Listmaniac: With a Fizzle and Not with a Bang - Series that Ended Badly

Hello!!

It's that time of the month again... when I write up a list of a topic of your choice. 

This month's winner: Series that ended badly. 

Now, the usual disclaimers apply - this is all my personal opinion, and I mean no harm by it. Please, feel free to tell me what you guys think in comments. Also, SPOILERS AHEAD

So, here we go:

5. The Blue Blood Series by Melissa de la Cruz

I started very iffy with this series - I'm culturally catholic and sometimes the whole angels imagery got a little too cray-cray for me, but I pushed through since Vampires were everywhere back then and I figured I might as well stick to this series and it was all good... for about two or three books.

But then, the ever present danger with series set in: the author began to stretch it nonsensically, making three books out of something that could have been resolved in just one and generally just cash-cowing the heck out of it. 

Still, nothing a good series can't recover from with a proper series finale but what did we get instead? Oliver ends up with Schuyler 2.0 (blond, Schuyler 2.0) and got to be a vampire, Jack and Schuyler get together - final-fucking-ly - and Mimi and Kingsley, by far the most interesting characters by then, are in hell. But by then... who cared?

4. The Summer Series by Jenny Han 

Well, I'm on and off with this series, honestly. In the first couple of books Jenny Han made it a point of showing rather than telling in this series, she slowly built up the relationships in the story, only to have the ending happen off the page and summarized in just a few paragraphs.

I know that in the paperback edition they added a bit more from Conrad's side (some of the letter's Belly mentions), but in the origina print, that wasn't there and the story was had this very rushed feel to it and really... unfinished.

And yeah, it made me angry because I stuck to those people for almost a thousand pages and the execution of the ending was pretty meh. 

3. The Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn
I was a huge fan of this series for years and years, and some of the books are still some of my favorite romance reads ever. But this was a really long series (8 books total) and the ending wasn't great.

Usually, romance novels build up to the fan-favorite character getting his or her book last, so the payoff is bigger, but with the Bridgerton, the fan favorite for a lot of people was actually Hyacinth, the character we had known the longest, but she got the seventh book in the series and it was okay, wasn't great.

In the last book we got Gregory instead, the youngest of the brothers and the one we had spent the least amount of time with through out the series - he had spoken maybe ten lines across the 7 books prior -and his story was way too convoluted. The writing was ok, because Julia Quinn is a great writer, but the payoff was minimal and the plot not so great.


2. Starfish Sisters by J. C. Burke 
This is actually just  duo-logy, but the first book (Starfish Sisters) was excellent, one of my favorite YA books I've read in a long time and the plot was pretty original - about the lives and trials of four young surfer girls who wanted to make the Australian Junior Team - I was ecstatic when I heard there was a second book.

But that book, Ocean Pearl, well... it just didn't live up to it's predecesor, and you got the distinct feeling that the author just wrecked the lives of these girls just so she could keep writing about them, particularly when it came to Ellie and Ace. So the final book just left a bitter aftertaste.


1. The Gallagher Girls by Ally Carter
Here's the thing... I love Cammie Morgan and her friends, particularly Macy and Liz - though Bex is probably  my least liked character of the whole series - and I really love the Gallagher series.

The books had every potential to be fun and awesome: they are about a bunch of teenage girls at an elite spy school; and yet they had some depth and my heart broke for Cammie and how she felt about her dad's death.

This was a rare series that actually got better as the books progressed. usually the first book is strong and then it starts going down hill, but with the Gallagher Girls it was more of a slow build up, and books 3 and 4 where excellent... and then the series took a dark turn and it never recovered from it, in my opinion.

Book 5 was all dark and gloomy and though book 6 was a bit better, I started to find Cammie's narration very tiresome, to be honest. And by the end, I just didn't care about any of it.



So that's me, the series finales that have most disappointed me.

What about you guys? Please let me know in comments!

Also, up for next month:
Hidden Gems - books I love but that never really got popular
Make it a Movie - books that I would LOVE to see in a movie/tv format.