Yesterday as part of the A Month of Faves event hosted by Kim and Tanya of the blog Girlxoxo.com, I shared “My Top 5 Favorite Fiction Books Read In 2020” and tomorrow as part of the event, I will share “My Top 5 Favorite Nonfiction Books Read In 2020.” Today I’m writing on on my own topic not part of the events with series that didn’t stick for me this year, with series either I read the first one or abandoned in the middle of the first or sometimes second one.

In alphabetical order, by last name of author, are the 10 series that just didn’t “grab” me:

• The John Madden series by Rennie Airth
• The Albert Campion series by Margery Allingham
• The Wind River series by Margaret Coel
• The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey
• The Inspector Morse series by Colin Dexter
• The Phryne Fisher (Miss Fisher) series by Kerry Greenwood
• The Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths
• The Dalziel and Pascoe series by Reginald Hill
• The Lew Archer series by Ross Macdonald
• The Inspector Wexford series by Ruth Rendell

As always, a few notes:

• Not that John Madden.
• I tried reading four of them, because they were made into TV shows that either I liked or had seen.
• I feel bad about three of them, because friends recommended and I wanted to like them for one reason or another (or several). Sorry, friends (you know who you are), they just didn’t work for me.
• Seven were British murder mysteries, which I thought I liked. Maybe not? Maybe I like them in TV series more than books.
• At least, it was split even with five men and five women. So I can’t be considered misogynistic…

There is one series, though, that I’m sticking with, despite it being completely outlandish and maybe because it is and I’m just going with it in this crazy year, is the Serge Storms series by Tim Dorsey.

So are there series that just don’t stick for you or work for you? Or what are the ones that do?

Author’s notes: 1. I opted not to go with book covers in this post because a. I didn’t necessarily want to promote series that don’t work for me and b. because to be honest, I just didn’t want to take all that time finding them. Mostly, it was b, though. 2. What got me thinking about this topic was watching or trying to watch the later series of CSI after William Petersen, who played Gil Grissom, left. Finally, this weekend I decided to pull the plug and give up on ever finishing the series. And I’m okay with that.