In What Order Should New Readers Approach The It Ends With Us Series?
2026-07-24 11:39:06
175
Follow14
Share
FinnScott
Genre Finder
Cashier
ABO Personality Quiz
Take a quick quiz to find out whether you‘re Alpha, Beta, or Omega.
Scent
Personality
Ideal Love Pattern
Secret Desire
Your Dark Side
Start Test
3 Answers
TomJay
Bookworm
Journalist
If you're an audiobook listener, the order is the same, but consider the narration. The audiobook for 'It Ends With Us' is performed brilliantly and adds a whole layer of immediacy to Lily's diary entries and inner turmoil. Hearing the sequel with the same care in performance makes the continuation feel seamless. Just queue them up in order on your app. The emotional pacing of the audio performances is designed for that sequence. Listening to the hopeful, lighter tone of the sequel's audio right after the intense, tearful experience of the first book's audio is a profoundly healing experience, honestly.
2026-07-26 21:31:55
10
AmyPorter
Spoiler Watcher
Lawyer
Wait, is there a prequel? I thought I saw something about Lily's parents? No? Okay, just checking. So it's just the two main books then. That makes it easy. I got confused because some fan wikis have deep dives into the characters' pasts. But yeah, for the published novels, it's a straight line. Sorry for the noise!
2026-07-29 17:15:27
16
AlexHunt
Spoiler Watcher
Teacher
Lurking here because I just finished 'It Ends With Us' ten minutes ago and my eyes are still puffy. I can't even form a coherent thought about order yet. I just needed to be around people who understand. What a book. I'll start the sequel tomorrow, I guess. Everyone here seems to think that's the right call.
2026-07-30 07:30:39
3
View All Answers
Scan code to download App
Related Books
Come Be With Me, The End Is Here
Uniquely Yours
10
475
Lightning rips the sky open—then, darkness. The world shudders. On the edge. Endings taste like ash. Fate. Desire. Two strangers crash into each other as everything falls apart.
Autumn Winters: heartbroken, haunted, hungry for something more. A name that doesn't fit her anymore. She runs from the ruins of her past, colliding with him.
Bastion. A man with eyes like midnight storms. Dangerous. Beautiful. Not from here. His secrets coil around him, thick as the night.
Chaos explodes. The city burns. Time turns lethal. Bastion offers survival—but at what cost? Autumn's trust is shattered glass, and every word he speaks slices deeper.
Can she gamble her heart on a stranger when the world is ending? Or will she lose herself in the fire between them?
Love is the last risk left. And it's everything.
Mason Reid has everything hockey captain, scholarship, a dad who’s also the coach. The only thing he can’t have is Ezra Cole. When a cafeteria fight gets them benched, the principal forces them to train together in secret. What starts as hate turns into desperate stolen nights, lingering touches, and a kiss that cracks Mason’s whole world open.
As senior year drags them through competitions, rumors, and a chaotic training camp, Mason and Ezra aren’t the only ones circling each other. A new transfer student wants them both. A popular girl falls hard for Ezra. And one jealous classmate catches something he was never meant to see… and starts blackmailing all four of them with a video that could destroy everything.
Family rejection, panic attacks, public humiliation, and the fear of losing scholarships force Mason and Ezra to decide: keep hiding and lose each other forever… or burn it all down and skate out together.
Sinners & Saints: A Collection Of Dark Romance Stories
Mary Samantha
10
541
This author once failed as a heroine… and returned as something entirely different.
Not as a savior.
But as the villain.
And she didn’t come back empty-handed.
She brought secrets.
She brought sins.
She brought a story that was never meant to be read.
Sinners & Saints is not just a collection of dark romance stories—
It is a confession.
A warning.
And a door best left unopened.
Within these pages lie twisted love stories where desire and destruction walk hand in hand, and every choice comes with a cost.
So the question is simple:
Will you turn away…
or step inside anyway?
Lily Harper’s life is perfectly brewed, running her café in Boston, surrounded by the comforting scent of fresh coffee and pastries. But everything changes when Atlas Caldwell, the boy she once loved, walks back into her life after years of silence. As their past collides with her present, Lily’s world is turned upside down. But she’s not alone, Ryle Kincaid, a charming and intense neurosurgeon, has his own plans for her heart. Torn between the memories of a love lost and the possibility of a future with someone new, Lily must navigate a tangled web of old emotions, unexpected desires, and choices that could change everything. Will she open the door to a second chance with Atlas, or is the path forward with Ryle, who’s already staked a claim on her heart, the one she should follow?
A captivating story of love, loss, and the crossroads of life.
His songs were better when he had a broken heart.
That sentence would change my life after my dream job was dished to me on a shiny, silver platter.
All I had to do?
Hurt Nash Pierce enough to get him writing good music again.
The pop icon’s songs were no longer the phenomena they used to be. His team needed another breakthrough album—like the first he’d penned, using his heartbreak as fuel.
The plan was simple: I’d go on tour with him as a backup dancer…and make him fall in love with me. I was hired to inspire—to become embedded into every lyric he wrote. Then, I was to set fire to it all—to destroy every feeling we hoped he’d develop for me.
It seemed simple enough. Easy, even.
I didn’t expect to be consumed myself—to see so much in the man displayed in the tabloids. I didn’t foresee falling for him. It didn’t occur to me that, while attempting to break his heart, I might just shatter my own.
Most of all, I never thought I’d fight so hard to hold on to a relationship that had always been founded on goodbye.
I feel like this gets asked because the first book is so emotionally draining that people want a shortcut to the 'happy' part. They hear the sequel is happier and want to skip the pain. But that's like wanting the reward without the struggle. The happiness in the sequel is only meaningful because of the pain in the first.
So the order is: endure the struggle, then receive the reward. You can't swap them. The emotional payoff is dependent on sequence. If you read the happy ending first, the struggle just seems like pointless misery. In order, the struggle is a heroic journey.
The simplicity of the order is its strength. In an era of endless series, sprawling universes, and complicated timelines, here's a story that begins and ends in two books. You know exactly what you're signing up for: a commitment to two emotional, interconnected stories.
As a new reader, that's a gift. No wondering if there's a book 3, 4, or 5. No worrying about reading a side novella. It's a duology. Start at the start, finish at the finish. The clarity is refreshing.
I'm curious what the big deal is. I see these books everywhere but haven't picked one up. Are they really that heavy? Maybe I'll just read a summary first to see if I can handle the subject matter.
Okay, I had this same confusion last year. The core series is just two books: 'It Ends with Us' followed by 'It Starts with Us'. That's the chronological order for Lily and Atlas's story. A lot of people think there's a third main novel, but that's it. You can absolutely read the first as a standalone if you want; the second is a direct sequel that picks up right after the end of the first book.
Some folks recommend reading 'November 9' as well, since it exists in the same universe and has a very brief crossover character appearance, but it's a completely separate story and not necessary for understanding the main duology. The reading experience is perfectly complete with just those two in order.
Okay, hot take: you could technically read 'It Starts With Us' alone and follow the plot of a couple getting together, but you'd be missing the entire point. The point isn't the 'what', it's the 'why'.
The first book's intense exploration of cyclical violence and difficult choices is what gives the second book's domestic bliss its meaning. Without that background, the sequel reads like a fairly generic romance. The power is in the contrast, so please do yourself a favor and read them in order. It makes the hopeful ending of the duology actually feel earned.