Anyone But... Books in Order

The Anyone But... series takes one of Penelope Bloom's favorite ideas and gives it a neat, satisfying structure. Years earlier, three friends made a pact that they would never date any of the King brothers, no matter how rich, attractive, or successful those boys turned out to be. Naturally, adulthood makes that promise very hard to keep.

That setup gives the series its through line. Each book follows one woman and one King brother, with old history, bruised pride, and unfinished feelings doing most of the heavy lifting. Anyone But Rich kicks things off by reuniting Kira with Richard King, who has grown up into the exact kind of man she should still avoid. Anyone But Cade shifts to a more obvious second-chance story, while Anyone But Nick turns an old crush and a painful misunderstanding into workplace tension.

These books are lighter than Bloom's darker romances, but they are not weightless.

The stakes come from the past. The women know these men from before the money and polish, and the brothers have a habit of walking back into their lives at exactly the wrong moment. That means every romance has two jobs to do. It has to build present-day attraction, and it has to deal with whatever happened years earlier, the betrayal, the bad timing, the heartbreak, or the promise that once felt impossible to break.

What makes the series work is how neatly the books bounce off one another. Because the heroines are friends and the King brothers are, well, King brothers, each novel adds a little more context to the family and friend group around the central couple. You start to see patterns in the brothers, their charm, their ego, their blind spots, and you also get a strong sense of the women as a unit. The loyalty between the friends gives the romances extra tension because getting involved with a King is never just a personal decision.

The tone stays firmly in romantic comedy territory, with plenty of banter, sexual tension, and exaggerated frustration. But Bloom also lets the heroes earn their way back. These are not stories about perfect men showing up to be adored. They are stories about men who have history to overcome, and women who are smart enough to remember what went wrong the first time.

So if you like reunion romances, old crushes, stubborn promises, and billionaire brothers who really should know better, Anyone But... is a very easy series to sink into.