Six athletes. One condemned house. And the brilliant, overlooked women who bring them to their knees — first, hard, and out loud.
The Series
At 21 Foxglove Lane, six Hartwell University athletes share a falling-down Victorian they call the Locker — six bedrooms, a kitchen leak that keeps time at forty-one drips a minute, a group-chat bot nobody fully understands, a casserole-bearing landlady named Greta, and, taped to the door at the end of book one, a notice that the whole parcel is slated for demolition.
The clock on the house runs the length of one academic year, and so does the series: each book hands off to the next like a relay, the seasons turning hockey to football to baseball to swim to basketball to lacrosse while the wrecking ball gets closer. A captain who can’t read the playbook and the tutor who figures out why. A footballer and the astronomer who banned him from her observatory. Academic rivals chained to one lab bench. A frozen swimmer and the anonymous analyst who defended him. A botanist with a dangerous ex and the foster-alum who knows care from control. And, last, a brother’s best friend who has four years of “do not” undone in ninety seconds.
Every book is dual first-person, present tense, and the hero falls first — hard, and eventually out loud. The heroines are the academic-side counterweights who drive every solution. This is found-family college romance where the brain is the love language.
No cheating. No cliffhangers. A guaranteed happily-ever-after every single time.
What’s Included in This Package
The Six Books
Book One — Tutoring the Captain (Josie Mercer & Beck Carter)
“He’s the hockey captain who can’t read the playbook. She’s the only one who ever figured out why.”
Tutoring the Captain · Josie Mercer & Beck Carter
Beck Carter has hidden two things his whole life: that the words on a page fight him — dyslexia he’s never once said out loud — and that he’s never been loved without conditions. A failed Lit midterm is about to bench him for his final season, and the only person who can save it is Josie Mercer, the curvy writing-center tutor who sees straight through him by the end of the first session.
Josie doesn’t date jocks. She was somebody’s “starter girlfriend” once, the practice round before the real thing, and she can spot the setup. But Beck doesn’t want practice — he falls the second she laughs at a paperback, and he falls all the way. He just has to survive a compressed midterm, his father’s voice in his head, and the terror of letting the smartest girl on campus read the one thing he’s never let anyone see.
Jock-and-nerd instalove at its most tender — a hero who falls first and means it, a heroine who’s the catch and finally knows it, and a disability-rep arc that lands in a public reading scene worth the whole book. The series opener, and the night the demolition notice arrives.
Featured hooks · Jock & Nerd · He Falls First · Curvy Heroine · Hidden Disability (Dyslexia) · Found Family · Forced Proximity
Book Two — Falling for the Star (Wren Hollis & Dante Ruiz)
“She banned him from her observatory in ninety seconds. He came back with coffee and a five-year plan.”
Falling for the Star · Wren Hollis & Dante Ruiz
Wren Hollis runs the campus observatory and loves things best through a telescope — distance is the only safe way to adore anything. Then a football player breaks in at midnight, nearly destroys an eleven-thousand-dollar lens, and calls the most important instrument in her life “the big space tube.”
Dante Ruiz has been famous since he was fifteen and lonely exactly that long. When the observatory’s funding lands on the chopping block, he offers what he’s got: four hundred fans, star nights, a crowd through the door. He just didn’t plan on her funding review and the biggest game of his life landing on the same Saturday — or on falling so hard that being in two places at once starts to sound reasonable.
Sunshine-and-grump instalove with a himbo who’s secretly pre-med and a heroine learning to be seen up close. It pays off on a candlelit hill, a fifty-yard line, and an official star-chart correction that names a binary after the brightest thing in her sky.
Featured hooks · Sunshine & Grump · He Falls First · STEM Heroine · Forced Proximity · Opposites Attract · Hidden-Depths Hero
Book Three — Crushing My Rival (Amara Osei & Cole Whitaker)
“For three years she’s beaten him by tenths of a point. He’s been letting her think it was easy.”
Crushing My Rival · Amara Osei & Cole Whitaker
Amara Osei keeps receipts — every grade, every ranking, every tenth she’s earned twice over for half the credit, because that’s what it takes when you’re first in your family and the whole campus is waiting for you to slip. The fellowship that funds her future has her name on it. It also has one stone permanently in her shoe: Cole Whitaker, the baseball golden boy who keeps finishing one slot behind her without appearing to try.
Then the fellowship names them co-finalists, chains them to one lab bench, and grades them against each other. Up close, Cole’s secrets don’t survive a week — the 4.0 he’s hidden from his draft-obsessed family, the med-school plans packed under his glove, the fact that he’s been quietly losing to her on purpose. Rivals with benefits was supposed to change nothing. Now there’s one fellowship, two futures, and an integrity review with both their names on it.
Academic rivals-to-lovers at its smartest — a hidden-genius jock, a first-gen heroine who refuses to win with an asterisk, and a couple who’d rather redesign the contest than let it manufacture a loser between them. It ends with a ring in a pipette-tip box and nobody losing anything that mattered.
Featured hooks · Academic Rivals to Lovers · Lab Partners / Forced Proximity · Curvy Heroine · Secret-Genius Jock · He Falls First · First-Gen Heroine
Book Four — Faking It with the Swimmer (Junie Park & Theo Lindqvist)
“The whole internet has seen the worst eleven seconds of his life. Only one person ever defended him — and he has no idea she’s the girl taping sensors to his starting block at midnight.”
Faking It with the Swimmer · Junie Park & Theo Lindqvist
Theo Lindqvist froze on the blocks at the Olympic trials on live television, and the clip has followed him ever since. The only kind thing anyone ever said about it came from an anonymous analyst who broke it down frame by frame and called it disciplined. He’s memorized that video like scripture.
Junie Park has one rule: never be findable. She got doxxed once, and once was a pizza she didn’t order and her mother’s address in a comment section. So when a blurry photo turns her and the swim captain into a campus mystery, fake-dating the quiet giant is the safest cover she can build. Except Theo means every fake kiss — and the closer he gets, the more certain he becomes that his fake girlfriend and the voice that saved his life are the same person.
Fake-dating instalove with a flat-voiced cinnamon-roll hero, a hidden-genius heroine, and a man who guards her secret with his own name. It earns a press-conference reckoning, a finals-week sign only eleven people on earth could read, and a silver medal that beats gold.
Featured hooks · Fake Dating · Secret Identity · He Falls First · Hidden-Genius Heroine · Cinnamon-Roll Hero · Mental-Health Rep
Book Five — Guarding the Good Girl (Mabel Foster & Jaylen Brooks)
“He memorized her watering schedule before he learned her last name. He’d burn the world down for her. She’d rather he hold her coffee while she does it herself.”
Guarding the Good Girl · Mabel Foster & Jaylen Brooks
Jaylen Brooks survived eleven foster placements by one rule: don’t want anything, and nothing gets taken. Then mandatory service hours put a laminated watering schedule in his hands and a curvy botanist in his eyeline, and the quietest man at Hartwell breaks his own rule by Tuesday.
But someone got to Mabel Foster’s greenhouse first — an ex who never raised his voice, just rearranged her until she couldn’t trust her own judgment, and who’s transferred to Hartwell to finish the job. Mabel rebuilt herself in that greenhouse one repotting at a time, and she is done being pruned to fit anyone’s planter. She doesn’t need a bodyguard. She needs someone who knows the difference between being cared for and being controlled.
A protector romance done right — a touch-her-and-die hero who never once acts instead of her, and a survivor heroine who files the order, wires the trap, and testifies herself. Care, not control; the system, not fists.
Featured hooks · Protector Hero · Curvy Heroine · He Falls First · Care vs. Control · Foster-Care-Alum Hero · Coercive-Control Survivor
Book Six — My Brother’s Best Friend (Sadie Carter & Luca Moretti) · Series Capstone
“He’s spent four years not looking at his best friend’s little sister. She just got off the train and gave him about ninety seconds.”
My Brother’s Best Friend · Sadie Carter & Luca Moretti
Luca Moretti has two skills: scoring goals and doing bits — and he’s used both to hide one thing for four years. Beck Carter took him in when his own family’s restaurant went dark, made him a brother. You do not repay a table like that by falling for the man’s little sister. So Luca filed it under never. Then Beck hands him a “babysitting” favor, and Sadie Carter steps off the train, reads his mask like a museum label, and calls him on it in a day.
Sadie grew up invisible next to a golden-boy brother and crossed a county line to stop being the thing people set aside to keep the peace. She’ll keep Luca’s secrets; she will not BE one. He has until her exhibition opens to say the loud thing — or watch her walk into the light without him. The house they all love is coming down. A restaurant with his name on it is waiting to come back.
Closes the series — a townie hero who finally gets loud, a heroine who refuses to be a secret, and a museum exhibition that turns the Locker’s last season into the most public declaration of all. The demolition lands, the time capsule comes up, six bricks come home, and Moretti’s reopens. All six couples, accounted for.
Featured hooks · Brother’s Best Friend · Forbidden / Off-Limits · He Falls First · She Falls Too · Townie-on-Scholarship Hero · Series Finale
Series Tropes
Series Details
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What You Get
R4 000,00
1 in stock
