Sometimes the first book is really good and everybody wants to read the sequels. But then it turns out that the sequels aren’t that good and in many cases, they even ruin the one that you actually liked before. At least that happened to me a few times 
So let’s hear about your experiences! What’s a great book ruined by its sequels?
Umm… I don’t think I know any books ruined by a sequel. Though to be fair, I don’t read many book series, just a few and they’re all great. Sooo… I wonder if the @Bookworms know any?
Um…
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Don’t hate me for this lol)
The Land of Stories
So those are the only two stories that I think are good books. Not completely ruined by the sequels but I just don’t really like them because there are a lot of books to read and the newer books don’t capture what I originally liked about the first one.
Here are some books that when trying to re-read it, i understand why I liked them when I first read it but now that I’ve read absolutely fantastic books, yeah I don’t like them.
Dorothy Must Die - (spoiler alert) I mean, in the one of the last books the dog turned into a giant three headed dog monster thing that was used for war in Oz (don’t ask, trust me, just don’t). Plus even within the series (which is kinda long) it has spin-offs on spin-offs on spin-offs.
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl - When I was reading this one I really liked the first book and all the other books were just bad and the MC turned into a Mary Sue (if that already wasn’t apparent). But then I re-read it and I couldn’t get past the first two chapters. It just felt cheesy. Also, this is not how spirits work lol.
Just plain bad:
Divergent (I’m biased, I saw a lot of negativity surrounding the plot before I read the books)
Actually really good book series thingies that work really well and in my opinion need all the books and couldn’t just explain the whole plot in a singular book:
A Series of Unfortunate Events - I love this! Just love. (Kinda spoiler blurred cuz this is an actually good book series that I’m not about to ruin for you lol) I wish in the books that the narrator met the kids! It was so frustrating to see that he was in a similar timeline or at the same places and never managed to find them. In my opinion, he would have been the perfect guardian lol. So yeah I don’t like the last book because this never happened!
That’s literally the only series I would actually say is the best series I’ve read by far. I’ve liked other books more than this, but I do think that these books work best as a series. (Except for the last book. I don’t like that one because of (insert spoiler that I put above). While I have liked other series such as The Illuminae Files, Scythe, and Unwind, because of the style of the Series of Unfortunate Events and the way it’s written makes it extremely unique. Other books that are series unfortunately don’t have that same uniqueness and you usually end up feeling like the books are written by different people in a sense lol.
I think that sometimes authors make a book, it becomes a bestseller and then they make another book when the original book was probably best as a standalone. I even have an example. I haven’t read the sequel to this but One Of Us Is Lying. Purely because I think there is nothing more to add to the conclusion and I don’t wanna read another book exactly like it lol.
I think all of this is why I kinda don’t like series. Like I can definitely look back and loved reading each of them but then I remember moments when I didn’t like parts of the other books and it would ruin it a bit for me. And that’s with basically every series I read. It’s understandable… It’s understandable hard to come across the same way with a series. Because when you write something then write another thing you usually learn from your past mistakes, or change something up unknowingly to make it a different quality than it was before. Or authors have to find unique ways to add tension or conflict when initial conflict was supposed to be resolved in the first book. If you really want to write a good series, you’d have to meticulously plan out everything in order to avoid this.
So yeah, that’s generally why I prefer stand-alone. My favorite stand-alone(s) are Girl In Pieces and Bone Gap!
I haven’t read the sequel to Call me by your name and I honestly don’t want to. I’ve heard many things, not so good things, and I don’t want that sequel to ruin the whole experience for me. I like how cmbyn ended and I don’t think there should be anything after that.
I like most sequels (Mostly how I try and write mine Don’t kill me plz)
But they all are books that were meant to have sequels and so on. I can see how a sequel can ruin a book. I feel like that’d be more likely if the book wasn’t meant to have a sequel, but, that’s just a guess.
Just adding a tag!
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I really can’t think of any that are really ruined by sequels. Some sequels have their flaws of course, and may even have aspects that could ruin a book, but usually there’s at least some good to it as well.
What about you guys @Bookworms ?
Yeah, I still don’t think I know any either.
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