Professor Hunter Books in Order

The Professor Hunter books are not a separate romance so much as a second angle on one of Ivy Smoak's biggest stories. If The Hunted gives you Penny and James from the outside, this series opens the door to James Hunter's head, which is not always the safest place to be.

That is the point.

James has always been one of Smoak's messier heroes. Even in the original books, he is secretive, intense, guilty, and often convinced he is worse than everyone around him thinks. Professor Hunter takes those traits and turns them into the main event. Obsessed, Devoured, and Loved revisit major parts of the Penny and James story through James's perspective, which changes the tone right away. The books feel darker, more intimate, and more uncomfortable in a deliberate way.

You are no longer only watching a forbidden relationship unfold. You are sitting with the man who knows he should walk away and does not. That means more jealousy, more rationalizing, more self-loathing, and more insight into the habits that make James both compelling and frustrating. His point of view also makes room for more family history, more context about the people around him, and more detail on how he sees himself compared with how Penny sees him.

These are not calm retellings.

Smoak uses the shift in perspective to push the story into rougher emotional territory. James is obsessive. He is ashamed. He is often trying to convince himself that desire and love are not the same thing while acting like a man who has already lost that argument. If you were ever curious why he makes certain choices in The Hunted, these books are built to answer that.

What makes the series worth reading is that it does more than simply replay scenes. It also extends James's arc. By the time you get to Loved, the focus is not just on want. It is on damage, accountability, reconnection, and whether someone who thinks of himself as broken can actually learn how to live differently.

So this is best read as a companion series. It works best when you already know the main line of the story and want to go deeper into the character who keeps wrecking himself from the inside. If James Hunter was the reason you stayed with The Hunted, this is where you get the full, darker version of the deal.