25 Underrated Books to Add to Your Shelves, According to Avid Readers

"Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen ($20) is the best thriller I've read this year. The author is local to New Jersey, and I wouldn't have heard about it unless I saw it in a bookstore recently! It's a great nod to some of the state's history and Atlantic City as a whole." — Murphey M.

"I keep bringing this one up, but my favourite read this year was King and the Dragonflies ($12). It is a middle school/older student book. King is a boy who questions his sexuality as he deals with other issues: racism, death in family, etc. It's [written] by Kacen Callender, a nonbinary author." — Laura C.

"Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger ($15). Everyone raves about The Time Traveller's Wife, and that is a great book, but her second novel doesn't get enough love. Maybe the ghost aspect turns people off? I don't know, but I loved it." — Nancy T.

"I recommend it everywhere, but I don't hear nearly enough people talking about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland ($17). I feel like everyone should read it. It should be made into a movie and a TV series and get a million sequels." — Julia H.

"The Wrath and The Dawn ($10) was amazing, but I don't see many talking about it anymore." — Caroline H.

"The Secret History by Donna Tartt ($15) is so much better than The Goldfinch!" — Jenn M.

"Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis ($17). It was my favourite novel of last year! The author created unforgettable characters with beautiful connections between them." — Lauren O.

"While Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series is hugely overrated in my opinion, her stand-alone novel The Host ($19) deserves more recognition." — Laura D.

"Words in Deep Blue ($8). I'd never heard of it before I read it, nor have I heard anybody mention it since. It has a gorgeous cover and is so much deeper than I ever expected when I picked it up. It devastated me when I read it (in a good way.)" — Jennifer H.

"As Many Nows As I Can Get by Shana Youngdahl ($15). It is one of the most heartbreaking and honest depictions of the interior lives of academically driven students, drug abuse, adoption, and grief that I've ever read." — Tricia C.

"My Name Is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd ($20). It's such a heartfelt, shocker of a story about a young girl who's just been released from jail and is trying to start her life over." — Jennifer H.

"Everyone raves about The Giver but few people talk about the other three books in the quartet ($28): Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son. One of my favourite series ever!" — Cindy W.

"Dark Matter by Michelle Paver ($13)! This is a wonderful ghost story that I feel has been buried under talk about Blake Crouch's novel of the same name. But I've never seen better for a sense of dread, some truly scary moments, a character study (well-told through a journal format), and last but not least, a really great dog! (The audio version is also dynamite!)" — Christine L.

"The Neverending Story ($9). Most people only know about the movie, which is vastly altered from the original novel. It's a wonderful fantasy story that goes way beyond the fantastical elements and is more about the power of stories and friendship." — Hayley C.

"I recommended [If We Were Villains ($14)] to my Nanny, and the next I heard, she'd gotten her book club to read it, and they all loved it." — Kat S.

"I've recommended Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories ($17) to anyone I can. With one exception, all of the writers are First Nations authors. The stories are set in Nunavut and draw on Inuk folklore and folkways. I found the writing more atmospheric than 'horror.' The characters are engageing, and the settings are gorgeous and austere. This book made such an impression on me that I'm now learning Inuktitut!" — Lilith P.

"Maus (parts one and two) by Art Spiegelman ($25). It's a graphic novel about the author's father's survival during World War II. Books about WWII seem to be a popular genre, and I would put this book at the top of the list with Elie Wiesel's Night. I read it about 15 years ago, and the way the author describes the train ride to the camp, along with the graphics, haunts me still to this day." — Hilary M.

"Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis ($11). He's so famous for the Narnia series that his sci-fi works get overlooked." — Jenny D.

"Rebecca and Jamaica Inn hog the Daphne du Maurier limelight, and My Cousin Rachel ($29) gets largely ignored. And when people do talk about it, they just go back and forth about Rachel's guilt. But it's such a deep dive into gender roles and perspectives and so richly atmospheric that I don't understand why it gets almost no attention." — Christina P.

"I never see anyone mention The One-in-a-Million Boy ($14), which I loved as well as The Hundred Year Old Man Who Jumped Out the Window (and Disappeared)." — Kathleen B.

"Okay, so I've never seen ANYONE talk about this book, and it's absolutely fantastic: My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel ($13). It's set during Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile and is about a young revolutionary who befriends an older gay man in order to use his flat for clandestine meetings. It's beautifully written and very touching!" — Rebecca J.

"Cinder & Ella by Kelly Oram ($13) is one of my all time favourite reads and one of the best contemporary retellings I've come across. I've read it quite a few times now, and it never fails to make me cry." — Alison C.

"The Universe Versus Alex Woods ($16) [is] highly, highly underrated — I've encountered about a half dozen people who also read it, and I've been recommending it all over for ages (all the others I talked to loved it as much as I did.) Absolutely amazing. One of those books that's impossible to explain without it sounding totally insane . . . 'Young English boy with psychic mother, who is the second person in history struck by a meteorite, has an inauspicious encounter with a disabled, pacifist American Vietnam veteran with a passion for Kurt Vonnegut, and eventually winds up detained at border security with an urn and a lot of pot.' There's no way it should work as a coherent story, and yet somehow it does, and it's relatable and dryly hilarious and incredibly poignant — the book handles some very heavy issues in a very mature way. A bildungsroman like nothing else I've ever read, or probably will ever read. Everyone should read this book, and it frustrates me immensely that so few people have." — Kylie M.

"I don't know about 'underrated' but to me, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson ($14) is a work of absolute genius, and I am forever banging on to friends, acquaintances, and book clubbers about how good it is." — Lesley D.

"Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua ($12) [is an] absolutely gorgeous Palestinian book with a Tolstoyan plot." — Melissa A.