Tackling Romance Books in Order

Tackling Romance is Kathleen Kelly's sports-romance lane, and it gives her room to trade biker compounds and outlaw wars for football fame, media pressure, and very public relationships. The emotional style is still recognizably hers. The heroes are confident and protective, the attraction lands fast, and the couples still have to work through fear, pride, and messy life circumstances before they get anything like peace.

The big difference is the atmosphere.

These books live in a world of pro football schedules, headlines, fans, and the strange pressure that comes with being watched. In Tackling Love, quarterback Colton Anders crashes into Skye Hadley's quieter life and pulls her into exactly that spotlight. She is not built for celebrity chaos, which gives the romance some of its best tension. The chemistry is there, but so is the question of whether everyday life can survive the circus around a star athlete.

Tackling Life keeps the football setting but shifts the emotional weight. This time the story leans more into second-chance territory, with old feelings, unfinished hurt, and life-changing secrets returning to the surface. That makes the series feel a little broader than a simple athlete-meets-normal-girl setup. Kelly is still interested in the way public lives strain private relationships, but she also uses the sports frame to talk about timing, regret, and whether people can come back to each other after years apart.

Another useful thing to know is that Tackling Romance is lighter in texture than Kelly's MC books, but not weightless. You may get fewer bullets and fewer club wars, yet there is still plenty of emotional urgency. She writes these couples with the same instinct for momentum that she brings to her biker series. The books move quickly, and the outside world keeps pressing in.

Because the series is short, it works well for readers who want to sample Kelly without committing to a long connected world. You still get the familiar hallmarks, alpha energy, strong attraction, and people learning how to trust, but the setting is easier, brighter, and more recognizably contemporary.

So if MC romance is not your first stop, or if you want a break from club politics without leaving Kelly's style behind, this is a good series to try. Start with Tackling Love, then move to Tackling Life for a more emotional, second-chance follow-up.