What does it take, if anything, to get you to help yourself to a novel you've already read?
I have only one series of novels where this has happened to me, although I confess to be considering re-reading Vince Flynn's books.
Why only two books of a three book series? For the first and potentially the last time I re-read Kristen Heitzmann's Secrets before the second in the series Unforgotten debuted. I loved Secrets because of the unique and truly amazing co-protagonists Reese and Lance. I've said before if I was a man, I would've been Lance Michelli (sans the Catholic part, and that's no offense to Catholics). His passion and spirit captured me from the first acquaintance. Kristen outdid herself with these two characters. When I purchased Unforgotten, I read it, closed the book and opened it again to the first page, completing it a second time. Then I reread Secrets and Unforgotten in order. Never had done anything like that before or since. All total, I reread those novels three times each.
The characters were amazing, the story unique, the scenes life-touching, and the locations intriguing and wonderfully presented. Needless to say, I've loved a lot of novels that proved meaningful to me in many different ways, but there was something about these two that reached way down deep and left a mark. The third and final novel (Echoes) in the series was a disappointment but then it would've been hard to equal the first two.
So I know some of you have resorted to taking second helpings of novels you've read. Why?
Father, thank you for the beauty of creating fiction that models life in all of its difficult ways but somehow through it all leaves a redemptive seal. Only you can inspire that kind of truth and beauty. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.