I think this is what is so fascinating about reading as a whole and books. Such a personal thing. I love the "In Death" series, I can't get enough of the setting, the cases, Eve, Roarke and all the other characters that come after the first few books. That is what I love so much, the growth with the characters and how we get to know them more and more. It took me a couple of books and I was hooked.
Funny thing is, I can't read Nora Roberts as Nora Roberts, go figure.
. I tried I think 3-4 of them, finished one with something about a wedding planner and was bored to tears. The others I never finished. I am very very hard on contemporary romances and I get bored so easy. One even had some sort of paranormal in it, can't remember, they were on some small town island or something, like witches maybe? Didn't like that one either.
The world building in the In Death series to me is gradual. The first one I was a bit confused too, it was hard to imagine how things work, how things look, heck, I couldn't even get a sense of how Eve looked. That changed for me at book 3 or so. I do think there is a lot less description of certain things, yet the cases and the murders and all that is pretty detailed.
The futuristic setting though is one of my favorite things about it. The food vendors and the soy dogs, yikes.
There are lots of little things that pop up after the first 2-3 books. Little humor here and there, more back story on the characters, cases that pull the characters together.
For me regular police procedurals don't interest me. Same reason I don't watch any of the CSI shows and such on TV, just no interest. But its the setting and the characters in the in death series that make it for me.
I don't like to read them back to back though, they are what I read in between lets say historical romances to change it up.
I'd say though if one still doesn't like the series after 2-3 books, its probably not going to work.
All I know I want a autochef.
I don't even know how many books there are total, I just keep chugging through one by one. Last one I read was #16 Portrait in Death, so next up is "Imitation in Death". I don't know how far in the series that is. I think there are some 30 odd books? I get annoyed though at the short stories in between, like I do with any series. I don't read short stories and it throws me off when I see the numbers like 17.5 on goodreads. Sometimes its even worse and like 1.2, 1.4, 1,6, yikes.