Sweet Home Books in Order

The Sweet Home novels are Tillie Cole’s take on new-adult college romance, starting on the University of Alabama campus and then following a tight circle of friends into adult life. The books mix big football Saturdays, dorm-room drama, and heavy real-world issues.

In Sweet Home, English transfer student Molly Shakespeare arrives in Tuscaloosa to work on her master’s degree and escape a past full of loss. She has no interest in campus royalty until she collides with star quarterback Romeo Prince, a gifted player whose public success hides a childhood shaped by abuse and impossible expectations. Sweet Rome retells their story from his point of view, filling in the cracks and family secrets you only glimpse in the first book.

From there the focus shifts to the Carillo brothers, three Italian-American players who have grown up on the rough side of life. Sweet Fall pairs wide receiver Austin Carillo, pulled between gang loyalty and the NFL draft, with cheerleader Lexi Hart, who is fighting an eating disorder and the aftershocks of grief. Sweet Hope sends art curator Ally Prince to Seattle to work with a reclusive sculptor whose criminal past collides with her image of the perfect love story. Sweet Soul follows the youngest brother, shy Levi, as he quietly reaches out to Elsie, a homeless young woman who has forgotten what safety feels like.

Although the stories deliver the swoony hallmarks of sports romance—locker-room banter, big games, and found family in the locker room—they also spend serious time on trauma. Cole writes frankly about parental abuse, grief, mental illness, and poverty, letting her characters’ scars sit alongside banter and heat rather than disappear.

The books are closely connected, so they work best in series order, beginning with Sweet Home and running through to Sweet Soul. Secondary characters gradually move into the spotlight, and long-running threads about the Carillos’ past and Molly and Romeo’s future pay off across multiple instalments.

If you like emotional campus romance with intense family backstories, the Sweet Home world offers a complete arc, from first meeting in a lecture hall to hard-won adult happiness.