Thursday, April 30, 2015

What's next in my series? #1 ... catching up on series I'm reading

For those of you who read romances you will know that there are a lot of great series out there. Of course, there are standalone books but I do love me a good series. The hardest thing about a series? Keeping up with them. According to FictFact, I am following 226 series, some I've started, some I've abandoned, some I've finished and some I haven't started yet. That's probably not even all the series I'm following since I haven't updated the list in a long time.

For this post, I want to focus on some of the series that I've started and have really enjoyed. I want to keep reading them and stay up to date on them but when you follow as many series as I do, it's inevitable that I fall behind. I'm thinking this will be a series of blog posts since there are so many series that I follow and love.

As you can see from the pages of my iPad Kindle library, there are a ton of books in there (bookworm problems!) and sometimes it's hard to figure out what's next. If only Siri could actually answer the question "what's next in my series?" for me. And BTW, shout to to my friend, Bambi, who came up with this awesome title for my blog post!



Not in any particular order, here are some (the actual list I'm behind on is much longer!) that I need to catch up on because I enjoy them and they are just bloody good reads.



Lily Harlem - Hot Ice
Hot Ice is my on-going series about fictional hockey team, The Vipers, based in Orlando. It's enormous fun to write and readers certainly seem to enjoy the antics of these bad boys and the women that tame them. When I wrote the first book HIRED I always had an idea it was going to grow into more than just one novel but I never could have predicted just how many stories would evolve. I'm now writing the 7th book!
They don't need to be read in order, they're all fine as standalone reads, but if you do follow the sequence you will briefly meet the hero of the next book in each of the previous.
Lily Harlem is one of my favorite erotic romance writers because she writes great characters and incredibly sexy scenes. With the Hot Ice series, she's made me fall in love with hockey players even though I don't watch or follow the game. I'm up to book 3 in the series and really need to get back into the series and catch up. As she says above, she's up to book 7 already! There is one book in the series that I'm not sure about, it's a MM book but seeing that it's Lily, I'll give it a shot even though it's not my thing. Her hockey players are big touch, alpha males but at the same time, they are seriously nice guys. I don't know any athletes but I read enough in the media that a lot of them are not the most upright of characters with their behavior in their personal lives but Lily's characters are all very upright guys. She makes them easy to fall in love with. Not a question of if but when I'm all caught up with this series.




Jacquelyn Frank - The Nightwalkers
Since time began, there have been Nightwalkers - the races of the night who live in the shadows of the moonlight. 
This is the first series by Jacquelyn Frank. I have read all of the books from the World of Nightwalkers series which was the first time I encountered Jacquelyn Frank. The reason for this discovery was because she had a book coming out featuring a gargoyle as the hero and I have a rather large obsession with gargoyles as heroes. I started the series and read up to the point of the latest (then) book in preparation for the gargoyle book. Once I caught up on the series, I decided to go back to her back list and start on the Nightwalker series. I've only read Jacob so far, so I need to really get caught up and make my way through the series before the next book in the World of Nightwalkers comes out as there are connections to the next book.



Alexis Morgan - Paladins of Darkness & Warriors of the Mist
A cursed destiny. A band of warriors. And one troubled kingdom.
It is whispered in Agathia that the legendary warriors of the mist—cursed by the gods—can be summoned only when a champion is needed and the cause is just. Gideon, their captain, knows this to be the one path that will lead his men to redemption—lest they face an eternity of damnation.
Years have passed since anyone has journeyed to the river's edge, but times are desperate. 
I'm in the middle of two series by Alexis Morgan and I really need to get my act together and catch up on them. At least with Warriors of the Mist it is only the latest book in the series that I haven't read. With Paladins of Darkness, I have a few more but I think the series has ended and I think psychologically, I'm delaying the end because the series is over. I love that series and I just don't want it to end. With Warriors in the Mist, I'm just slack. I am definitely going to read them though because I love her writing and the stories are great.



Jeaniene Frost - Night Huntress & Night Prince
The NIGHT HUNTRESS series is an urban fantasy romance featuring half-vampire heroine Cat Crawfield and Master vampire hero, Bones. My heroine and hero have a difficult road ahead of them and they will have to work very hard to earn their HEA (happily-ever-after), so their story isn’t over with the first book. Hope you come along for the ride!
I first came across Jeaniene Frost and the Night Huntress series because of few of the girls in my book group were raving about the books. On their raving recommendations, I started my journey reading about Cat and Bones, and of course, like them, I fell in love with the stories and with Bones. :-) I'm on the last book of the series, or rather, I haven't read the last book in the series. I might be saving it but I'm not sure. I had started to read it a while ago but then decided to read it later as it wasn't the right time for me to concentrate on it and I wanted some dedicated time to really savor the story. I haven't picked it back up since. I must! I have read all the books in the Night Huntress World series!

With the Night Prince series, I started it because well, (1) Jeaniene Frost is a great writer and (2) I loved Vlad is a character. I really enjoyed the first book but got stalled from starting the second book because a friend reading it claimed that Vlad was a total douche canoe in the book and she hated him for it. She was going through a bad divorce at the time and during that time, I think all men were douche canoes to her! I really don't like hearing opinions like that because it ruins it for me and it's the reason I stay away from reviews before I read a book. I haven't picked the book up but I plan to, especially now that the third book is out and I know that Leila married Vlad. I promise I'm not spoiling anything - it's in the blurb for the book!



Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse
Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is no typical Southern belle. She can read minds. And she’s got a thing for vampires. Which, in a town like Bon Temps, Louisiana, means she’ll have to watch her back—and neck
I loved this series during the early books and I have to admit that I thought the quality of the books started to fall off around about book 11 for me, when the series went on TV as True Blood. I was even super excited about the TV series but never made it past the first season. If you look at my ratings for the books, you'll see that though they were consistently 3 or 4 star reads for me, they started to dip below that towards the end. I haven't read the last book yet because (1) it was the last book and I thought I was saving it and (2) I accidentally read a comment in an thread unrelated to it about a major character that ruined it for me and made me not want to start the book. Then just now, as I was researching the series for this post, I read a HUGE spoiler about the ending that just ruined it even for me. Why do people do that? Why do they just post spoilers without a spoiler alert? <Rant!> Now, I'm even more uncertain if I will go back and read the last book. I guess eventually I will just to say I've finished it although Charlaine Harris doesn't seem to be done with the series or the characters as she seems to keep coming out with related books.



Deborah Harkness - All Souls Trilogy
A Discovery of Witches is a historical fiction novel that tells the story of a modern-day witch who inadvertently calls up an ancient enchanted manuscript at Oxford University's Bodleian Library[6] thereby attracting the unwelcome notice of a host of magical creatures who live among humans, including other witches, daemons, and a 1,500 year-old French vampire.
I love this series. I love the writing and I love the story. I fully intend to read the last book in the series but this is a long book, and it demands attention and dedication to its reading. I want to be able to savor it and give it my full attention so I'm looking for a time when I can do just that. It's one of my favorite series of all time. Even if you are not into anything paranormal, read this because the writing is beautiful and it is a journey of the senses.

I had planned on talking about a lot more series that what I ended up with, but the post just got too long. If you are interested in what series I follow, check out my list on FictFact or just drop me a message and we can chat about them, all my contacts via social media are below or you can use the "Contact Me" form in the side bar. :-)


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4 comments:

  1. This is a great post. I would like to read some of these with you. I have to catch up on Vladimir and would like to read the Alexis Morgan books. I should probably do one of these posts as well so I can motivate myself to get caught up.

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    1. You tell me which series you want to read together and we'll do it. I always love a reading buddy that I can chat about the books with.

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    2. Vlad first. You can read book 2 and remind me what happened, then we can read book 3 together.

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    3. I'll need to get that into the reading queue. I'll let you know when I'm reading it.

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