Below is the complete list of Sarah Adams books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Dalton Family Books
Publication Order of It Happened in Charleston Books
Publication Order of It Happened in Nashville Books
Publication Order of Rome, Kentucky Books
Publication Order of The Los Angeles Sharks duology Books
About Sarah Adams
Sarah Adams is an American contemporary romance author known for warm romantic comedies, slow-burn chemistry, close-knit families, and protagonists whose emotional insecurities sit beneath otherwise lighthearted stories. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Adams grew up wanting to become a writer but did not begin pursuing fiction seriously until adulthood. She has described finally writing her first novel while her two daughters were young and napping, turning a long-held ambition into a publishing career that began independently before expanding into traditional publishing.
Adams made her debut in 2020 with The Match, a romance about Evie Jones, a woman with epilepsy who works for a service-dog organization, and single father Jacob Broaden. Her early novels quickly established several qualities that would become characteristic of her work: approachable humor, strong family relationships, emotionally vulnerable characters, and romances designed to leave the reader with an ultimately optimistic feeling.
Those first books include the interconnected romances The Match and The Enemy, followed by The Off-Limits Rule and The Temporary Roomie. The latter pair revolves around members of the Marshall family and uses familiar romantic-comedy situations such as a forbidden attraction to a brother’s best friend, enemies-to-lovers tension, forced proximity, and fake dating. Expanded traditionally published editions of several of these early novels later brought them to a broader readership.
Adams reached a significantly larger audience with The Cheat Sheet. The novel follows ballet teacher Bree Camden and professional football player Nathan Donelson, best friends whose supposedly platonic relationship becomes complicated by fake dating and feelings neither has successfully admitted. Its popularity, particularly among online romance readers, helped establish Adams as a major contemporary-romance name. She later returned to the same Los Angeles Sharks football world in The Rule Book, featuring sports agent Nora Mackenzie and NFL tight end Derek Pender, college exes unexpectedly reunited through their careers.
Her other major success is the Rome, Kentucky series, which began with When in Rome. Inspired in part by the romantic escape of Roman Holiday, the novel strands exhausted pop star Amelia Rose in a tiny Kentucky town, where she meets pie-shop owner Noah Walker. Rather than continuing one couple through every installment, the series gradually turns Rome itself and the Walker family into its connecting center.
Practice Makes Perfect follows Noah’s socially reserved sister Annie Walker and tattooed bodyguard Will Griffin, while Beg, Borrow, or Steal develops the long-running antagonism between Emily Walker and fellow teacher Jack Bennett. In Your Dreams continued the Rome, Kentucky sequence, making the series Adams’s most substantial interconnected small-town setting.
Her work has become associated with tenderness and romantic tension more than explicit sexual content, although the level of intimacy has evolved somewhat across her bibliography. Humor, banter, yearning, fake relationships, forced proximity, friends-to-lovers dynamics, and characters learning to reconsider the lives they thought they wanted recur frequently. Her Southern background also influences the importance of community, family involvement, food, hospitality, and small-town belonging in many of her stories.
Now a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Adams continues to write from Nashville. Her bibliography charts a clear progression from independently published contemporary romances to nationally published sports and small-town romantic comedies, while retaining the emotional quality that first defined her work: people who may feel uncertain about themselves finding relationships, families, and communities in which they can finally feel at home.