Most of my regular readers know that I don’t often read series. Mind you, there was a time that I read lots of them. But today, things have changed, even though sometimes I’ll read the first novel of a series in hopes of finding one in which I want to get invested. No, I’m not talking about books that looked like stand-alone novels, that ended up having sequels. What I’m talking about are the series that I started to read – knowing full well that there would be more books in the future – and then… stopped reading one point in time or another. Some of them flopped from the start, some fizzled out after a while, while others just got lost in the shuffle. Let’s see which ones are in each of these three categories.

When I started writing this, I didn’t realize just how many series I had begun reading and never finished. So, I’ve decided to do this in three separate posts. I’m starting with the category of:

Series that Got Lost in the Shuffle

Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot – Agathe Christie. Well, I guess this isn’t really fair to include these. I mean, ALL those books, you can’t really have expected me to have read them all, can you? Mind you, I did succeed in reading all of the Tommy & Tuppence books (novels and short stories), so give me some credit for that achievement! In the meanwhile, I’ve just added to my Book Depository “wish list” all of the five Superintendent Battle books that she wrote (I think I read the second one – The Seven Dials Mystery – but I might have seen it on TV, so I’m not sure!). What I love about Christie’s books is how her language is so deceptively simple, but so incredibly evocative, and she seems to know all of her investigators – both professional and amateur – intimately. This is one of the reasons why I’ve not been totally thrilled with many of the television and movie adaptations of these books; I see these novels played out in my head, and not all the actors they film match the characters I envision when I’m reading them.

Rebekah Roberts – Julia Dahl. I was an early reader of Dahl’s first two Rebekah Roberts books, “Invisible City” and “Run You Down,” both of which I enjoyed. However, her third book in the series published in 2017 flew totally under my radar, and I never got a chance to read it. What I found unique about these books was the insights that Dahl showed into the ultra-Orthodox communities of New York, which was something unique. Maybe I’ll find the third book and read it someday, because I am sure I’ll like it at least as much as the first two.

Elmwood Springs – Fannie Flagg. What a complete oversight this was! I read the first book in this series “Welcome to the World, Baby Girl” before I had this blog. Then in 2016 I saw the fourth book of the series, “The Whole Town’s Talking,” available as an ARC, and I was a bit shocked to get approval for it, and frankly didn’t even know it was part of a series. Despite this, it was such a fun read, and it didn’t even feel like I was missing anything by not having read the other three books. The thing is, now that I’ve read the ending, I’m not sure if I’ll go back to read what happened between book 1 and book 4.

Chocolat – Joanne Harris. Funny thing about this series, I originally thought that the two other books that were in this series were the ones that all take place in Lansquenet, a fictional village on the banks of the River Loire. By this I mean “Chocolat,” “Blackberry Wine,” and “Five Quarters of the Orange,” all of which I read and reviewed here. However, I was mistaken about this, and Harris did confirm that these three books were a type of series, but that they weren’t the “Chocolat” series – which follow from the characters of Chocolat, not the place it takes place. The actual eponymous series that stem from this novel include three books I never read, and I’m somewhat dismayed with myself for not knowing about them, or reading them. I really should right this wrong, but because I wasn’t thrilled with the era that Chocolat was set in, which made me like the movie more, I’m not sure how well the other books in this series would sit with me.

B.K. Troop – Allison Burnet. There are three books in this series, but they aren’t listed as such on Goodreads. The three books are “Christopher” – which I read, but never reviewed – “The House Beautiful,” and “Death by Sunshine.” While I liked Christopher, I preferred his stand-alone novels better (“Undiscovered Gyrl,” and “The Escape of Malcolm Poe”), so I never went back to read the other two novels in the series. Now I see that there’s a sequel to his “Undiscovered Gyrl” that came out in 2015, about which I never knew! (Aside from this, I’m ashamed to say that I never saw the film “Ask Me Anything” which he made out of his novel “Undiscovered Gyrl.”)

Wicked City – Beatriz Williams. The problem here was that I read the second one of this series, “Wicked Redhead,” and really loved her writing, so as soon as I could, I went on to read a stand-alone of hers. I know, I should have gone back to read the first one of the series, but I’ve just never gotten around to it. I loved the characters as well, and the era (roaring 20s) is one I like a whole lot, and want to read more about. I don’t see that she’s written a third book here, but it was obvious to me that she has every intention of doing so in the future. I can only hope that I’ll have read the first book before that happens, because unless I do, it will probably get lost in the shuffle.

Next time… Book Series that Flopped from the Start!