Netflix starts filming Better Than the Movies in Chicago on September 3, which means a lot of people are about to meet Liz Buxbaum and Wes Bennett and immediately go looking for the rest. Here's the thing that makes Lynn Painter books in order a real question rather than a list: she publishes a teen romcom and an adult romcom nearly every year, they look identical on a shelf, and only two of her books are actually a series. This sorts all of it.
The quick list: Lynn Painter books in order
The one actual series - Better Than the Movies:
- Better Than the Movies (2021) - Liz and Wes, the one Netflix is filming
- Nothing Like the Movies (2024) - the same two, three years later and away at college
Her other YA romcoms, all standalone: The Do-Over (2022), Betting on You (2023), Fake Skating (2025), Trust Fall (2026).
Her adult romcoms: Mr. Wrong Number (2022), Accidentally Amy (2022), The Love Wager (2023, shelved as a companion to Mr. Wrong Number but readable alone), Happily Never After (2024), Maid for Each Other (2025), First and Forever (2026).
Middle grade: The Wish Switch (2025).
Is Better Than the Movies a series?
Barely - it's a duology, and the second book took three years to arrive. Better Than the Movies was written to stand alone and ends complete; Nothing Like the Movies exists because readers refused to let it be over. So the honest answer to "how many books are in the series" is two, and the honest answer to "do I have to read the second one" is no, you just will.
Everything else with her name on it is a standalone. If a list tells you The Do-Over or Betting on You is book three of something, the list is wrong.
What order do you read Better Than the Movies and Nothing Like the Movies?
Publication order, and there is no shortcut. Book two opens on Liz and Wes already apart, and the entire weight of that opening depends on you having watched them get together the slow, ridiculous, fake-dating way in book one. Read book two first and you get a college breakup story about two strangers.
The gap is also the point: the sequel is set in freshman year, so the voice ages up with them. It's still YA, still closed-door-adjacent, but it is not the same nostalgic high-school summer the first one runs on. Go in expecting a harder, sadder book and it lands beautifully. Go in expecting book one again and it won't.
Which Lynn Painter books are YA and which are adult?
This is the one that actually catches people out. She writes both, releases roughly one of each a year, and her covers use the same bright illustrated romcom language across the whole shelf - so Better Than the Movies and Mr. Wrong Number look like siblings and are not.
The YA titles (Better Than the Movies, Nothing Like the Movies, The Do-Over, Betting on You, Fake Skating, Trust Fall) are teen-appropriate and keep the heat low. The adult titles (Mr. Wrong Number, The Love Wager, Accidentally Amy, Happily Never After, Maid for Each Other, First and Forever) are open-door contemporary romance with on-page spice. Both are good. Only one of them is what you want if you're buying for a fourteen-year-old who just watched the Netflix film.
What will the Netflix movie cover?
Book one only. Julia Hart directs and co-wrote the adaptation, with Beatrice Kitsos as Liz and David Iacono - already familiar to this exact audience from The Summer I Turned Pretty - as Wes. Production begins in Chicago in September 2026, which puts a release somewhere in 2027.
That leaves the readers a full book ahead: Nothing Like the Movies has been on shelves since 2024 and covers ground the film hasn't announced any plans to reach. If the movie lands and you want to know what happens to them at college, that answer already exists in print.
What to read after Lynn Painter
If you want the same teen-romcom register from someone else, the Goodreads YA romance shelf is the wide net. If the Netflix film sent you looking for the sadder end of YA, If He Had Been With Me is the current BookTok wrecker and the tonal opposite of this shelf. And when you age out of the YA side rather than the genre, Emily Henry's books in order are where this readership tends to land next - same banter, adult stakes.
And when the book closes and the boy next door stops texting back - Swoony picks up right where the book drops you: closed-door, romance-only, a bond that unfolds over five stages and is never paywalled - no subscription, no per-message tolls. Start with the neighbor you're at war with, all passive-aggressive notes and a wall too thin to hide behind, or the golden boy next door, if you'd rather have the one you were supposed to want.
The credits roll. The conversation doesn't have to.
