The Leap from Book 1 to Book 2 for Readers

The Leap from Book 1 to Book 2

I’m not here to talk about the difficulties of writing a book 2. I already ranted about that like ten times. No, I’m here to chat about reading sequels.

I’ll be totally honest, the only sequels I’ve read in the past five or six years have been from the Monster Hunter International series and The Hunger Games.

Last night I finished reading the book Cinder—Cinderella is a cyborg, a mechanic and much, much more. It was a great story. Very cool. I really liked it.

My hubby looked at the book on the table and asked when I was going to read the second one.

I mentally shrugged. I hadn’t thought about actually reading the second one. Like I said, it was a good book, the ending wasn’t a cliffhanger, but it led directly into the next one. I’m interested, just not enough to go out and buy or borrow book 2.

Since then, I’ve been wondering why. Why don’t I ever go on?

I’ll make a list, because I like making lists.

1-Volume. I write YA, therefore I need to read a lot of YA. Almost all YA books are part of a series these days, which is somewhat annoying. On the other hand, if you love, love the first book, then of course as a reader you want more. But I have a mountain of YA books waiting to be cracked open. I figure once I’ve read the first one in a series, that I get the gist of how the author writes and plots and presents their ideas. Time to move on.

2-Time. This pesky time thing is irritating, at the very least. There are only 24 hours in a day, and so many hours in a week and I work some of those and I have some devoted to writing and I have to entertain my hubby or he gets really weird and frightens the neighbors and if I don’t work-out not only do I get more chubby but I get grouchy and I do better when I go to a class and someone tells me what to do rather than self-motivating myself, I have a church calling that takes out one evening a week with awesomeness…so you see, there’s a lot going on. If I don’t adore a book, I won’t read the next one. Even if I thought it was great. Adore is different than great.

3-Interest. I like stories in all their forms, and if I’ve already guessed the end of the series before I’m finished with the first half of the first book, then why go on? YA is intricate, but it often relies on tropes that don’t get old as much as they get to be stale. Maybe that’s the same thing. However, I use tropes in my books—teenagers haven’t been introduced to all of the tropes, so this is totally fine. If my interest isn’t piqued, then I’ll move on to something else.

4-The Feel. This goes toward all of those dang dystopian books. If the feeling in the first book is dark, dank, dreary and morbid, then I probably won’t go on to the rest of the series. I like good endings. They don’t have to be perfect, but there needs to be something to smile about. If I’m not liking the feel of the book/series, then it’s kind of dead to me.

That’s my 2 cents worth.

What about you? Do you read a whole series? Why or why not?