As you may have noticed from the kind of stalkery weird way I pop up across over internet, I like to comment on blogs! It’s fun to discover new books, get to know you awesome people, and covet gorgeous blog designs. Also enter all your giveaways, but let’s not go into confessions like that right now.
But what happens when a blogger reviews a sequel of a book I haven’t read? Do I comment something unintelligent like, “That looks kind of awesome even though I’ve never heard of it before and frankly I have no idea what you’re talking about in your review because it obviously has to do with the first book.”
Or do I back away quietly and not comment at all? Thus saving showing the world my naivety on the unread series.
It’s one of life’s difficult questions.
Personally, this difficulty isn’t going to stop me reviewing sequels. If I love a series, heck yeah, I’m going to review it! This year I’ve reviewed Unhinged (Splintered #2), Blindsided (Transparent #2), Ignite Me (Shatter Me #3), Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) and Fragments (Partials #2).
Although, if we take a good long look at that list…these are ALL the sequels I’ve reviewed. I’m the kind of read-one-book-and-then-move-on type reader. But if I did read lots of sequels I would absolutely review them. Review what you want, right?!
My comment stats were interesting for those reviews, though.
The review of Unhinged hit 23 comments, while Fragments got doozy of 5. Ignite Me was pretty fair with 13 comments and Cress went insanely wild with 22 comments! Blindsided, which nearly NO ONE had read still hit 20 comments. Although, I confess, I actually spent most of the review talking about pop tarts. It was a lively discussion.
What can we take out of this? Everyone is addicted to Marissa Meyer and we all love The Moth. And if you talk about food in your review, you’ll get comments. I love food.
But the cake of the matter is: if our blog readers haven’t read the first book in the series, the sequel-reviews aren’t going to make sense.
And also SPOILERS. It’s incredibly hard to write a sequel review without spoiling something from the first book(s).
I think there’s a happy medium. If we have a lot of sequels to review, maybe we could make sure we have at least one standalone or first-in-a-series review to go up that week too? We need to help our our random visitors, right?!
I’m very interested in YOUR thoughts on this.
Cait has an affinity for mushrooms. It is this intense need for all fried fungi that leads Mime to say (in a Saruman voice) “Mushrooms have rotted her brain”. Cait knows this isn’t true. She’s just a Hobbit at heart. Besides her indulging in Hobbit tendencies, she’s been editing her novel and tweeting about her sociopaths. One day she’ll write a book about nice people. But it is not this day.
Most of my sequel reviews don't get much attention, unless people have already read the series and want to share their thoughts on it. It's a hard life sometimes, being a reviewer.If people would just stop writing so many series we might not have this problem! (Okay, I actually love series, but I feel like there is just far too many of them in the world. But that's another story)
Ah, yes, we suffer so greatly being surrounded by books. 😉 *laughs manically* I do like series because when I've fallen in love with a character/world I get MORE. But I do struggle to keep up with them all. 😉
I had a BUNCH of views on my review of Cinder, compared to Scarlet, so I guess that's true. Although I'm a contemporary person (as you've hopefully figured out by now), so a lot of them are standalones. I'm going to read Unhinged soon, though. Can't wait! And also, you need to revise your opinion on Pop Tarts because it's unacceptable.
I do not actually understand how one writes a stand alone. My first book was one but I forget how I did it. Frankly I find series easier.
I normally say something generic like "I haven't read this series but it sounds interesting" or something else if I don't like the synopsis. I normally skim through the actual review since I know nothing about the book!Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
Oh my goodness I have this dilemma too!! I normally skip out reading sequel reviews if I haven't read the first one unless I have already heard about the series and want to get a look at whether or not it's going downhill. But If a fresh new series, I would probably scroll past it. For myself though, I absolutely would review sequels to a book! Like you said, review whatever you like 😀 So I'm doing just that!
I only write reviews for sequels (and further into a series) if I LOVE it. My rule for spoilers is that if it's in the first 5(ish)% of the book, and can be downloaded as sample chapters for FREE, then it's not a spoiler. That's my only rule. I try to avoid commenting specifically on previous books (ambiguity is your friend). As for reading them on other blogs, I skim, and I check out ratings. First and last paragraphs are typically safe, and so far I have regretted the practice.Jessica @ Rabid Reads
Hmm…I am okay with first and second book reviews, but if it is the third (or farther out), I don't usually read the reviews
Yeah…I usually don't read the reviews of sequels unless I've already read it. And actually, right before seeing the post, I was debating on whether I should just review only the first book in the series I read. I don't read much, so I would be posting less reviews, and I don't want that to happen. BUt I just don't knowwww.
Well, in general, I usually only read reviews of books I've already read (or books I haven't heard much about and know I'm not going to get to any time soon, so I'd probs forget the details of the review by the time I read the book). So the same applies to sequel reviews. Only read them if I've actually read the sequel itself. Especially if it's a book I'm super excited about e.g. I avoided any mention of Ignite Me or Cress like the plague until I'd finally read them.In terms of writing reviews, if it's the first time reviewing a book from that series, I'll usually do a weird fusion review which is half a review of the series so far and half a review of the book itself e.g. my review of Earth Star by Janet Edwards. With spoiler warnings and such if necessary, of course 🙂
I stopped writing reviews a long while back, but I tended to write reviews of either first books or, if it was a sequel, to do both books in one post. Then people could stop reading after the first book if they wanted to avoid spoilers.
Agree, it's kind of awkward, but even if it's a sequel review, I still try to comment and say something interesting. If not, I skim over the review, find a sentence that doesn't really have anything to do with the story and more about the tropes/author/genre or whatever and contribute a thought or insight on that. I write a lot of reviews for sequels, and I really won't mind if my readers would rather comment on the next review that may be about the first book or about a standalone. It's hard and there's really a grey area there.Great discussion, Cait! You always ask the interesting questions :)Faye at The Social Potato Reviews
I thought you would put what I feel is the biggest issue, spoilers. If you haven't read the first one, then not only may you not understand, but you may also get spoilers. So I actually don't really read sequel reviews unless I've read the first. And even then, sometimes I won't read them. But this is a really good post.
I love reading sequel reviews!:) But I also love reading spoilers (Alleigent is proof of that;P)!:D I'm getting ready to review my first book on my blog. It's a sequel review;P I rest my case;)
I've never actually thought about this before. I don't mind sequel reviews because they get me to read the first book. Sometimes spoilers can be annoying, but a lot of the time I don't remember the review when I'm reading. xD
I don't read reviews for sequels unless: I've read the first book(s) or I have absolutely no interest in the series and am just curious about what people thought. I've read a handful of reviews for Ignite Me because after reading maybe 10 pages of Shatter Me I knew the series just wasn't at all for me, but people had such FEELINGS about the final book that I loved reading reviews for it. I personally write books for sequels without really thinking about numbers or comments if I feel like reviewing the book. *shrugs* I want my blog to be an entertaining place that people stop by, but I don't really think about how many reviews I'm putting up or what they are about. I love my readers, of course, but I don't think they have, like, hurt feelings if I don't post everyday or anything. I always expect for sequel reviews to have spoilers about the first book(s) in the series. When people post that their reviews are spoiler free of earlier books I was wonder: then what are you even talking about? Great post! It's an interesting topic.
I have to admit that I don't read sequel reviews unless I have read the first book. Mainly because I might want to start that series and usually sequel reviews have first book spoilers in them. I might read it if I have no interest in the series at all and want to see what others think of it. I write reviews for sequels, but I honestly haven't really given it much thought before. I didn't think about the fact it might get less views and comments because people aren't really going to want to read it if they haven't read the first book. I generally just review everything I read, so if I read a sequel then I will review it. I'm sure someone, anyone out there might want to read it lol. Maybe not though. I am lucky if 5 people comment on my reviews, so I would have counted the Fragments review a HUGE success lol.
You're such a nice blogger, actually considering your readers and all lol. The way I see it is that I do better when I blog for me, so I review sequels. They're not all that popular, but we do around two reviews a week and the rest is features/discussion so I don't really mind. My policy with the sequel is that it's totally fair game to spoil what happened in the first book. Often, the synopsis does that anyway. Personally, I never read the review of a sequel to a series I haven't started. I don't want to get spoiled in even the slightest way. Great topic!-P.E. @ The Sirenic Codex
As someone who is both terrible at reading reviews of sequels and actually reading sequels, I'm just going to sit this one out in the corner…Under The Mountain
Didn't think about this before. I do write reviews for the sequels I read and it is incredibly hard to write them without giving anything from book one away- because I can't compare them! I suppose I could just mention at the beginning of my post that there may be spoilers as far as book 1 goes or something. And to be honest- when a blogger reviews a sequel and I haven't read book 1 yet, I will generally skip it because I really don't want to accidentally read any spoilers.
Contemporary people are awesome (I'm juuuust sayin' because it's true). I do like it how contemporaries are standalones because I get a bit of closure. I mean, it'd kill me to read a sequel to TFIOS. I just wouldn't want to. I'm happy it ended just were it did. x)*sticks valiantly to pop tart resolution*
Haha! I have a few standalones that I've written, but my brain keeps going back to them and most have spun into series/trilogies. x) It's too much fun.
I haven't reviewed that much sequels but it's definitely hard to navigate through the spoilers for the first book(s) so that the review actually makes sense. And I don't usually read sequel-reviews I haven't read the first book of. That happened after I was slapped with a spoiler in the first (!) sentence of The House of Hades review. I mean, who does that right? Cruel, cruel reviewer!
Gah, that'd be sooo frustrating! I had a similar thing happen for one of Cassandra Clare's series. Which I DID intend to read, but now I know like a major spoiler sooo…not so keen anymore. :((
Sometimes I based my comment on the rating. For example: "haven't read the predecessor books, but based on your rating this might be a new series to watch out" or "sad to hear you didn't like this one"Some bloggers do series review which makes everything less awkward? Or is it just me? And I love poptarts OMG
Series reviews can be cool! Although they can be looooong, and sometimes it's hard to wade through mega long posts, eh? Ew. You can keep the pop tarts. XD
I myself like to read sequel reviews sometimes, because sometimes I want to know if a book is worth reading even if only to get to the second book if it's better.And OH MY GOODNESS YOU'RE RIGHT! People comment whenever there's food mentioned. XD I should do that….
FOOD IS GLORIOUS. Charles Dickens basically summed up life in general when he wrote Oliver Twist.
I have no idea bout my stats. It's not something I really care about. I probably should but I like comments so much more! Comments are real people (most of the time… oh spam <3 ) I have no problem reviewing sequel books. I try not to post anything too big spoiler wise but there are times when they are inevitable.I read sequel reviews even when I haven't read the first book. I don't like leaving series unread. If I start one I am fairly determined to finish it. So there are times when I want to know if the rest of the series lives up to the first book's promise before I commit. A lot of the time I don't mind spoilers. I read books for the journey – learning HOW something spoileriffic happens and the actual spoiler itself… not usually that big. PS. I LOVE poptarts. I haven't had one in years but wow.. they're great!
Comments rock, because people rock and…gah, I REALLY appreciate every single comment I get. XD I really need to finish more series. I usually get to book #4 and then sort of wander away…I'm not sure why! It's not because I don't enjoy it. *sigh* I have like a kilometre long list of series I need to finish…
Exactly! I find it extremely difficult to avoid skimming. >_<
We are awesome. We do what we want. 😉 I think the main trouble lies in it when you visit a blog and they've ONLY reviewed like sequels that whole week…and where do you comment without looking like a weirdo??
I agree with your rule for spoilers. 😉 That's basically what I go off too. And if it's a sequel, I don't bother about being careful of spoilers for the first book. Maybe that's bad, (and I do try to put a "may contain spoilers from first book" before the review) otherwise it's entirely impossible to write! I accidentally stumbled on a review the other day and didn't realise it was like a 3rd book in the series, but it STARTED the review with complete spoilers and now that entire series is sort of ruined for me. :((
If I've HEARD of them, maybe…but otherwise I really can't think of anything intelligent to say about sequel reviews. >_<
Haha…I read your mind. Mwhaha. It's difficult and I feel for ya! I reckon go ahead and review all the sequels you want. Personally, I just feel like it's awesome when we have variety? So not a week full of sequel reviews…that's what really gets me.
Same! If I'm actually going to read the series, ohhh gosh I don't go there at all. I read Cress early enough, but Allegiant? I didn't read a SINGLE review until I'd read it. Otherwise people just aren't so careful in their reviews anymore!!
Both books in one post is fun! I've done 2 of those this year (one post had 3 books in it…but gah, I hated the series so much I had veeery little to say besides "yawn". xD) But exactly! That's an awesome way to do it.
Oh, yes! I do that too….the whole zone in on something else…it makes for an interesting comment too, I reckon. 😉 I've had to skip commenting on a few blogs lately because I just didn't "get" the sequel reviews. I feel bad for not commenting though, sooo…hehe. There's always grey areas, eh?! Mwhaha. My mind is a riot of insanity. And questions.
Aw, thanks, Lisa! I didn't really go into the spoiler issue, I just gave, what? A few sentences on it? But yeah, I agree. And I recently had an entire series ruined because I didn't KNOW the review wasn't on the first book (it wasn't titled very well) and then it started off with massive spoilers. Sooo…awkward. I'm a bit disappointed and I hope I forget it before I go to read that series.
Ha! Go you! Sequel reviews CAN be awesome, because then all the real fans come out of the woodwork and you can fangirl with them. x)
Spoilers can be soooo super frustrating. >_< Argh. It takes talent to review a sequel without spoilers, honestly, it does!
I expect for sequel reviews to have spoilers too. 😉 I think it's only fair! I mean, how hard would it be to have no spoilers??!! There's nothing left to talk about, unless (I guess) the book is of completely different characters to the first one, like The Lunar Chronicles (but heck, book #3 would be impossible to blog about without spoilers). I reckon we absolutely review what we want. (And yessss, I didn't like Shatter Me, but I have SUCH feelings about Ignite Me.)
I wasn't networking very well when I reviewed Fragments either…aaaand I spent most of the review posting GIFS of people sleeping. >_> Um. Yeah. SO. I mostly skip reading reviews for book #2s, just because I never know what they're talking about!
I know, right? I'm all sorts of wonderful. I agree with your sequel policy, too. I TRY to remember to do a "this may contain spoilers from first books, read at your own risk etc" but sometimes I forget. >_< My bad! And I only do 2 reviews a week, too, usually, so if I'm going to review a sequel I make sure one of the other reviews ISN'T a sequel.
N'aw, the corner's not so fun. I should be in there with you, though. I mean, what have I read? 5 sequels this year? 5 out of 66 books?!!! WHAT AM I DOING.
Hii I review series's, I try to do a series at a time (cause that is how I read) I try not to be spoilery, but sometimes something may slip about the previous books, not intentionally, just so you can actually say something about the next books.I don't get many comments.. but then again.. I am new so I don't get many comments. But I will keep at it. I will find all those people that like to read reviews for series's 🙂 .I find I don't read a review until after I have read a book, series or not, I then get a biased opinion and all that blah blah. I just like to see what everyone has to say about each book overall and I comment about that (when I comment – I am lazy sometimes)88dreamers @ Seriesly Reading
Oh I do read standalones too, just thought I would talk all about series's 🙂
I'd LIKE wait to read reviews until AFTER I've read a book, too…but most of the time I read all reviews. Unless I've read a billion. Like, gosh, I have read SO many reviews for The Winner's Curse. The idea of reading the book myself isn't even that needy anymore. *sigh*
Accidentally reading spoilers is the worst, honestly. >.< I get so frustrated when it happens. But I DO think it's fair to assume that sequel reviews are going to have spoilers! I mean, how impossible would it be to write the review otherwise??
This is the only blog where I read sequel reviews, mostly because (a) I don't read many blogs, and (b) you're good at making sure sequel reviews make sense if we've read the first book's review. You're good at balance with spoilers, too. I don't write sequel reviews if I can avoid it in most cases, because of spoilers. If I am reviewing a series, I usually do one series-wide review or just review the first book and then say a thing or two about the other books in that same review.
N'aww, thanks, Emily! That's freakishly awesome to know. XD Spoilers are difficult, that's for sure, but sometimes sequels NEED discussing, right?!! I couldn't have survived through Unhinged and Allegiant without talking about them on le blog.
When you reviewed Cress, I had heard of that series but I hadn't read it. All I knew was that you basically loved it(understatement? XD). I read the Cress review and meh, yeah, it sounded cool but I forgot about it. Now that I've read Cinder and Scarlet, I went back reread the Cress review and I was just grinning the whole time cuz this time I KNEW ABOUT STUFF. Still, even though I didn't read your Cinder and Scarlet reviews(I don't think) the main reason I started reading the Lunar Chronicles was because I knew you loved them, and I trust your recommendations. I trust them even more now because I LOVE THE LUNAR CHRONICLES TOO NOW. So basically, even though I didn't know anything about Cress when I read your review, seeing your fangirling and loving of it made me want to read the whole series. As a side note: I GET CRESS TOMORROW. THE LIBRARY FINALLY RESERVED IT FOR ME GIORWHKGORIEWGHROEWHLNBRTWOYLT
I am a little hesitant about reviewing sequels. I don't want to fill it with spoilers, then in that case, I'm hesitant in review just about any book. And when I see a review for a sequel (like Allegiant, wow, there were reviews EVERYWHERE), I either just skim or (as in Allegiant's case) I actually just skip them. I feel kind of bad skipping them, but I hate it when all the suspense is ruined. It's one of the best parts of a book. Maybe next time I write a sequel review, I'll write about food every time I'm tempted to add a spoiler. 😉
Wow, another very intriguing discussion girl! It's quite interesting to review a sequel because there's a very high chance that somebody that would comment on the blog normally hasn't read the book. Then there's always the issue with spoilers. Still, I do and will continue to review sequels. Especially if I really enjoy the series (: I feel like it's helpful to faithful followers of that series. I try to limit my spoilers in a review, and if there are some I put them in spoiler code. When reading reviews about series' I never have read, I'm honestly okay. I can usually get the jist of what the individual book is about and then it can actually help me decide if I want to give the series a chance or not (:great discussion! (:
Sometimes I skip commenting. 😀
I usually read the sequel reviews for books I have read, or know about, but other times I just comment "sorry not reading but I stopped by anyway!" Recently I put up combined book 1 & 2 reviews and I think that actually went really well because people know what the book is about when they read my 2nd book review. Great discussion Cait!Jeann @ Happy Indulgence
My review comment stats are very random. They can vary from 10 comments to 5 comments. Great discussion, Cait 🙂
I don't mind writing reviews for sequels. If my review will spoil something from the first book, I try to put a warning in the review. I will read sequel reviews if I know I probably won't read the series. BUT . . . If it is a series I am reading, then I will probably avoid it until I have read it.
I hate to say it, but I honestly don't read many series. I'm trying to get better at that, but I guess I've always been a standalone kind of reader. (That sentence sounds really awkward, but you know what I mean…) Although, it is really annoying having to go on blogs and comment on reviews of sequels that you haven't read yet. I agree…it's definitely hard to know what to say!Thanks for sharing though, and, as always, FABULOUS post! <3
I don't reading sequel-reviews if I'm not about to read the book myself, generally I forget details after a while, so if I read the book later, I'm sure I will have forgotten any major spoilers.I try not to spoil, too, but I'm also not too fussy about spoilers! Mands @ The Bookish Manicurist
I completely agree with you, I have this problem far too often! It seems as if nearly everything I read these days is a sequel and those are always the posts that get the least amount of views and comments (unless it is from an uber popular series like Divergent or The Hunger Games for instance). I always try to write sequel reviews in a way that those who haven't read the books will still understand and be able to enjoy them, but this is much easier with some books than with others.Similarly to what you have suggested, I always try and make sure that if the last book I read was from a series and wasn't the first book from it that my next review will be of a stand alone. But it's an ongoing problem.Excellent discussion topic, I really enjoyed. 🙂
I personally have not reviewed many 'sequels' but even though while reading reviews of sequels I feel quite in the dark about what the story and plot is about, sometimes sequels have a way of being more intruiging and interesting than the original book, and if the author loved it, I feel like I really would like to give this series/trilogy a try. Also, if there was something really upsetting, ridiculous about the sequels, I'd be more cautious about starting the series in the first place and investing emotions in something I won't be able to like that way. So yes, I definitely don't mind reading and commenting on sequels 😉
I actually meant to say *if the blog reader loved it, etc…' mybad typo!
People just NEED to stop spoiling major stuff!
I posted about this at one time (i.e. too lazy to find the link for you). I find it hard to review sequels books, and later in series books are even worse. It's so difficult to know what to say, and how to say it without just constantly comparing it to book one.