Struck Books in Order

The Struck series, sometimes published under the first book's original title Storm and Stone, follows a team of teenage operatives working for the Young Detective Agency. Each novel pairs a dangerous assignment with a developing romance, dropping the characters into glamorous but risky settings where it is never clear who can be trusted. The books can be read as standalones, but they are most satisfying in order as you watch the four core agents grow into their roles.

In Storm and Stone, American scholarship student Raven Stone is trying to keep her head down at a painfully elite English boarding school. When her friends start to turn on her and students quietly disappear, she realises something is badly wrong behind the school's ivy covered walls. Kieran Storm and Joe Masters arrive posing as pupils, part of an undercover YDA operation into blackmail and corruption. Raven struggles with falling for Kieran while wondering how much of what he shows her is real, and how much is the act of an undercover agent.

Stung focuses on Kate Pearl, a former top YDA recruit who vanished after a mission in Indonesia went horribly wrong. A year later she is on the run, framed for murder and hunted by a violent gang called the Scorpions. Nathan Hunter, once her trainee and secret crush, is ordered to find her before the gang does. As they dodge assassins and piece together what really happened, Kate and Nathan have to decide whether they can trust each other again.

In Shaken, the spotlight shifts to Damien Castle, the team's smoothest operator, and Rose Knight, a Brooklyn girl with an obsession with Egyptology and a desperate need for money to save her father's life. Damien suspects that Rose's fund raising schemes are covering something more dangerous, but the more time he spends with her, the less detached he feels. The story weaves together art, crime and family secrets, testing Damien's belief that duty should always come first.

Scorched brings the quartet to a finale with Joe Masters and Ember Lord. Ember, daughter of a crime boss, wakes to find herself accused of her father's murder and unable to remember the crucial night. Joe is assigned to win her confidence inside a secure training centre and find out if she is a killer or a pawn. As they stage a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream to get closer to the truth, the emotional and physical risks escalate for both of them.

Taken together, the Struck books read like a cross between spy thrillers and contemporary romance. They are full of undercover operations, high stakes chases and kisses grabbed in hiding places, ideal if you enjoy stories about young people trying to work out who they are while saving the day.