Top Ten Tuesday | Top Ten Most Underrated Books

Top Ten Underrated Books

I’m a big fan of this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, friends. It’s nice to be able to look at something quantitatively instead of having to MAKE CHOICES. We all know how hard it is to figure out which books to put on our lists each week. But finding the most LITERALLY underrated books on my Goodreads shelf was interesting and fun, and in some cases, surprising. I stuck to books I’ve already read so that I can better judge how egregious their lack of ratings are.

These are in order from highest under 2000 to lowest!

Guys. THIS SERIES THO. Do you like Sherlock retellings? BFF-turned-romance? Mysteries? Aussies? Family secrets? If you said “yes” to any combination of those things, you should absolutely read this series. I’ve read the whole thing (even though book 3 isn’t out in the US yet; I loved these books so much that I bought it from the Aussie publisher), and it was all amazing. Given how many people I know who’ve read and loved this series, I’m surprised that book 1 doesn’t have more than 2,000 ratings. Close though!

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this book on my blog before. It’s not YA (AT ALL), but I fucking love it. I LOVE IT. It started out as a serial release on Wattpad and I could not control my chill every time a new chapter was released. I’ve read this book so many times. May and Ben have such a REAL relationship. Ruthie Knox is taking her sweet time finishing book 2, but it makes me a little sad that this is such an underrated book because it’s so good.

So, I’m going to be honest right up front. This isn’t the easiest book to read. It’s a fantasy that takes place on an island that I imaged was somewhere like the South Pacific. The rest is hard to explain, so I won’t even try. There’s TONS of subtext and English-major analysis stuff going on, which is great. Lots to think about. Sometimes the text gets a little convoluted. I can see why maybe not a lot of people have read it or finished it or rated it, but none of this takes away from how brilliant it is. The world is like nothing–NOTHING–else I’ve ever read, and it’s one of those books that really leaves you in awe of the mind that created it.

SUUPER cute NA right here that I’m suuper surprised has so few ratings. (I should note for context that the most rated book on my shelves is THE HUNGER GAMES with over 4.2 million.) It’s been a little while since I read it, but I know it’s got the friends-turned-more thing going on and it’s just really sweet. Definitely worth a read if you’re looking for a light contemp.

God, this book is really good. It’s set in Spain, a gorgeous place, and I can’t think of a single other book set there, so that adds to the je ne sais quoi. It’s about teen pregnancy, which I know some people steer clear of, but this is a really wonderful story about the bonding between an expectant mother and her little nugget. Plus, there’s something really eye-catching about this cover. I don’t know.

Criminally underrated book, in my opinion. This book was SO GOOD. Great world-building, characters, magical system, romance, everything. I feel like this one is falling victim to the “I want to read this, but it’s not NEW new anymore, so I’m going to read this other book instead,” and that’s a real shame. It’s been one of my favorite books recently.

Another surprisingly underrated book. I thought that the first book in this series, THE HALLOWED ONES, was excellent on its own and didn’t necessarily need more, but I enjoyed this sequel quite a bit! The vampires in this series are awesomely terrifying, and the Amish angle is so intriguing.

See my rant about EVERY BREATH above. Read this book, please. Read this whole series. There will be no regrets.

You know how sometimes you read a book and you can spot things that maybe aren’t perfect but you’re just so enchanted with the language and the world and the characters that you really can’t bring yourself to care too much? This is one of those books for me. I loved it. Truly. I still think about it to this day.

I guess I’ll give this one a slight pass since it only just came out, but WHOA, this was a great book. I hope the number of ratings go up, especially since it’s a fast-paced, twisty sequel that’s just as good as–if not better than–the first.