Below is the complete list of Riley Thorn books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series by Lucy Score.
Riley Thorn Series
- The Dead Guy Next Door (2020)
- Corpse in the Closet (2021)
- Blast from the Past (2022)
- The Body in the Backyard (2024)
About Riley Thorn Series
Lucy Score’s Riley Thorn books are some of her most distinctive romances because they lean harder into mystery, chaos, and screwball energy than her more purely small-town love stories. This is not a straightforward contemporary-romance series with a different couple in each book. It is a continuing romantic-mystery line built around Riley Thorn herself, a woman whose life is already unruly before dead bodies, psychic gifts, and a very determined private investigator begin making it even messier. The series currently runs as a four-book sequence, which gives it a stronger ongoing arc than many of Score’s linked standalones.
The first book matters more than usual because it establishes almost everything that gives the series its identity. Riley is not a sleek amateur sleuth or a polished romantic heroine. She is funny, frazzled, stubborn, and deeply unsuited to a quiet life. That is exactly why she works. The books thrive on the collision between her chaotic instinct for involvement and the criminal situations she keeps stumbling into. From the beginning, the series makes it clear that Riley’s world is going to be part mystery, part romance, and part escalating disaster.
Publication order is the best way to read these books because this is a true continuing series, not a set of isolated capers. The relationship at the center develops across the books rather than resetting from one installment to the next, and the recurring cast becomes a major part of the pleasure. Riley’s family, neighbors, and the wider circle around her are not just comic extras. They create the lived-in, unhinged atmosphere that makes the series feel bigger than a simple romantic subplot attached to a murder investigation. The books get funnier and more satisfying once that world is already familiar.
Another strength of the series is tone. Lucy Score is clearly drawing on romantic comedy here, but she also lets the books tilt into paranormal and mystery territory without losing emotional momentum. That mix is what makes Riley Thorn stand apart in her bibliography. These novels are not trying to be dark thrillers, and they are not gentle cozies either. They sit in a middle space where danger is real, the romance matters, and the comedy comes from character rather than from undercutting the stakes. Riley’s particular kind of chaos drives that balance. She is the sort of heroine who can make a crime scene, a family disaster, and a romantic standoff all feel like part of the same bad day.
The ongoing romantic thread is also one of the biggest reasons order matters. In many Lucy Score series, each book focuses on a new couple, so readers can move around more freely. Riley Thorn is different. The emotional payoff depends on staying with Riley herself and letting her relationship evolve alongside the mysteries. The books are much more rewarding when read as one continuous line because the romance, humor, and danger are all built on accumulation.
For readers who already have the list above, the best way to think about Riley Thorn is as Lucy Score in her most chaotic, mystery-heavy, and character-driven mode. Read in publication order, the books become more than a string of funny romantic mysteries. They turn into a full running story about one gloriously overwhelmed heroine, the trouble that keeps finding her, and the love story stubborn enough to survive all of it.