I’m pretty sure September just started, and yet somehow it’s almost over and I still haven’t posted this month’s Monthly Recommendations post! September is all about bingeworthy series, and it just so happens that I’ve binged my fair share of series, so I’ve got lots of options for this list. And don’t forget to check out the Goodreads group for even more great recommendations!

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Red Rising is absolutely the first series that came to mind for me when thinking about series I’ve binged, as I read the entire trilogy in the span of a week. I work full time and have other stuff going on, and the Red Rising books are not short books, so the fact that I read them so quickly is really a sign of how addictive they are and how much I enjoyed them.

I’ve talked about these books a fair amount on my blog, but for those who aren’t familiar, they’re set in space where people are separated by colors into a caste system, with Red at the bottom and Gold at the top. When Darrow’s wife is executed for daring to rebel against the social order, he finds himself caught up in a plan to overthrow the Golds. It’s super fast paced with lots of exciting twists and turns, and Brown weaves in a lot of ancient Roman history into them that’s a really neat juxtaposition with the space setting.

They’re really fun (and really stressful!) reads that I highly recommend. And definitely be prepared to binge them. Brown is the master of throwing in major plot twists that you will never see coming but that will keep you eagerly reading, plus the cliffhangers! Thank god I read these books after they were all published, because I’m not sure how I would have survived the wait for Morning Star!

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Illuminae is another scifi trilogy full of exciting twists that kept me hooked, and I’m really glad I held off on reading them until they were all published so I could binge them straight through.

I’m sorry I’m a bit of a broken record, as this is another series I talk about fairly often on my blog, but for those who aren’t familiar with these books, they follow the survivors of a corporate espionage attack on a remote space mining operation as they try to flee their pursuers to safety. Only a virus breaks out on their ship and their AI system goes rogue and all kinds of chaos ensues. Plus they’re told in a series of interview transcripts and chat logs and other multimedia formats that are really fun to read (and I hear the audiobooks are amazing!).

Definitely be prepared to read all three books straight through if you start this series!

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

I read these books as they were published the first time around, so I already knew what happened in them and only intended to read the first one when I started my reread of the trilogy. That plan quickly went out the window, though, as these books are super addictive and I just had to keep reading about Feyre and Rhysand and Prythian, especially as the stakes kept getting higher and higher!

A Court of Thorns and Roses follow Feyre as she discovers the fey world after killing a fey in the forest and being forced to live out the rest of her life across the wall in the fey land of Prythian as punishment. Only things in the fey world are much more precarious that she could have ever imagined and threaten the safety of the human world, drawing Feyre into a dangerous court of intrigue in order to save her family and her people. Fans of strong romances in their fantasy will really like these books!

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

So I actually put off buying Six of Crows because I had the Grisha trilogy in paperback and wanted all of Bardugo’s books to match, but it took so long to come out in paperback that I finally caved and bought the hardcover. I specifically chose not to purchase the sequel, Crooked Kingdom, at the same time as I didn’t want to spend the money on both right away and figured I’d get around to buying it when I was ready to read it.

I think I made it about halfway through Six of Crows before I realized there was no way I’d be able to wait for the sequel, so I immediately purchased it so I could start Crooked Kingdom as soon as I finished Six of Crows. I just got so invested in the characters and their story that I couldn’t bear not to know what happened next!

If you haven’t read them yet, the Six of Crows duology follows a group of six criminals as they pull off a heist of epic proportions. Only not everything is what they thought it was and a mysterious drug is threatening the magic users in the land, and the group members quickly find themselves in over their heads. If you love really compelling and complex characters combined with fast-paced fantasy, I think you’ll love these books too. Just don’t make the same mistake I did and buy them both at the same time!

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat

I’m not totally clued in on the controversy around these books, but my understanding is that they’re incredibly polarizing. I can definitely see why, so I don’t recommend reading these books if you’re at all triggered by sexual assault and rape or if you struggle to read books that are heavily steeped in slavery, especially sex slavery.

That warning out of the way, binge is the perfect word for what I did with these books. I had Captive Prince on my shelves for ages and still hadn’t read it when I scooped up the second one through a really good deal on Book Outlet. I rarely buy the sequels to series I haven’t started yet, but I was ok risking it with these books because the second one was so cheap. Well, I’m incredibly glad I did, because I wound up reading the entire trilogy in a weekend. That’s slightly less impressive than it sounds because these books really aren’t that long, especially the first one, but yeah. I did almost nothing else that weekend but read these books. After debating if I was better off buying the kindle of the third book or running over to the bookstore to complete the physical copies of the trilogy, I wound up making a last minute bookstore run so I could finish out the trilogy.

These books follow the story of Damen after he is stripped of his position as heir to the throne and sold into slavery by his half brother as a pleasure slave to the prince of an enemy court. As a slave, Damen gets caught up in the prince’s struggle for the throne that threatens to encompass his own kingdom as well. Plus, the prince has more reason to hate Damen than anyone because Damen killed the prince’s brother in single combat, so Damen is forced to keep his identity a secret, upping the stakes even further.

I was just really captured by the characters and all of the political intrigues going on in this book, plus I really liked the ancient Greek feel I got from them. I just couldn’t wait to see how the story unfolded and how the characters were going to get themselves out of seemingly impossible situations. The ending wound up being a bit anticlimatic and abrupt for me, but overall I really enjoyed this series.

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I realize this series is pretty fantasy-based, but I don’t really read many contemporary series, and romances tend to be more standalones set in the same world since each book follows a different couple, so I don’t really view them as series in the same way. There are also lots of other, maybe less well known series I could have included on this list, but I wanted to focus on ones that I’ve personally binged, and these are definitely the top ones!

What’s the last series you caught yourself binging from start to finish? Let me know in the comments!