Bergman Brothers
romance
Series · romance
Tough Love
The Tough Love series by Chloe Liese has 4 books and is best read in publication order, starting with He's a Brute (2019).
- Books
- 4 books
- First published
- 2019
- Status
- completed
- Last checked
Start here: He's a Brute (2019) — then read straight through in publication order.
Reading order
The order the books were released — the default way to read the series.
- Book 1:
He's a Brute
Alternative text for cover: Cover of He's a Brute - Book 2:
She's a Spitfire
Alternative text for cover: Cover of She's a Spitfire - Book 3:
They're a Match
Alternative text for cover: Cover of They're a Match - Book 4:
They're Strictly Friends
Alternative text for cover: Cover of They're Strictly Friends
About the Tough Love series
Tough Love is Chloe Liese's first published series, self-released in 2019 before she moved to traditional publishing with Bergman Brothers and the Wilmot Sisters. It's a set of contemporary romances built on abrasive, opposites-collide pairings — the title says the tone: gruff, guarded leads paired with love interests who refuse to be steamrolled. He's a Brute opens the series with a controlling, hard-edged hero and a scientist heroine who agrees to an emphatically no-strings arrangement that neither of them keeps to the rules of for long. She's a Spitfire and They're a Match continue the pattern with new couples trading barbed banter that curdles into something warmer, while the spinoff They're Strictly Friends takes the closest platonic pairing left standing and pushes it across the same line. Liese's now-signature ingredients are already present in embryo here — own-voices disability and neurodivergent representation, blunt communication between leads once the walls come down, and humor that leans dry rather than cute — but the prose and pacing are noticeably rawer than her later, more polished Berkley-published work.
For readers who came to Liese through Bergman Brothers or the Wilmot Sisters, Tough Love is worth knowing about as her origin point rather than a required starting place: it shows where her voice began before six more years of published romance sanded down its edges.
How to read this series
Read in publication order: He's a Brute, She's a Spitfire, They're a Match, then the spinoff They're Strictly Friends. The first three follow different couples in loosely the same social circle, and the spinoff pulls a secondary pairing from those books into their own romance, so it reads best last. None of the four requires reading Liese's other series first or is required reading for Bergman Brothers or the Wilmot Sisters — Tough Love is a self-contained, separate world.
Frequently asked questions
How many books are in the Tough Love series?
Four: He's a Brute, She's a Spitfire, and They're a Match, plus the spinoff They're Strictly Friends, all originally self-published in 2019.
What order should I read the Tough Love books in?
Publication order: He's a Brute, She's a Spitfire, They're a Match, then They're Strictly Friends, which is a spinoff pulling a secondary couple from the first three books.
Is Tough Love connected to Chloe Liese's Bergman Brothers or Wilmot Sisters series?
No — it's an earlier, separate self-published series with its own unconnected cast, published in 2019 before those later series.
Is Tough Love a good starting point for Chloe Liese's books?
It's her earliest published work rather than her most polished — most readers new to Liese are better served starting with Bergman Brothers or the Wilmot Sisters, then coming back to Tough Love as an origin point.
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Reading order last verified .