Below is the complete list of Elle Kennedy’s Him books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
Him Books
with Sarina Bowen
About Him
Elle Kennedy’s Him series, co-written with Sarina Bowen, is a compact hockey romance built around one central relationship and the emotional consequences that follow from it. On Kennedy’s official site, the series is grouped around Him, Us, and the later novella Epic, and that small scale is part of its strength. Instead of spreading its energy across a huge cast or an overbuilt fictional mythology, the series stays closely focused on Jamie Canning and Ryan Wesley, letting the books deepen one partnership rather than constantly shifting to new couples.
What makes these books stand out is the balance between sports-romance momentum and real emotional intimacy. Hockey matters, but it is not there just as branding. The athletic world gives the series structure, pressure, and a believable environment for male friendship, competition, career ambition, and public identity. Within that setting, Kennedy and Bowen build a romance that begins in the long shadow of friendship and unspoken history. That foundation gives the series a different feel from a more conventional opposites-attract setup. The emotional core is not simply attraction, but recognition: two people who already know each other well enough to wound each other, and eventually well enough to build something lasting.
Him remains the book that defines the series’ identity. Its summer-hockey-camp history and second-chance friendship structure give the story unusual warmth beneath the tension. Us then broadens the emotional scope without losing that intimacy, moving past the first rush of reunion and into questions of visibility, career, and what it actually means to sustain a relationship once it becomes real in everyday life. Epic, as a novella, functions less as a major structural expansion than as a return to characters readers already know deeply, offering another look at a relationship that has become the heart of a small but very beloved series.
Another reason the series has endured is tone. These books are witty, sexy, and fast-moving, but they are not flimsy. Kennedy and Bowen write Jamie and Wes with enough affection and emotional clarity that the relationship never feels like a premise in search of heat. The banter is sharp, the chemistry is immediate, and the hockey setting gives the books energy, yet what lingers is the sense of two people gradually learning how to stop performing around each other. That is why the Him series feels bigger than its page count might suggest. It is not trying to be an endless hockey universe. It is a concentrated romance about friendship, desire, partnership, and the way one relationship can carry an entire series when the writing trusts its characters enough to stay close to them.