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Series · sports romance

Ballers and Babes

by Lauren Blakely

The Ballers and Babes series by Lauren Blakely has 4 known books (4 published) and is best read in publication order, starting with Most Irresistible Guy (2018). The latest book with a fully recorded publication date is A Wild Card Kiss.

Books
4 known books (2 novels + 2 novellas)
Published
4
First published
2018
Status
ongoing
Shelved under
Romance
Last checked

Start here: Most Irresistible Guy (2018) — then read straight through in publication order.

Book one

Most Irresistible Guy (2018)

Reading order

The date order of published books and any announced future entries — the default way to read the series.

  1. Most Irresistible Guy

    Novella

    Most Irresistible Guy, a prequel novella published January 11, 2018, introduces Cooper and Violet ahead of Most Valuable Playboy: a long-running friendship between the two shifts into something more across pivotal moments, including a wedding and Cooper sharing the news that he's won his starting quarterback job.

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  2. Most Valuable Playboy

    Novel

    Most Valuable Playboy opens the Ballers and Babes series. Originally self-published September 1, 2017, it was reissued by Sourcebooks Casablanca on February 18, 2025 at 336 pages: a young quarterback who needs a fake girlfriend for a charity auction turns to Violet, his best friend's sister, in this friends-to-lovers sports romance.

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  3. A Wild Card Night

    Novella

    A Wild Card Night, published February 7, 2022, is the prequel novella to A Wild Card Kiss, introducing Katie and Harlan shortly before the full-length novel that follows their story.

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  4. A Wild Card Kiss

    Novel

    A Wild Card Kiss, originally self-published February 25, 2022 and reissued by Sourcebooks Casablanca on December 2, 2025 (320 pages) as Ballers and Babes Book 3, follows Katie Madigan -- who catches her groom kissing someone else minutes before her own wedding -- and Harlan Taylor, a local football hero she meets that same night, whose lives collide again when his team hires her yoga studio.

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About the Ballers and Babes series

Ballers and Babes is Lauren Blakely's football-world sports romance series, opening with Most Valuable Playboy (originally self-published September 2017) and continuing with A Wild Card Kiss, a single-dad second-chance romance originally self-published in February 2022 under a different series label before Sourcebooks Casablanca folded it into this series with a December 2025 reissue. Each full-length entry is a standalone romance connected by a shared pro-football setting and overlapping side characters, bracketed by short prequel novellas (Most Irresistible Guy ahead of book one, A Wild Card Night ahead of book three).

The series has had a complicated publishing history typical of Blakely's large backlist: Sourcebooks Casablanca has been reissuing selected self-published titles under new print editions, and at least one former Ballers and Babes entry, Most Likely to Score, has since been moved by the author into her separate Dating Games series and is not tracked here as part of this one.

Frequently asked questions

What order should I read the Ballers and Babes series in?

By series number: the prequel novella Most Irresistible Guy (0.5), then Most Valuable Playboy (Book 1), the prequel novella A Wild Card Night (2.5), then A Wild Card Kiss (Book 3). Each full-length book also works as a standalone.

Is Most Likely to Score part of the Ballers and Babes series?

Not anymore. Lauren Blakely's own site states it was originally released in Ballers and Babes but has since been moved into her separate Dating Games series, so it isn't tracked here.

Are the Ballers and Babes books connected to each other?

They're linked standalones sharing a pro-football world and overlapping side characters -- Most Valuable Playboy's Cooper and Violet, A Wild Card Kiss's Katie and Harlan -- but each couple's romance is self-contained within its own book.

Reading order last verified .