Emily McIntire Books in Order

If you want the dark villain romances: Hooked → Scarred → Wretched → Twisted → Crossed → Hexed
If you prefer small-town emotional drama: Beneath the Stars → Beneath the Stands → Beneath the Hood → Beneath the Surface
If you want the newer forbidden-love saga: Burning Daylight → Forsaking Midnight
If you want a romantic suspense standalone: Be Still My Heart

Emily McIntire grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and by her own account she was writing from the time she was a kid. Long before publication, she was filling notebooks with song lyrics, poems, and little stories, the kind of early practice that turns writing into less of a hobby and more of a reflex.

Writing came first.

That early habit never really went away. McIntire has described herself as an avid reader and a longtime songwriter, and both pieces show up in her fiction. Her books tend to have a strong emotional pulse, quick hooks, and scenes that lean hard into tension. She published her debut novel, Beneath the Stars, in 2020, launching the Sugarlake series and introducing the blend of angst, chemistry, and messy feelings that would become a through line in her work.

Those first books showed one side of what she does well. The Sugarlake novels are contemporary romances with small-town roots, second chances, family baggage, and people trying to heal while they fall in love. Readers who start there usually notice how much space she gives heartbreak, loyalty, and the long shadow of growing up in one place.

Then Hooked changed the scale of everything.

With the Never After books, McIntire moved into darker territory and found a much bigger audience. She has said those novels are not straight retellings, and that distinction matters. Instead of replaying an old plot, she borrows the villain energy, emotional shape, and familiar echoes of well-known stories, then builds a new adult romance around them. Hooked, Scarred, Wretched, Twisted, Crossed, and Hexed all work that way, each with its own setting, couple, and brand of trouble.

Success followed quickly. McIntire's official bios note that her books have hit major bestseller lists and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. That is the business version of the story. The reader version is simpler: people pick up one book for the premise, then come back because they like the intensity.

A lot of that appeal comes down to the kinds of characters she writes. McIntire likes antiheroes, forbidden attraction, family secrets, revenge plots, and couples who should probably stay away from each other but absolutely do not. Even when the setup gets dark, the emotional core is still romance. Readers come for the heat and the chaos, but they stay because the books are trying to get bruised, stubborn people to a hard-won happy ending.

She has not stayed in one lane, either. Be Still My Heart, written with Sav R. Miller, leans into romantic suspense, while Burning Daylight opens the Defying the Stars series and shifts her into a corrupt small-town world built on old feuds and tragic-love-story inspiration. That range is part of the fun. The backdrop changes, but the emotional stakes stay high.

McIntire has also been open about living with stage IV breast cancer, and she describes herself as a thriver. She now lives in Tennessee with her family and cats, still writing stories that run hot, push at genre edges, and clearly enjoy making life difficult for the people who fall in love.

At the center of it all, her work is pretty easy to sum up. If you like romance that is messy, intense, and a little dangerous, Emily McIntire has probably written something for you.