Cookie O'Gorman Books in Order

If you want the first book and signature fake-dating vibe: Adorkable
If you want action with your YA romance: Ninja Girl → The Good Girl's Guide to Being Bad
If you want interconnected later YA romances: Adorkable → Wallflower → Bookworm → Sweetheart → Introvert
If you want college sports romance: The Best Mistake → The Perfect Play → The Sweetest Game → The Total Knockout → The Merriest Christmas
If you want romance with a small-town mystery: The Unbelievable, Inconceivable, Unforeseeable Truth About Ethan Wilder

Cookie O'Gorman grew up in the South, and that setting has clearly stayed with her. Small towns, local gossip, sports fields, family closeness, and the strange beauty of awkward teenage moments keep showing up in her fiction. She writes young adult and new adult romance, and her books tend to mix humor, nerves, first kisses, and the steady belief that love can still turn out okay.

She writes for the dorks, the weirdos, and the romantics.

In her own bio, O'Gorman says she believes the world has too many tragedies and not enough happily-ever-afters. That idea does not read like a slogan in her work. It feels more like the engine. Even when she brings in rumors, loneliness, social embarrassment, grief, or family trouble, the story is still reaching for warmth.

Her debut novel, Adorkable, arrived in 2016 and set the tone early. It takes a geeky heroine, a best-friends fake-dating setup, and a mountain of buried feelings, then lets all of them collide. Readers who connect with O'Gorman usually connect for the same reasons they do here: quick banter, sincere emotion, lovable awkwardness, and heroines who are funny without turning hard-edged.

She kept stretching that formula in interesting directions. Ninja Girl adds martial arts, danger, and a heroine who would rather train than flirt. The Unbelievable, Inconceivable, Unforeseeable Truth About Ethan Wilder threads a small-town mystery through a romance. The Good Girl's Guide to Being Bad leans into rule-breaking and opposites, while Cupcake brings baking, body confidence, and homecoming nerves to the front. The premises shift, but her stories keep the same soft landing.

Fake dating is clearly one of her favorite storytelling toys, and she knows how to get a lot out of it.

That thread runs through later books like Fauxmance, Wallflower, Bookworm, Sweetheart, and Introvert. O'Gorman likes putting shy, bookish, hopeful, or carefully self-protective characters in situations where pretending becomes harder than telling the truth. Along the way, she keeps coming back to smart girls, swoony boys, close friendships, music, sports, and those painfully embarrassing moments that make young love feel real instead of polished.

Her books also reward readers who stick around. Characters reappear, families interconnect, and one generation's romance can echo into the next. She is especially good at turning everyday pressures, an audition, a scholarship, a sports injury, a bad rumor, a humiliating party, into stakes that feel huge because they matter so much to the people living through them.

O'Gorman also writes college-set sports romance. In the Southern U O'Brien Brothers books, including The Best Mistake, The Perfect Play, The Sweetest Game, The Total Knockout, and The Merriest Christmas, she moves from high school hallways to campus life and louder family chaos. The tone is a little older and a little steamier, but the core appeal stays the same: strong chemistry, loyal people, and relationships that have to earn their happy ending.

Away from the page, she has shared that she loves dancing, dogs, music, books, and writing, and that she has a soft spot for nerds and ninjas. She has also joked about her own awkward side, which feels very fitting once you've read her work. If there is one reliable promise in a Cookie O'Gorman book, it is that romance can be sweet, funny, a little embarrassing, and still genuinely comforting.