Top Ten Tuesday #22: Can't-Freaking-Wait Sequels

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and The Bookish. Each week the girls at B&B think up a fun theme, and participating bloggers post their favorite 10 books in that category. This week's theme is

Top Ten Sequels I Can't Wait For But I Have to Anyway Because the Publishers Say So

I love reading series. I always have. They keep me in reading. From The Baby-Sitters Club to Nancy Drew to Hardy Boys, Boxcar Children, Harry Potter, The Mediator, Artemis Fowl, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and more, my childhood books often chronicled mulitple adventures of the same characters. It's because I have a tendency to fall hard for my characters and want to read about them until they die, but heaven help the author who did kill a beloved character because that was always devastating. Hence the amount of serials in that list. I do like a good standalone, and in fact, sometimes I prefer them because they're good palate cleansers when I'm stuck in limbo between the next book's release or when I've been shotgunning a series. Naturally, I have far more than 10 books on this list, and there's no way I could ever possibly pick the absolute ten that I need most because I WANT THEM ALL GIVE THEM TO ME BEFORE I HAVE A MELTDOWN. *coughs* Sorry. So instead, I'm doing a bit of a differently styled list today. Some of the books included fit in several categories so I just picked the one I liked best. Enjoy!

The Next Installment

These are the in-between books. Not the beginning, not the end. These are the ballsy books that have to carry the story and that often pray they don't fall prey to the Curse of the Middle Book.

•  Burning Kingdoms (Internment Chronicles 2) - Lauren DeStefano
• Scorched 2 - Mari Mancusi (currently untitled)
• The Girl with the Windup Heart (Steampunk Chronicles 4) - Kady Cross
• Earthquake (Earthbound 2) - Aprilynne Pike
• The Infinite Sea (5th Wave 2) - Rick Yancey
• Firefight (Reckoners/Steelheart 2) - Brandon Sanderson

The Novella

I don't always need a full-blown novel to keep me going. 50-150 bonus pages set in a world I love are a luxury, and I seriously love this trend.

• untitled Internment Chronicles novella - Lauren DeStefano
• "Levana's Tale" (Lunar Chronicles) - Marissa Meyer
• "The Initiate," "The Son," "The Traitor" (Divergent) - Veronica Roth
• "Camp Christmas" (Camp Boyfriend) - J.K. Rock

The Companion

Like with the novella, I'm okay if the author chooses not to do a full sequel with the exact cast as the first one. I'll also take a story with new characters, as long as the old ones pop up every now and then.

•  Perfect Couple & Most Likely To Succeed (Superlatives 2 & 3) - Jennifer Echols
• The Boy Most Likely To (My Life Next Door 2)  - Huntley Fitzpatrick

The Next Book Isn't Even Out Yet, But I Already Want the One After That

Some of these, I've actually already read the next book so my desire for the one after that has been stoked. Others, I don't have to read the one that's about to be pubbed to know that I already want the next-next one.

• Blackcoat Rebellion 2 - Aimée Carter (currently untitled)
• Feels Like Fate (Hundred Oaks 5) & untitled #6 - Miranda Kenneally
• Take Me On (Pushing the Limits 4) - Katie McGarry
• Every book in The Dark Artifices, The Wicked Powers and TLH by Cassandra Clare

The Series Finale

The big kahunas. These are the books we most anticipate--and dread. These are the ones that truly have the power to make-or-break a series. Off the top of your head, you can list final books that did just that. Or you can go back to that TTT post we all did a couple weeks ago.

• The Forever Song (Blood of Eden 3) - Julie Kagawa
• Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten 3 - Julie Kagawa (currently untitled)
• My Not So Super Sweet Life (My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century 3) - Rachel Harris
• Mediator 7 - Meg Cabot (currently untitled)

My goodness, it seems like we've been waiting forever for City of Heavenly Fire and Mediator 7. OH WAIT THAT'S BECAUSE WE HAVE. But seriously, no rush. I really would rather an author take some extra time (here's lookin' at you Veronica Roth, Laini Taylor, & Michelle Hodkin) to get things right than for a book to come out exactly one year after the one before, but be weak like some of those make-or-break-and-we-broke-it books (once again, I'll state that I have not read Allegiant yet, so if you consider it to be a broken final book, please keep that comment to yourself along with the plethora of reasons why kthx).

I hope you've enjoyed my post of WAY more than ten books today. Did I hit just about all of yours? I wouldn't doubt it. If I did skip yours, let me know what it was and why I'm missing out! Feel free to share your TTT links as well.