Closer to You Books in Order

Closer to You is Jackson’s deeply angsty new adult series, focused on a small circle of friends whose lives have been intertwined since childhood. The books lean into first love, bad decisions, and the long shadow of trauma, all while the characters are trying to build adult lives from the pieces.

The story begins with Come to Me Quietly, where art student Aleena Moore has never really moved on from Jared Holt, her brother’s best friend and the boy she loved in high school. Six years later, Jared returns, tattooed and wrecked by guilt over the accident that destroyed his family, and ends up sleeping on Aly’s couch, forcing their unresolved feelings into the open.

Come to Me Softly continues Jared and Aly’s journey after they finally choose each other. The focus shifts to what it means to stay when the person you love is still carrying heavy grief and anger, and how they can build a future without pretending the past never happened.

In Come to Me Recklessly, the lens moves to Aly’s brother Christopher and his first love, Samantha Schultz. Once inseparable, they are now strangers living on the same street, both pretending they are content with safe choices until old chemistry and buried hurt push them toward a second chance.

Across the series, Jackson uses dorm rooms, family backyards, and college-town bars as a backdrop for very grown-up emotions. The characters are figuring out careers, identities, and what kind of partners they want to be, with family expectations and their own mistakes pressing in from both sides.

Closer to You reads best in order, since the friendships and family ties weave through all three books, but each novel delivers a complete love story, full of late-night confessions, stubborn hope, and the question of whether the people we are becoming can still fit with the ones we once loved.