Book by Book Summer: Shelving Books Within A Series in Different Genres? Review Indexing is Hard.

Lately I've been struggling a lot with shelving books correctly.

While I think I've grown pretty confident in shelving books into the "correct" genre, there's one thing that keeps bugging me - what about books that change the genre within a series?

Typically characters go through a journey in a series. May that be physical or emotional. Sometimes when I'm reading sequels I find myself contemplating whether it's actually still the same genre.

For example this happens a lot in contemporary to me. Sometimes you'll have a YA Contemporary start out with a premise that may lead to romance. In the sequel we'll then learn more about the characters and their romance, leading to me wanting to shelve that book as a Romance, rather than a Contemporary.

While that may be up to the beholder and is probably a thing you've got to decide on your own - what if shelving the sequel in a different genre would be a spoiler?

Would it still be better to shelve the book "correctly" or put it in the same genre as the first novel so you won't spoil the experience for readers?

This happened to me when I reviewed the Generations series by Scott Sigler. The first book ALIVE heavily relies on the reader not knowing where the book is set or what is happening. It starts with a girl waking up inside a coffin.

If you plan to read these books, I suggest you'll stop right here and go straight to telling me what you'd do in the comments, cause I'm going to be spoilering now.

I shelved the first book under dystopia because I don't want to spoil anybody's reading experience. Even just shelving it under Sci-Fi, or like I do under one my sub categories within the genre, would be a GIANT spoiler because it would reveal that the characters are stuck on a space ship.

The second book ALIGHT takes place on a foreign planet and is absolutely clearly Sci-Fi. I don't think there's any way that you could justify this book being a dystopia, it's just very clearly Sci-Fi to me.

So now I'm stuck in a dilemma.

Do I shelf book two under Dystopian like the first or do I shelf it under Sci-Fi? Anyone who'll be merrily scrolling through my review index will very likely end up getting spoilered if I do the latter. And if I do the former it's just nonsense.

Whether you're reading Sci-Fi or contemporary, I feel like book series should all be shelved neatly together in the same genre, don't you think? Maybe it's me being weirdly overorganized but there is just something that insanely irks me when shelving something incorrectly or not together with the predecessor.