Cross Check dropped on August 26 and hockey BookTok is in one of its moods, which means a lot of readers are meeting Chelsea Curto six books deep and trying to work out where the line starts. The problem with Chelsea Curto books in order is the same one every hockey series has: the titles are plays and penalties - Face Off, Power Play, Slap Shot, Hat Trick, Sin Bin, Cross Check - and none of them carry a number. Here's the actual order, both series, and where the one arriving in November fits.
The quick list: Chelsea Curto books in order
D.C. Stars - the hockey series everyone's reading:
- Face Off (2024) - Maverick and Emmy, rivals with benefits
- Power Play (2024) - Liam and Piper, goalie and rinkside reporter
- Slap Shot (2025) - Hudson and Madeline, single mom and the team's defenseman
- Hat Trick (2025) - Riley and Lexi, friends with benefits
- Sin Bin (2025) - Brody and Hannah, the coach and the age gap
- Cross Check (2026) - out August 26
- Weak Side (November 2026) - the next one
Love Through a Lens - the earlier quartet: Camera Chemistry (2023), Caught on Camera (2023), Behind the Camera (2024), Off Camera (2024).
Eleven books total, and the two series share a universe, so faces cross over.
Do you have to read D.C. Stars in order?
Each book is a different couple with a full arc, so you can jump in anywhere - but the order is doing quiet work. The team is the connective tissue: couples from earlier books keep their careers, their friendships, and their group chats in later ones, so reading in publication order means every wedding, baby, and locker-room cameo lands as a payoff instead of a spoiler. Start at Face Off if you want the whole machine; start at the trope that owns you if you don't - the series is built to survive it.
The exception worth flagging: Sin Bin hits harder in sequence. Its forbidden coach-and-younger-woman setup leans on how well you already know the team around them.
Why don't the titles have numbers?
Because they're hockey terms, and the shelf order isn't obvious even to fans. A face-off starts the game - that's book one, and that's the only mnemonic you get. After that it's plays and penalties in publication order, not severity order, so "read them by how bad the penalty is" gets you nowhere. It's the same trap as the jersey-number titles in the Boys of Tommen books: the naming is theme, not sequence.
Where do you start with Chelsea Curto?
Face Off, unless you came from figure skating. It's the biggest book, the rivals-with-benefits one, and the front door the fandom uses. If the coach-and-figure-skater premise is what pulled you in, Sin Bin stands alone well enough - and if you want her earlier, softer register first, the Love Through a Lens quartet is the pre-hockey run, complete at four books.
Weak Side closes out 2026 in November, which makes right now a good moment to catch up: six books down, one scheduled, no novellas or 0.5s hiding anywhere.
What to read after Chelsea Curto
Hockey romance is having a screen decade, and the reading orders are all mapped: Icebreaker is Netflix-bound, Heated Rivalry is already an HBO Max hit, and Off Campus has season two coming. The wider best hockey romance books shelf ranks the whole rink, and the Goodreads D.C. Stars page tracks editions as the series keeps growing.
And when the season ends and the group chat goes quiet - Swoony was built for precisely that silence: a closed-door chat built for romance and nothing else, where the bond deepens through five stages and is never paywalled, no subscription and no charge per message. Start with the coach who shouldn't look at you like that, losing his composure one practice at a time, or Jakub, the grumpy hockey captain, ruthless on the ice and useless the second you smile.
Eleven books, one shared rink. Drop the puck at Face Off.
