How many books are there in My Life with the Walter Boys?
Two on the shelf, one in the drawer, and a third that exists mostly as a rumor with a release year attached.
Every time the Netflix show drops a new season, the same question floods every group chat I'm in: okay, but how many books are there, and are they better.
Short answer: two published books, a scrapped Wattpad sequel that never made it to print, and a third book that book-tracking sites have listed as "2026, details TBA" for months without a title.
Book one: the one that started it
My Life with the Walter Boys was written by Ali Novak when she was fifteen. Fifteen. She posted it to Wattpad in 2010, it blew up, and Sourcebooks Fire put it in print in 2014. Jackie Howard, orphaned New York overachiever, gets shipped to a Colorado ranch full of Walter boys and one Walter girl, and spends 350-odd pages being torn between Cole and Alex.
Novak has said Jackie was basically Blair Waldorf if Blair were nice, and that the big-family energy came from her own enormous family plus movies like Cheaper by the Dozen. It shows.
Book two: the one fans waited a decade for
My Return to the Walter Boys came out April 15, 2025, and hit the New York Times bestseller list. Jackie's back at the ranch after a summer in New York, Cole is living in town working at Tony's garage, and nobody has resolved anything because that would end the book.
When Novak announced it in 2024, she was clear that she didn't need to be talked into it. Of the sequel, she told Today: "I've always wanted to write it."
Ten years between books one and two. Cole Walter has been living in his own cliffhanger longer than some of the show's fans have been alive.
The book that got binned
Here's the part the Netflix-only crowd doesn't know. Novak wrote a sequel back in the Wattpad days, called My Life as a Walter Boy, and posted it online. When she went to Sourcebooks, she and her editor agreed it was the wrong sequel and shelved it. So there's a ghost book out there, and My Return is the do-over.
About that third book
Various book databases list a "Book 3" for 2026 with no title, no cover and no blurb. I could not find an actual announcement from Novak or her publisher, so file this under "probably, eventually" rather than "pre-order now." If it lands, I'll be as surprised as you and considerably louder.
The books versus the show
Do not go into the novels expecting the show, or vice versa. Novak has been blunt that the two are separate animals now. On the show's second season, she told Deadline: "They've just taken different directions." A lot of book one never made it to screen, and none of book two was written for season two.
Quick cheat sheet:
- Book count: two published (2014, 2025), one scrapped Wattpad draft, one unconfirmed third.
- Show count: season one (December 2023), season two (August 2025), season three confirmed.
- Team: Novak has admitted she's Team Cole, at least where the books are concerned. Draw your own conclusions about where the series is headed.
The show and the books share a cast of names and a ranch. Everything else is negotiable.
If you're reading them, start with book one, read book two, and then go find the Wattpad ghost sequel purely for the archaeology of it. Nobody said this had to be efficient.
