How do you feel about starting a series of books…in the middle? Or at least, not at the beginning? I don’t mean deliberately, I mean you find a book that looks completely amazing, you buy it and start reading, and then you realize it’s part of a series…and not the first book.

What do you do?

Throw it down in disgust and walk away forever?

Keep reading, on the assumption that you’ll figure out what happened before?

Stop, buy and read the previous books in the series, and then read your enchanting new love?

(Is there some other option/reaction I haven’t mentioned?)

I won’t purposefully start reading in the middle of a series. Are you kidding me? And not get the whole story? And, generally, I try to ensure that whatever fabulous new book I’ve stumbled across and been intrigued by is not in the middle of a series. But it has happened. Occasionally. Recently. Like last week.

I started reading Suddenly Spellbound by Erica Lucke Dean to review it, and then realized it was not the first book in the series. Since I was reading it for something other than pure enjoyment, I kept reading, but the bits of backstory and mentions of past shenanigans bothered me, because I didn’t know the details of what had happened.

If I’d been reading just for me, I would have gone with either option one or three above. I would not have kept reading, because not knowing drives me up the wall.

So, what would you have done?