Below is the complete list of Caroline Peckham’s The V Games books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of The V Games Books
- V Games (2017)
V Games was published in 2017 and is listed as book #1 in the The V Games series. - V Games: Fresh From The Grave (2017)
Published in 2017, V Games: Fresh From The Grave is listed as book #2 in the The V Games series. - V Games: Dead Before Dawn (2018)
V Games: Dead Before Dawn is a 2018 release and appears as book #3 in the The V Games series. - Wolf Games (2018)
In the The V Games series, Wolf Games is book #4 and was published in 2018. - Wolf Games: Island of Shade (2018)
Wolf Games: Island of Shade was first published in 2018; within the The V Games series, it is listed as book #5.
About The V Games
Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti’s The V Games series is an upper-YA paranormal romance and survival saga built around vampires, televised blood sport, captivity, rebellion, and the brutal question of what people will do when survival becomes entertainment. The series is split into seasons, with the first three books following Selena Grey and Varick Cartwright, the second three shifting to Cass and Jameson, and Hunter Trials opening a third arc through Mercy’s story. That season-based structure makes the series broader than a single-couple vampire romance, while still keeping the same dangerous world at its center.
The first season begins with V Games, where Selena Grey is taken from prison and forced into a deadly competition with other girls. The game is staged on an island and watched by powerful vampires who treat human survival as sport, spectacle, and betting entertainment. Selena enters the story already marked by violence and judgment, but the series does not reduce her to the crime that put her behind bars. Her fight is physical, emotional, and moral: she has to survive the vampires hunting her while deciding what kind of person she will be in a system designed to strip humanity away.
Varick Cartwright is central to the first trilogy’s tension. As a vampire tied to the world that imprisons Selena, he should represent only danger, but his role becomes more complicated as the story develops. The relationship between Selena and Varick is shaped by fear, distrust, attraction, and the uneasy possibility that one of her captors may also be one of the few figures capable of helping her. Peckham and Valenti use that conflict to give the first season its emotional edge. The horror of the games is never separate from the question of trust.
Fresh from the Grave and Dead Before Dawn continue Selena and Varick’s arc, expanding the survival premise into a larger fight against the vampire systems behind the games. The first season can be read as its own completed trilogy, with a clear beginning, escalation, and resolution around Selena’s ordeal and the forces controlling the V Games.
The second season begins with Wolf Games and moves into Cass and Jameson’s story. This shift keeps the series fresh by changing the central relationship and widening the supernatural world beyond the original island contest. The later books, including Island of Shade and Severed Fates, continue exploring the consequences of a society where vampires, hunters, wolves, and humans are locked into violent power structures. The focus remains on survival and romance under pressure, but the second season gives the series a different emotional rhythm.
Hunter Trials opens the third season through Mercy, adding another branch to the same world. Because this arc is less developed than the first two seasons, it feels more like an expansion point than a fully completed cycle. Its importance lies in showing that The V Games universe is not limited to Selena and Cass alone; it can support new heroines, new trials, and new corners of the vampire-dominated world.
The V Games is best understood as dystopian paranormal romance with a strong survival-game structure. Its appeal lies in the mix of danger, rebellion, forbidden attraction, and heroines forced into impossible situations by powerful supernatural systems. Peckham and Valenti write the series with the intensity that defines much of their later work: harsh worlds, emotional stakes, brutal choices, and romance that develops where safety is almost impossible.