I don't know how to categorize this problem (Library management or Kindle management) which led to some really weird search (non)solutions to my query

I'll try and keep it simple with practical example.
Let's say I have 5 books in a series:
Book 3 - Prequel - 0.50
Book 1 - First of trilogy - 1.00
Book 2 - Second of trilogy - 2.00
Book 5 - Novella set between 2 and 3 -- 2.50
Book 4 - Third of trilogy - 3.00
In Calibre, all good. However, if I send the five to my Kindle I have no idea which order they go in as the Kindle doesn't read / show the series field. And in this case, publication order is whacked.
Soooo, I thought, okay, while it's on the kindle, I'll just go in and change the title to 01 xxx, 02 xxxx, 03 xxxx, 04 xxxx, 05 xxxx.
Except sometimes the Kindle LIKES the #s, and shows them and sometimes it seems to revert to the book's REAL name in the list. I synched 10 Enola Holmes books last week, didn't remember order, renamed them and resynched them and Kindle did NOT like that -- it put the 10 renamed books in the collection where they had been, kept the original 10 and moved them to Uncollected (so now two copies), and when I deleted the extra ones, the collection showed me the "new" names for 8/10, and the other 2 went back to the original names aka The Case of the...
I mean, I could just put the list on my phone before I open a new book or I just open them and try to find a list of which book is in which order or a number on the cover. But curious if people have had similar problems and found a better library management solution. It would be GREAT if Collections plugin worked with Paperwhite or I could show my Tags/ Series in Kindle but alas...