Principles of Love Books in Order

The Principles of Love follows Love Bukowski through the high school years when every feeling seems urgent, every friendship can tilt overnight, and every bad decision feels bigger than it probably is. The series starts with Love arriving at Hadley Hall, an elite New England prep school where her father is the new principal. She wants the kind of life that would look good in a movie. What she gets is messier, funnier, and much more interesting.

Love is very good company.

A lot of the series' charm comes from her voice. She is sharp, self aware, romantic, and often imagining a better version of events even while real life is going off script. The early books have the classic teen setup of crushes, shifting friend groups, awkward status games, and the thrill of a new school. But Emily Franklin keeps the story rooted in the stuff that lasts longer than a single romance.

Family is the bigger thread running underneath everything. Love was raised by her father, with a lot of help from her aunt Mable, and questions about her absent mother never fully go away. As the books move from The Principles of Love to Piece, Love, and Happiness, Love From London, and beyond, that family history keeps pulling the plot forward. New information arrives slowly, and it matters because it shapes how Love sees love itself, and what she thinks safety, loyalty, and home are supposed to look like.

The setting shifts help keep the series moving. Hadley Hall gives the books their prep school pressure cooker, but Franklin does not leave Love there forever. London opens things up in Love From London, while Martha's Vineyard becomes another important emotional landscape in later books. Those places are not just backdrops. They change the mood of the books and give Love room to try on new versions of herself.

The boys matter, but they are not the whole story.

That is probably the best way to describe the tone. Yes, this is a romantic series, and there are crushes, breakups, old flames, and complicated choices all the way through All You Need is Love, Summer of Love, Labor of Love, and Lessons in Love. But the books are just as interested in friendship, family, grief, writing, and the strange work of becoming yourself while everyone around you is still trying to define you.

By the end, the series feels less like one long will they or won't they and more like a record of a girl growing into her own life. If you like YA that mixes boarding school drama with family questions, travel, humor, and a heroine who talks to you like a friend, this is the appeal. Start at the beginning and read in order. Love's world changes a lot, and the emotional payoff works best when you watch it happen step by step.