Discussion: Falling Out of Love with an Author/Series

FALLING OUT OF LOVE WITH AN AUTHOR/SERIES

I’ve fallen out of love with quite a few series over the past few years and it’s always hard to make the decision to part with books you once loved. It’s always hits hard when I think about how much I loved a particular book or series and then realizing that the love just isn’t there anymore. Sometimes it’s a direction that the series took, sometimes it’s an incident that made me see the author/series in a different light, and other times it’s just not quite the topic or series for me anymore.

Sometimes, this is why I love stand-alone novels. The publishing industry seems both fast and slow. Putting out one book of a series per year may seem like forever to wait for it but I know there’s soooo much more that goes on in order to get that book to publication, like you know… writing it. While it feels like we wait forever for a series to finish, I’m sure for an author it can feel like a mad dash to stick to the one-book-per-year pressure! And at the same time, I‘ve fallen out of love with series over the span of two or three years simply because I’m a different person than when I started reading it. I started the SWEET EVIL series when I was a baby blogger four or five years ago and I JUST LOVED IT. Then by the time that series wrapped up last year, I lost all interest in even finishing the series. Part of it was that I didn’t love the second book as much as the first but by the time the third book came out, I wasn’t the same person or the same reader that I was when I had read the first book. It was so sad to see how much I had loved and fangirled over the first book and then my love for the series just changing over time because of how my life had changed me.

Other times, it’s heart-breaking to see a series change with each book. There are plenty of books that I’ve read where I really enjoyed the first book in a series and then the second book just took a turn that baffled me! I think that is harder to take than just falling out of love with a series because of life-changes. It’s a disappointment that settles in when you were expecting the series to go one way and it totally goes somewhere that you’re not expecting. I positively adoooored REBEL OF THE SANDS but reading the second book just felt so…. different, and I just wasn’t on board with everything that happened in TRAITOR TO THE THRONE. Usually the changes aren’t too drastic but there have been a few series where it just didn’t even feel like the same characters or plot and I just had a hard time wanting to read the second book, much less continue on with the rest of the series, even if it was only one more book.

And the worst, I think, it’s falling out of love with an author completely. By now, you may know that I am not as into Sarah J. Maas’ books as I used to be. I hopped on late to the THRONE OF GLASS fandom but I fell in loooove with CROWN OF MIDNIGHT, HEIR OF FIRE, and QUEEN OF SHADOWS was actually my top top read of that year. I also really enjoyed A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES and was impressed with how it still felt like Sarah J. Maas but was different from the Throne of Glass series. Then I started having… issues. I just couldn’t get into EMPIRE OF STORMS and I never got in the swing of the book. I was surprised and disappointed to see the same elements pop up in EMPIRE OF STORMS that I had just read in A COURT OF MIST AND FURY. I had a hard time with some of the writing styles and dialogue in ACOMAF, didn’t get the pacing in EoS, and barely even had the desire to read A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN, which ended up really disappointing me even going into it knowing that I wasn’t going to love it. I was just so shocked and a little heart-broken (or something less dramatic) that I just wasn’t loving her books as much. I simply adored QUEEN OF SHADOWS and I don’t know if it was me or the books but somewhere along the way, I lost that passion and the little things ended up being a main focus of irritation instead of seeing those big things that I loved as a whole. The series just felt… different by the end and so many things had happened that I almost didn’t feel like I was reading the same books anymore. Again, just my personal opinion but it’s the most notable change for me and the one that sticks out when talking about this topic. I’ll still be finishing the Throne of Glass series since I’m almost done and so far in but I’m not excited about it anymore, and that makes me sad.

BUT this happens! It’s a natural progression of a reader’s life, I think, and really it’s all the books’ fault!! I’ve changed so much because I read so much, so in a way, the fact that I’m a reader in itself has been the cause for a lot of my feelings to change. The more I read, the more I learn what I like. The more I see more technical things like world-building and character development. The more I discover magical new concepts and get tired of repeated ones. I guess reading it both a blessing and a curse when it comes to finishing old series and starting new ones! There’s always something new out there so it can be comforting to come back to a series that you’ve been keeping up with for years or it can be tiring that it’s not quite what you felt it used to be.

Are there any series or authors that you’ve fallen out of love with over the years? What caused your opinions to change? How do you deal with it — do you push on and finish a series or just let it be?