must decide whether the relationship can survive the fact that its beginning was built around a false identity.
The Attraction Distraction shifts to Sarah Novak, a Classics specialist working for the museum. She is sent to an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea to search for a rare ancient literary artifact, only to discover that several competing scholars have arrived with the same objective. Among them is Liam Maguire, her Irish former lover and professional rival.
Sarah defeated Liam for her museum position years earlier, and their romantic history ended badly enough that cooperation is the last thing she wants. When suspicious accidents begin eliminating other researchers from the hunt, however, competition becomes increasingly dangerous. Sarah and Liam are forced into an uneasy alliance, turning an academic treasure hunt into both a second-chance romance and a light adventure mystery. Their shared expertise matters as much as their unresolved attraction, giving the novella a stronger scholarly and exploratory element than the first book.
It Happened One Christmas Eve moves the spotlight to Claire Macintosh, director of the Museum of Literature. Claire’s wealthy mother has used the family’s financial support of the museum as leverage, pressuring her forty-year-old daughter toward a socially acceptable marriage. At a holiday gala where an engagement is expected to become official, Claire finally rebels by escaping in the horse-drawn carriage intended to deliver her ring.
The man dressed as Santa and driving the carriage is actually journalist Sam Carpenter, who has infiltrated the event while researching an exposé about Claire. Their accidental escape develops into a bargain: Sam will help Claire reach her cottage in Maine before Christmas, while she will grant him an exclusive interview. The resulting road-trip romance brings professional mistrust, family pressure, and holiday comedy into the museum world.
All three novellas were released in 2022 and were later collected in Booked: A Collection of RomCom Novellas for Book Lovers. The omnibus does not add a fourth romance; it simply brings Royal Valentine, The Attraction Distraction, and It Happened One Christmas Eve together in one volume.
Because each story features a different central couple, the novellas can largely stand alone. Publication order nevertheless gives the series its intended progression through the Museum of Literature and its staff. Taken together, they form a compact bookish romance collection in which professional devotion to literature repeatedly places the museum’s employees on unexpected journeys toward their own happily-ever-afters.