It’s been interesting (and extremely gratifying) as a life-long reader to see reading come back around as the thing to do in your free time. I feel like it was so easy to get burnt out from high school and college required reading that a lot of people lost the magic of reading just for fun. A lot has changed over the last five years, both positively and negatively, but a highlight for me is that reading is BACK, baby!!
As I’ve said a million times on here, everyone has different tastes. You may love nonfiction and detest fantasy (just typing that made me nauseous). You may live for romance books and refuse to read sci-fi even under the threat of death. Still, there are a good number of books that I think people would enjoy reading—if they knew they exist. My purpose today is to call attention to some of these books and try to get people talking about them because I think they deserve it!
Let’s talk underrated books!
Whistleblower by Kate Marchant – I stumbled across this book on Wattpad in college (because of course I’m a Wattpad girl), and I read it about fifteen times before it was officially published. Whistleblower tackles some heavier topics (i.e. racism, the #MeToo movement) without it being a heavy book. It’ll punch you right in the feels, but it won’t make you feel disheartened about the world around you when you’re finished. Essentially, a student journalist uncovers a scandalous story about the head coach of the football team at her university, and has to deal with the consequences of investigating it. This book is a perfect summary of what it feels like to be a college student, in control of your life and choices for probably the first time, and what you can do with that freedom—change the world or sit by and let its problems pass you by.
The Casquette Girls series by Alys Arden – I am singlehandedly taking on the responsibility of getting everyone in the world to read this series. It took me YEARS of badgering my long-distance best friend to read it, and it was so validating when she and her roommate became obsessed with it, too. I’ve mentioned it in another post (”My Favorite Books: Fantasy Edition”, if you want to give it a read) and I will continue to mention it until it gets the recognition it deserves!! If you’re looking for a new fantasy series to start that won’t make your brain explode with the world-building, I highly recommend this tale of vampires and witches in modern-day New Orleans. The author is currently working on book #5 (Yes, I’ve been compulsively checking her social media for any and all updates over the last four years), so soon there will be even more Casquette Girls content to absorb. Which reminds me, I need to check her Instagram this week.
Anything by Edith Wharton – Speaking of high school required reading, The Age of Innocence was one of my favorite books we had to read for English class, right alongside The Sun Also Rises and A Separate Peace. I’m also currently finishing The House of Mirth (review coming soon in my January reading wrap-up post!), which has just proved how much I enjoy Edith Wharton’s books. They’re kind of like if Gossip Girl had taken place in the 1890s, what with following the trials and tribulations of rich society in New York during the Gilded Age. In fact, if you’ve seen Gossip Girl, the school play in season 2 is actually The Age of Innocence. Wharton’s writing is really straightforward for what people would consider a “classic”—you get a similar feel to a Jane Austen or a Brontë novel with only half of the flowery prose (no hate to my girl Jane). And with that said, The House of Mirth needs to finish tearing my heart out. :’)
Anything by Ruta Sepetys – If you love Kristin Hannah, you HAVE to read Ruta Sepetys. Like, I won’t take no for an answer. Sepetys writes predominantly historical fiction that won’t just make you bawl your eyes out. As someone who’s a quarter-Lithuanian (and has pierogies and sauerkraut with every holiday meal), her book Between Shades of Gray shone a light on a part of the Holocaust and my ancestors’ history that I had never seen before. She also has novels about New Orleans in the 1950s and Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Her books illuminate parts of history that are rarely explored in popular fiction, like the fact that hundreds (if not thousands) of babies were taken from “undesirable families” in the 1930s and given to families who supported the Franco regime instead. I personally think that Sepetys deserves to be in the conversation about lauded historical fiction with Kristin Hannah and Kate Quinn, and that’s not something I say lightly.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – It’s always The Secret History this, The Secret History that. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE The Secret History, but The Goldfinch is the book of hers that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it. It has explosions, art theft, alcoholic children, antiques forgery, and unrequited love, which reads like a recipe for brain explosion. Theo, the main character who we follow from childhood to adulthood, is someone that I found myself wanting to hug and shake some sense into simultaneously. The Goldfinch is full of complex characters and relationships, and is basically a very readable and interesting study on nature vs nurture—how does our past dictate our present and future? This book is a big boy, clocking in at 771 pages, but I believe it’s worth it, even with the undeserved lack of hype around it.
Rachel Hawkins’ YA books – This is a love letter to Rebel Belle, a formative book in my high school years. It taught me that you can draw inspiration from history to mix with fantasy and create a story about a contemporary teenage girl who has magic powers tied to a historical figure and now she has to save the world (as proven by the three pages I wrote of a story where a girl finds out she has magical powers inherited from Alexander the Great. So original!!). As a girl who grew up in the South and was guilted into participating in a debutante ball the summer before my sophomore year of college, I loved Rebel Belle and its sequels. Hawkins also wrote the Hex Hall series, which centered around witches, and shocked my sixth-grade self so thoroughly with a plot twist that—well, I don’t want to spoil anything, just in case people listen to me and start reading her YA books. If YA isn’t your thing, Hawkins also has a plethora of (pretty popular) adult thrillers to choose from as well.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie – Obviously, Agatha Christie is the queen of mystery and suspense. There’s a reason she’s published a billion Hercule Poirot mysteries: they’re entertaining and sometimes even funny while still surprising you by the end (the plot twist in Murder on the Orient Express, anyone?) I won’t lie, I accidentally skipped the chapter at the very end of And Then There Were None in which all is revealed the first time I read it, so I was at first a little frustrated, thinking, what the heck? We didn’t get any answers! We absolutely did get answers, it was simply user error on my part. Since then, And Then There Were None has become my favorite thriller. Yes, Christie is a household name, especially with her books being made into movies again recently, but I usually never see her among the Alice Feeneys and Gillian Flynns in a recommendation list of thrillers. This is my petition to bring Agatha Christie mysteries back to mainstream consumption!!
That’s all for today, folks! Not all book hype is created equally, and while social media has made it so much easier to bring books to the attention of the mainstream public, there are always some great ones that manage to slip through the cracks. I’m just trying to do my part out here to help remedy that. Let me know the books you think are underrated in the comments, and I’ll add them to my TBR for this year! Cheers, and happy reading!
Sequels and Scribbles 