Top 5 Tuesday | Top 5 series I wished were shorter | 6/10/25

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and now being hosted at Meeghan reads.

This Week’s Topic is:

Top 5 series I wished were shorter

Guilty Pleasures by. Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city’s most powerful vampire asks her to solve a series of vicious slayings, Anita must confront her greatest fear—her undeniable attraction to master vampire Jean-Claude, one of the creatures she is sworn to destroy…

[Once upon a time in the early 2000’s 😅…I was addicted to a series called Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter – and this was smut before BookTok revived smut so I was definitely getting my smut fix in for awhile. Vampires were IN and I was addicted to this series. And I think I read about According to Goodreads, I gave star ratings to 10 of the books, but a few titles on the list makes me think I read more before I stopped reading the series. Maybe 15? But to date this series has 30…30!!!!! 30 books in the series. Yeah – also Anita Blake Vampire Hunter was doing reverse harem before that became a thing also, so yeah. This author also wrote an urban fantasy Fae series called the Merry Gentry Series which I was addicted to also. That ended in 9 books but she definitely continued the Anita Blake series but I was over it after 10-15 books? ]

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Marked by. P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast (House of Night, #1)

After a Vampire Tracker Marks her with a crescent moon on her forehead, 16-year-old Zoey Redbird enters the House of Night and learns that she is no average fledgling. She has been Marked as special by the vampyre Goddess Nyx and has affinities for all five elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Spirit. But she is not the only fledgling at the House of Night with special powers. When she discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school’s most elite club, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look deep within herself for the courage to embrace her destiny—with a little help from her new vampyre friends (or Nerd Herd, as Aphrodite calls them).

[Remember I said Vampires were in?! Here’s another series that came out in the early 2000’s that I was addicted to. This was is a YA series and I stuck through until 8 books in. Looks like there are 12 books in the series. But I outgrew it for sure.]

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Zodiac Academy by. Caroline Peckhan and Susanne Valenti

You have been selected to attend Zodiac Academy, where your star sign defines your destiny.

If you’re one of the Fae, elemental magic is in your blood. And apparently it’s in ours. As twins born in the month of Gemini, we’re a rare breed even in this academy of supernatural a-holes.

Changelings were outlawed hundreds of years ago but I guess our birth parents didn’t get the memo. Which means we’re totally unprepared for the ruthless world of Fae.

Air. Fire. Water. Earth.

No one has ever harnessed all four of them, until we arrived. And it hasn’t made us any friends so far.

As the rarest Elementals ever known, we’re already a threat to the four celestial heirs; the popular, vindictive bullies who happen to be some of the hottest guys we’ve ever seen. It doesn’t help that they’re the most dangerous beasts in the Academy. And probably on earth too.

Our fates are intertwined, but they want us gone. They’ve only got until the lunar eclipse to force us out and they’ll stop at nothing to succeed.

We never knew we had a birthright to live up to but now that we do, we intend to claim our throne.

We can’t expect any help from the faculty when it comes to defending ourselves. So if the dragon shifters want some target practice, the werewolves want someone to hunt or the vampires fancy a snack then we have to be ready. But we’ve been looking after each other for a long time and fighting back is in our blood.

Today’s horoscope: totally screwed.

[I tried this series out – barely, I think I got through chapter one and then put it aside to read other books and never came back to it. I want to try and finish book one but sometimes knowing that it is already 9 books long intimidates me. We’ll see if I ever read it but I did wish it was shorter so it didn’t intimidate me 😅]

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Shatter Me by. Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me, #1)

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war – and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

[The first trilogy was a grower. Book one was okay but by book three I was obsessed – because of Warner. BUT I was happy with just a trilogy. I was even okay with the next three books, expect I still haven’t read book 6. But there are novellas in between these book so that’s like 11 books in the series…and I didn’t read all the novellas. And now she came out with Watch Me which is Shatter Me: The New Republic…and I will probably read that one but I should read the last book of the last series first? Anyway…I think the novellas were milking out the series…and I feel like it is still being milked out. But I am curious to see how the story evolves in Watch Me.]

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City of Bones: The Mortal Instruments by. Cassandra Clare

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder― much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It’s hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary’s first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It’s also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace’s world with a vengeance when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know…

[I was OBSESSED with The Mortal Instruments when it first published in 2007 – I got my sister and one of my friends as obsessed with this series as I was. We loved the short-lived tv series also! But I grew out of this series by The Infernal Devices. I read Clockwork Angel but that’s it and stopped. I kind of wished the author branched out and wrote a different series, but she stuck to this world and I’m happy for all the fans of this huge series but for me I wanted something different. I’m glad she has a new series out, I have the first book but haven’t read it yet. ]