In a community where new, awesome and perfect books are coming out left and right, it’s easy to get lost in new releases and leave backlist titles behind. It’s no sin, but you never know how many hidden gems you’ll find going back a bit.
So here are five books that aren’t talked about a lot, but that I really enjoyed it a lot!
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The Dominion of Atalanta is at war. But for eighteen-year-old Aris, the fighting is nothing more than a distant nightmare, something she watches on news vids from the safety of her idyllic seaside town. Then her boyfriend, Calix, is drafted into the Military, and the nightmare becomes a dangerous reality.
Left behind, Aris has nothing to fill her days. Even flying her wingjet—the thing she loves most, aside from Calix—feels meaningless without him by her side. So when she’s recruited to be a pilot for an elite search-and-rescue unit, she leaps at the chance, hoping she’ll be stationed near Calix. But there’s a catch: She must disguise herself as a man named Aristos. There are no women in the Atalantan Military, and there never will be.
Aris gives up everything to find Calix: her home. Her family. Even her identity. But as the war rages on, Aris discovers she’s fighting for much more than her relationship. With each injured person she rescues and each violent battle she survives, Aris is becoming a true soldier—and the best flyer in the Atalantan Military. She’s determined to save her Dominion . . . or die trying.
Rebel Wing was such a good book. I loved how Aris grew from a lovestruck teenager, to becoming a soldier -who can also fall in love but not the same. It’s just a different kind of behavior. It shows something that most of YA doesn’t have, which is that it’s okay to grow, to not to like the same things as before, not have the same friends, and fall in love with other people. And after all, that’s what YA is all about.
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Seventeen-year-old Annika Truman knows about the power of positive thinking. With a little brother who has cancer, it’s all she ever hears about. And in order to help Jeremy, she will go to the ends of the earth (or at least as far as Hollywood) to help him believe he can survive his upcoming surgery.
But Annika’s plan to convince Jeremy that a magic genie will grant him any wish throws her a curveball when he unexpectedly wishes that his television idol would visit him. Annika suddenly finds herself in the desperate predicament of getting access to a hunky star actor and convincing him to come home with her. Piece of cake, right?
Janette Rallison’s proven talent for laugh-out-loud humor, teen romance, and deep-hearted storytelling shines in a novel that will have readers laughing and crying at the same time.
Yeah well, thank you, book, I did cry and laugh at the same time. This is one of those feel-good stories that are a little bittersweet, but that you won’t regret having read. Because the funny parts are hilarious, pretty far-fetched but the author does a good job of making the scenes come alive. And the sad parts? HA. HELLO TEARS.
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When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.
Except there’s something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she’ll turn to dust if he touches her. It’s not until Dez’s father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there’s more to this boy—and her father’s “law firm”—than she realized.
Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation—an organization devoted to collecting “special” kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons—his entire life. And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills. The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they’re caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.
A secret Kale will kill to protect.
Kale is a babe. Yeah, I’m not above this kind of book. And if you’d like something to compare it to, you could say it’s along the lines of Jennifer Armentrout’s Lux series. Understandable since they’re from the same publisher. Touch is a gem I found purely on accident. Dez is a kickass protagonist, and Kale, is a babe, and also kicks a lot of ass.
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When you can’t trust yourself, who can you believe?
Everything about Anna’s life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There’s Nick, Cas, Trev . . . and Sam, who has stolen Anna’s heart. When the Branch decides it’s time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them.
Anna is torn between following Sam or staying behind in the safety of her everyday life. But her father pushes her to flee, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs. There’s just one problem. Sam and the boys don’t remember anything before living in the lab—not even their true identities.
Now on the run, Anna soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they’re both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away.
This is a book I also discovered on accident, and it’s a damn shame it’s kind of disappeared. I read it a long time ago, and loved the premise. The execution delivered. The story surprised you at times, and it was always entertaining. The kind of series you can easily binge read!
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Choose: A quick death…Or slow poison…
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear…
Someone save me from these books because this was one of my first favorites. The thing that I always most admired about it was the world building, and how it develops across the other books. I truly fell in love with the world. It was just so rich. How everything works… It’s fascinating. The story is obviously A+ too, as well as the romance!
What are some books you think are awesome but not a lot of people have heard about them?
OMG Poison Study! I’ve been meaning to read it forever because it’s one of the most well-known underrated books that I’ve heard of, and seeing it on your list really makes me want to push it up on my TBR 😋 I think it’s so important for these underrated book lists to exist because it’s so easy to get lost with only reading hyped books. There are so many wonderful novels that are truly hidden gems, and sometimes the right people will stumble upon these books if you share them. 😊 This was a wonderful post! (Poison Study, here I come! 😆📚)
YES! DO IT! I’m so happy you’ll read it! I remember when I first picked it up and was blown away by the world of the story! So intrincate and interesting! I hope you enjoy it!
Thank you for sharing – Your blog is great! <3
https://octoberslallu.blogspot.qa/
Poison Study sounds really interesting!
It is! You should really give it a try!