Taking Chances (Molly McAdams) Books in Order

Taking Chances is one of Molly McAdams's most talked-about worlds for a reason. It starts with a familiar new adult setup, a sheltered girl leaves home for college, meets beautiful people, discovers freedom, and then turns that setup into something far more raw and volatile.

Harper is the center of the first book, Taking Chances. She arrives at San Diego State ready to get out from under her strict Marine father and finally live like a normal eighteen-year-old. Instead, she falls into a tight friend group and then into a painful tangle with two very different men, Brandon and Chase. The emotional stakes get huge, quickly.

This series runs on big feelings. Love comes fast, loyalties shift, friendships get tested, and moments that seem like ordinary college drama suddenly carry life-changing weight. If you like tidy, low-conflict romance, this is not that. McAdams leans into mess, heartbreak, and the way one choice can echo through several books.

Stealing Harper takes the core story and retells it from Chase's point of view, which changes the emotional balance more than you might expect. It is not just a replay. It is a deeper look at obsession, jealousy, guilt, and the damage done when three people want different versions of the same future.

The series then widens. Trusting Liam moves into the orbit of Liam Taylor and Kennedy Ryan, connecting this world with the Forgiving Lies books while keeping the same emotional intensity. Stealing Chances does something even stranger and more playful, asking what might happen if reality itself shifted and a different life suddenly looked true. That book works because readers already know how much these characters are haunted by the paths they did take.

This is a series that likes to hurt a little before it heals.

Across the books, the appeal is not just the romance. It is the feeling of being young, reckless, certain, and completely wrong all at once. College apartments, late-night confessions, family pressure, found-family loyalty, and second chances all matter here. So does the question that keeps coming back: when your heart wants one thing and your life is already moving toward another, what do you do next?

Start with Taking Chances, then decide whether you want the alternate angle of Stealing Harper right away or want to keep moving through the wider circle. Either way, expect angst, chemistry, twists, and characters who make decisions with their whole hearts. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes it absolutely does not.