The Way I Used To Be Books in Order

Amber Smith’s The Way I Used to Be series follows Eden McCrorey as she tries to survive the aftermath of sexual assault and reclaim a life that no longer feels like her own. It is contemporary young adult fiction that deals directly with trauma, shame, relationships, and the long, uneven work of healing.

The first book, The Way I Used to Be, begins when Eden is fourteen and her brother’s best friend, Kevin, assaults her. Eden does not tell the people closest to her. Instead, the story follows her through all four years of high school as she changes under the weight of what happened, pushing away family and friends while trying to act like everything is fine.

It is not a quick recovery story.

Eden’s inner life is at the center of the series. Her relationships with her parents, her brother, her best friend Mara, and Josh Miller, a boy she cares about deeply, all become harder to manage when she cannot explain what she is going through. The books pay attention to the everyday effects of trauma: anger, isolation, self-blame, panic, distrust, and the strange pressure of being expected to move on.

In The Way I Am Now, Eden has come forward publicly, and the story picks up as she prepares for college while the case against Kevin moves toward trial. Josh is also back in her life, and the novel uses both Eden’s and Josh’s perspectives to explore whether love can work when both people are carrying old pain. The focus remains on Eden’s choices and boundaries, not on a simple romance fixing what has been broken.

The series expands again in The Way We Become, which brings Eden together with Gen, Kevin’s former girlfriend, and Amanda, Kevin’s sister. After the legal process has changed all of their lives, each young woman has to decide what moving forward looks like on her own terms. Their paths are different, but all three are dealing with the gap between what other people expect after a crisis and what healing actually requires.

These are emotionally heavy books, with frank material involving sexual violence and its aftermath. But the series is also about speaking up, finding support, and learning that survival can take more than one shape. Readers should start with The Way I Used to Be, since every later book builds on Eden’s history and the consequences of her decision to tell the truth.