Rake Forge University Books in Order

Rake Forge University is one of Ashley Munoz's darker and more dramatic settings. On the surface, it looks like a place built for the usual college romance ingredients, sports stars, rival groups, parties, and students trying to figure themselves out. Underneath that glossy setup, though, the series keeps pulling its characters into something more dangerous. Status matters here. So do secrets, family pressure, and the kind of loyalty that can get people hurt.

The first book, Wild Card, drops readers into that mix through Mallory and Decker. Mallory is chasing a story and trying to protect her future, which pushes her straight toward the Devils baseball team and a world that does not want outsiders looking too closely. What starts as a campus setup quickly turns into something more charged, with power plays, seduction, and the feeling that nobody at Rake Forge is ever just one thing.

Then King of Hearts opens the door wider. Taylor comes back to campus carrying much more than a messy past, and Juan Hernandez is waiting on the other side of that return. Their story brings in arranged expectations, criminal ties, and the ugly reality of being claimed by a future you did not choose. By the time The Joker arrives, the series gets even more personal. Kyle and Rylie are tied by years of history, and their romance turns the spotlight on old promises, abandonment, and the cost of being pulled into organized crime.

At Rake Forge, the romantic tension is never the only tension.

That is what makes the series work so well as a whole. These are interconnected standalones, so each book follows a different couple and comes to its own ending, but the world keeps tightening around them. Families overlap. Side characters keep reappearing. The emotional stakes grow as readers begin to understand how much the characters have inherited, and how badly they want to break free of it.

The tone sits somewhere between new adult romance and romantic suspense. There is plenty of heat, but there is also a steady sense of threat. Munoz uses the university setting as a pressure cooker. Her characters are young, but their problems are not small. They are dealing with loyalty, danger, control, grief, and the possibility that loving the wrong person could wreck more than a semester.

If you like campus romance with sharp edges, this is the series to try. Start with Wild Card and read in order. Each book can stand alone, but the payoffs land harder when you watch the whole Rake Forge web build one couple at a time.