Below is the complete list of Sarah Adams’ The Los Angeles Sharks duology books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of The Los Angeles Sharks duology Books
About The Los Angeles Sharks duology
Sarah Adams’s Los Angeles Sharks duology is a contemporary sports-romance pairing set around the fictional Los Angeles Sharks NFL team. The series consists of The Cheat Sheet and The Rule Book, with each novel following a different Sharks player and a complete central romance. The football setting, recurring teammates, and appearances by the first book’s couple connect the stories, while Adams uses contrasting romantic tropes to give each installment its own identity.
The Cheat Sheet centers on Bree Camden and Sharks quarterback Nathan Donelson, longtime best friends who have spent years quietly wanting more from their relationship while assuming the other person does not feel the same way. Nathan has become an NFL star, while Bree owns a dance studio after an accident ended her hopes of becoming a professional ballerina.
Their friendship has survived fame, career changes, and years of carefully maintained boundaries. Bree is determined not to risk losing Nathan by admitting that she loves him, and Nathan is equally reluctant to destroy the most important friendship in his life. The situation changes after Bree drinks too much and reveals her feelings to a reporter. The resulting media attention creates an unexpected commercial opportunity: Nathan and Bree are asked to pretend publicly that they are dating.
Fake dating therefore becomes the mechanism that forces them to confront a relationship that has never been as platonic as either pretended. Their existing familiarity distinguishes the romance from a typical celebrity-meets-outsider story. They already know each other’s habits, insecurities, families, and histories; the real problem is acknowledging that friendship may no longer be enough.
Nathan’s Sharks teammates also become an important supporting group. Their involvement in his romantic life gives The Cheat Sheet much of its humor while establishing characters who can exist beyond Nathan’s story. One of those players, tight end Derek Pender, eventually becomes the hero of The Rule Book.
The second novel pairs Derek with sports agent Nora Mackenzie. Unlike Nathan and Bree, Derek and Nora are not friends slowly discovering love. They are former college sweethearts whose relationship ended badly when Nora broke Derek’s heart. Years later, she becomes a full-time sports agent and discovers that her first major client is the man she left behind.
Derek initially sees an opportunity for revenge. He agrees to remain Nora’s client while intending to make the professional arrangement difficult enough that she will quit. Nora refuses to be intimidated, turning their reunion into a battle between two people who know exactly how to provoke each other.
A trip to Las Vegas transforms that professional hostility when Nora and Derek wake after a drunken night to discover that they are married. The accidental marriage complicates their careers, public image, and unresolved feelings, while forcing them to reconsider why their college relationship failed in the first place. Derek is also dealing with the aftermath of an injury and a late diagnosis of dyslexia, giving his outward confidence a more vulnerable dimension.
The Rule Book brings Nathan, Bree, and the Sharks friendship group back into the story, making publication order the most satisfying approach even though both romances can be understood independently. The duology progresses naturally from friends-to-lovers and fake dating in The Cheat Sheet to second-chance romance, professional rivalry, and accidental marriage in The Rule Book.
Together, the two novels present the Sharks less as a conventional sports series than as a tightly connected friendship circle. Football creates the shared world, but Adams keeps the emotional emphasis on relationships formed long before the public sees them—and on characters discovering that the rules they created to protect themselves are often the very ones they eventually need to break.