Below is the complete list of Tessa Bailey’s Romancing the Clarksons books in publication order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Romancing the Clarksons Books in Publication Order
- Too Hot to Handle (2016)
- Too Wild to Tame (2016)
- Too Hard to Forget (2017)
- Too Close to Call (2017)
- Too Beautiful to Break (2017)
About Romancing the Clarksons
Tessa Bailey’s Romancing the Clarksons series is a contemporary romance series built around four adult siblings, a difficult family history, and a cross-country road trip inspired by their late mother’s final wish. The premise gives the series more emotional weight than a loose set of connected romances. Rita, Aaron, Peggy, and Belmont Clarkson are not simply linked by surname; they are siblings who have drifted into separate lives, carrying tension, guilt, and unfinished feelings that the journey gradually forces into the open.
The first book, Too Hot to Handle, introduces Rita Clarkson at a point when her culinary career has collapsed and her connection to her siblings is strained. Stranded in New Mexico during the family road trip, Rita meets Jasper Ellis, a charming man on a motorcycle whose ease and confidence unsettle the careful defenses she has built. Rita’s story establishes the series’ main rhythm: each Clarkson sibling has a romance of their own, but the larger movement is about a fractured family being pushed back into contact by grief, memory, and obligation.
Too Wild to Tame shifts to Aaron Clarkson, a polished political fixer whose control begins to slip when he meets Grace Pendleton. Aaron is one of the more image-conscious Clarksons, and his romance works because Grace forces him to confront the difference between public performance and private need. The book expands the road-trip structure by showing how each sibling’s romantic arc reflects a different wound. Rita’s story is about failure and self-trust; Aaron’s is about ambition, image, and the danger of treating emotion like a liability.
Peggy Clarkson takes the center in Too Hard to Forget, which moves into second-chance romance territory. Peggy returns to her former college world with unresolved feelings for Elliott Brooks, a football coach whose past with her still carries emotional force. Peggy is vivid, confident, and determined to reclaim power over a heartbreak that never fully left her. Her book gives the series one of its most intense emotional setups because the romance is built not on first discovery but on memory, regret, and the question of whether desire can survive the damage already done.
Belmont Clarkson’s story, Too Beautiful to Break, brings the series to its most inward and vulnerable point. Belmont is quieter and more emotionally guarded than his siblings, and his connection with Sage Alexander has been building in the background before becoming the focus. Their romance is shaped by longing, fear, and secrets, with Bailey giving Belmont a gentler but deeply intense emotional presence. As the final sibling story, it also helps complete the family arc that began with the road trip.
The novella Too Close to Call is connected to the series but stands slightly apart from the core Clarkson sibling structure. It focuses on Kyler Tate and Bree Justice, a second-chance romance involving a college football star returning to his Indiana hometown before beginning his professional career. It adds to the broader romantic world without changing the central shape of the Clarkson family arc.
Romancing the Clarksons works because Bailey uses a bold, high-heat romance style while keeping the family premise emotionally coherent. Each book has its own couple and romantic trope, but the siblings’ shared journey gives the series a through-line of grief, reconnection, and self-reckoning. The road trip is not just a convenient device; it is the pressure that makes avoidance impossible. Across the series, the Clarksons are forced to face who they became apart from one another, what they misunderstood about each other, and how love can expose the parts of themselves they tried hardest to manage alone.