Second-Chance Authors

So a few years back, after Nathan Bransford blogged about how people don't really buy or read than many debut novels and come on we want to be writers so we should be buying them, I decided to ONLY BUY DEBUTS for a while. This led to me finding a few really great books, but also led to this book:

Bloom, by Elizabeth Scott. It looked so pretty and the summary was so good and I bought it. And I read it. And I didn't like it. Bloom was one of those books that just hit me the wrong way. The main character's decisions annoyed me, the secondary characters couldn't save it, and though I kept reading waiting for the ending to pay off, it never did.

So later, when I saw other Elizabeth Scott books in stores, I never picked them up. No, thank you, I thought. One was enough. I didn't read Perfect You, Stealing Heaven, or Something, Maybe.

And then I heard about this book.

 The Unwritten Rule. I wanted to read it before I knew who the author was just because it sounded like exactly the sort of book I was looking for. The title was amazing, the premise was intriguing, and I wanted to see how the subject was handled. When I (surprise!) got a review copy in the mail, I was ecstatic. To be completely honest I was a little wary of reading something by the same person who wrote Bloom, but mostly I was excited to read the book.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I loved that book. Not only did I write a completely glowing review, but I also emailed the author -- which I rarely do -- to tell her how much I loved the book and to thank her for writing it. I'm so glad that I gave E. Scott's writing another try because The Unwritten Rule is seriously one of the best books I've read.

And the point of this is that even if you don't like one book by a writer you might like -- you might love -- another book they wrote. So I challenge you to give an author whose books you don't think you like a second chance. Read their book that sounds the best, or the one everyone else has been recommending to you, or, heck, maybe just the one with the best cover.