TTT: Best Sequels Ever

Best Sequels Ever

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they have a different Top Ten list topic that a bunch of bloggers take and make their own list of those things. This week is Top Ten best sequels ever.

 

I am going to limit this to strictly second books in series. It just be WAY too hard to narrow down the list if I included 3rd, 4th, 5th, and so on books. I mean, every Harry Potter book would be on here and every Percy Jackson book and every sequels in almost every series I included here. So yeah, I'm just sticking to 2nd books.

 

1. Siege and Storm

Everything you love in the first one amplified. This didn't suffer from second book syndrome in the slightest (I guess that's going to be a given for all the books on this list). I love Leigh Bardugo because she's a really cool person and her books just blow my freaking mind. (plus, you know, STURMHOND).

 

2. Crown of Embers

I really liked The Girl of Fire and Thorns, I thought it was different and interesting and just good fantasy. Then comes this book and the story takes on an epic scale. We see Elisa become the queen she's meant to be and it took the scale of the story and blew it up.

 

3. Froi of the Exiles

I was hesitant going in to this sequel knowing that Froi, this wild, violent boy was going to be the narrator. But then Melina Marchetta took my every expectation and inverted it, flipped it upside-down, and exploded my brain. She made me love Froi, Arjuro, and Quintana. I was so invested in the story and the world and it broke my heart in the best way.

 

4. Dark Triumph

Let me give you a scenario that explains how great I thought this book was. Previously I had rated Grave Mercy (it's predecessor) as a five-star book, but I loved this one so much that I actually went back to change that rating to four so that I could adequately show how improved the series became. The romance was charming, the action was interesting, and the plot was twisting and dark, but hopeful. What's not to love about that?

 

5. Sea of Monsters

I read The Lightning Thief and loved it, but it wasn't until I read Sea of Monsters that I actually fell in love with this series. 

 

 

6. Unwholly

Another case of expanding, but this time in terms of plot. Just when you thought it couldn't get darker or creepier, IT DOES. And Neal Shusterman found even more ways to address political and moral issues through this series in a way that makes sense and isn't talking down to the audience at all.

 

7. Insurgent

More action. No love triangle. Trouble for Tris and Tobias that they decide to work through together. An actual realistic reaction to trauma from Tris. This was just as fantastic as Divergent and it set up the series for a fantastic finale.

8. The Throne of Fire

Good stuff just got gooder errrr...better. We met Bes who became one of my favorite characters in the series and in all of Rick Riordan works. I also connected with Sadie on a I-want-to-hang-out-with-you-NOW level. I kind of want to be her, too.

 

9. Sweetly

I wasn't too keen on Sisters Red, it was just okay for me. But I decided to give the series another go because I love fairy-tale retellings and I'd heard a lot of good things about this series. I'm so glad I kept going. I really enjoyed this book and Fathomless and now I can't wait for Cold Spell. I really connected with Gretchen and I saw a lot of myself in her. That was one reason I enjoyed this book so much.

10. Catching Fire

No one can convince me that this book doesn't contain one of the biggest (and best) plot twists in the history of ever. Two of them if you ask me.

 

11. Crown of Midnight 

Throne of Glass was great. I really loved it. But then this baby comes along and DANG. This series turns fantastic so fast I was afraid to blink and miss any of the progress. (Yeah, I'll admit that only barely made sense, but that's just what this book did to me. It cancelled out the sense-making part of my brain and now all that comes out when I talk about it is rave-y gibberish.