Top Ten Tuesday (3) - Top Ten Underrated Books I Read Last Year

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Follow the link to know more about the meme and join up! 

This week the topic is: Top Ten Underrated/Hidden Gem Books We've Read In The Past Year Or So. You can find this week's post by The Broke and the Bookish here.

This is a tough one, because I don't usually really know what's underrated and what not. I've in the past thought a book was relatively unknown, just to find out that the entirety of the Internet was already talking about it and I was just late to the party.

I've went through the books read last year and looked for those that had a relative small number of reviews on Goodreads.

I found out that I mostly read books that come recommended to me or that I've seen a lot about on Goodreads or in the blogging community. Those are rarely underrated.

Let me start with Tom Toner. Here's his Twitter and here's my review of his book: The Promise of the Child

It's such a good book. Honestly. But before you go and add it to your tbr list, please let me tell you once more: it is for an avid science fiction and fantasy fan, not for the casual reader.
Tom Toner built a world that is fantastic. A world that is our future and Earth is nothing more than a distant memory. Toner drops the reader straight into an unfamiliar world without explanation, its up to the reader to find out how it all connects together.

Here you can find it on Goodreads.
If you're a fan of complex world building and science fiction and fantasy and don't mind putting in some work, do the chap a favour and pick it up, because it was a marvellous read. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even though it took me a long time to read it and caused a headache or two in the beginning where I was utterly lost. Apparently the 2nd book will be less confusing and more accessible, hopefully that turns out to be true.


  
Annette Marie's Red Winter is a YA fantasy set in a world that is based on Japanese mythology. It's not the best I've read, but it's definitely different. The setting is intriguing and the mythology is gorgeous. My review can be found here.

Meg Elison's Book of the Unnamed Midwife is about survival in a post-apocalyptic world where a virus killed almost all women. As you can imagine a hostile environment. My review can be found here.

Corinne Duyvis' On the Edge of Gone suffers from a few problems. Not enough action. Possibly a lot of diversity just to hammer home the point of 'we need diversity'. But since that point still needs hammering, fair enough. The protagonist is an autistic girl and it's very well written and I enjoyed it despite the lack of action. My review can be found here.

And that's it more or less. The rest of the ones with fever reviews are deep in the fantasy or science fiction genre and have found their readership.

Link me to your lists and I'll make sure to visit!