The Obsession Books in Order

The Obsession line showcases Jesse Q Sutanto’s darker young adult side, where crushes curdle into fixation and teenagers learn just how dangerous it can be to live your life under constant surveillance. These stories lean toward thriller territory, but they are grounded in everyday settings like school hallways, libraries, and quiet suburban streets.

In The Obsession, everything begins with a boy who thinks he is in love and a girl who barely knows he exists. Logan is grieving the death of a former girlfriend and becomes fixated on Delilah, a new senior at his Northern California private school who reminds him of what he lost. He studies her social media, installs hidden cameras, and convinces himself that he is being romantic rather than predatory. Delilah, meanwhile, is dealing with an abusive police-officer stepfather and a mother who feels trapped and fragile. She is not the soft, helpless girl Logan imagines.

When Logan’s secret watching uncovers something shocking about Delilah’s home life, he suddenly holds evidence that could destroy her family’s fragile stability. What he sees convinces him that they now share a dark secret and are bound together forever. From there the book becomes a cat-and-mouse game between two teens who both refuse to be victims, each willing to twist the other’s weaknesses to survive. Sutanto alternates their perspectives, letting readers sit uncomfortably close to both the stalker and the girl he underestimates.

Rather than offering a simple good versus evil story, the book digs into how abuse, racism, and power imbalances play out in relationships. It questions the way pop culture often dresses stalking up as grand romance and asks what people who have been harmed are allowed to do in order to protect themselves. There are plenty of twists, but the tension comes as much from shifting moral ground as from jump scares.

The Obsession sits alongside The New Girl and Sutanto’s other teen thrillers as part of an informal group of books about dangerous schools, gossip apps, and the way systems fail the kids who do not fit. Each one tells a self-contained story with new characters and settings, so you can start anywhere, but they share an interest in who gets believed, who gets blamed, and how far someone might go to escape a life that feels like a trap.

Readers who enjoy fast, twisty YA thrillers with morally complicated leads will find a lot to chew on here. The tone is darker than in Sutanto’s romcoms or cozy mysteries, yet the same sharp humor and interest in social issues still peek through, making these books both gripping and thought provoking.