After Books in Order

The After series is Anna Todd's best known work, a new adult romance saga that follows Tessa Young and Hardin Scott from the first weeks of college into the messy start of adulthood. It begins when Tessa, a driven freshman with a long term boyfriend and strict mother, moves into a dorm at Washington Central University. There she meets Hardin, a tattooed British literature student whose anger and vulnerability pull her into a relationship that overturns every plan she thought she had.

After charts that first collision, as Tessa is drawn into a circle of friends, parties, and dares that expose how sheltered she has been. Hardin swings between charm and cruelty, and the book leans into the rush of first love, sex, and betrayal as their connection deepens. By the end, both characters have crossed lines they never thought they would, and trust between them is in pieces.

At its core, the series asks how much damage two people can do to each other while still trying to call it love.

In After We Collided and After We Fell, the world around them widens. Tessa lands an internship at Vance Publishing and gets a taste of professional life in Seattle, while new friends and colleagues show her what a more stable future might look like. Hardin tries, and often fails, to manage his jealousy and rage as family secrets, Tessa's estranged father, and the possibility of moves across the country or overseas put fresh pressure on them.

After Ever Happy pushes the story past college and into the fallout of everything that came before. Revelations about Hardin's family and a devastating loss in Tessa's life force both of them to confront addiction, grief, and the question of whether staying together will save them or break them for good.

The companion novel Before circles back to the beginning to give Hardin and several side characters a voice. It fills in his history before Tessa, revisits key scenes from a different angle, and offers glimpses of what their lives look like after the main series ends.

Readers can expect high emotion, constant conflict, and a relationship that many find as troubling as it is compelling. The books move quickly, with cliffhangers, big romantic gestures, and an unflinching look at how toxic patterns can form between two people who insist they cannot live without each other.