Love & Hate Books in Order

The Love & Hate books follow two interconnected couples who all orbit the same messy, glittery version of Hollywood. Olive and Jason share the spotlight in To Love Jason Thorn, while Lucy and Adam take center stage in To Hate Adam Connor, with cameos and found family threads tying the stories together.

In the first book, Olive has spent most of her life trying to forget her teenage crush on Jason Thorn, her brother's charismatic best friend who moved into their house during a difficult time. A few sharp words and a heartbreaking goodbye left her determined to move on, and by the time the story opens she has rebuilt herself as a quiet, hard working romance author whose debut novel suddenly explodes in popularity.

When the film rights sell, the studio wants Jason, now a famous movie star with a tarnished reputation, to play the male lead. Olive is thrown from her small writing desk straight into meetings with publicists, producers and the man who once crushed her. A publicity crisis pushes them into a fake marriage that is supposed to clean up his image and help sell her movie, but the more time they spend together the more old memories and unfinished feelings start to surface.

The book balances red carpet glamour with awkward family dinners, cramped apartments and quiet hotel rooms where Olive and Jason finally say the things they avoided for years. It is childhood friends to lovers, fake relationship and celebrity romance woven into one long, slow burn.

The second book shifts the camera to Lucy, Olive's outspoken best friend, who has sworn off love after watching generations of failed relationships in her own family. She moves in with Olive and Jason to regroup after a breakup, only to discover that the gorgeous, brooding neighbor on the other side of the fence is Adam Connor, an award winning actor and newly single father to a five year old boy named Aiden.

Lucy copes with her curiosity in the least sensible way possible, by climbing a ladder to spy on Adam's backyard workouts and adorable moments with his son. When she thinks Aiden might be in danger, she crashes into their lives for real, gets herself arrested for trespassing and earns Adam's instant resentment. What follows is a classic enemies to lovers arc, full of sharp banter, begrudging favors, inconvenient attraction and the soft domestic scenes that grow out of caring for a child together.

Cameos from Olive and Jason anchor the two novels in the same world, but each couple faces their own mix of career pressures, public scrutiny and private hurt. Underneath the humor and Hollywood trappings, both stories are about people who do not really believe in lasting love learning to risk their reputations, and their hearts, for something real.

You can read the books as standalones, yet starting with Olive and Jason's story gives extra weight to Lucy's jokes and fears in the second book. Together, the Love & Hate series offers celebrity fantasy wrapped around very grounded emotional stakes, all delivered with Maise's trademark blend of quirky dialogue, slow burn heat and big, satisfying happily ever afters.