Lets Talk Bookish

Let’s Talk Bookish: Underrated Reads

Dini @ dinipandareads17 Comments

✨ Welcome back to another week of LTB! ✨

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and myself! In this discussion meme, participants get to talk about certain topics, share opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Learn more about LTB, past topics and future topics HERE.

This week’s topic is:

Underrated Books

Suggested by: Leyre @ Read You Leyre
Prompts: What makes a book “underrated”? Did you read any books in 2025 that you think are underrated? Did you read any books with underrated tropes (or micro tropes) or genres? What are some of your favourite “underrated” reads from 2025 and of all time? 

What makes a book “underrated”?

Underrated books are the ones that basically haven’t got the attention and recognition it deserves. It could be that you rarely, if ever, see it mentioned on social media or by other book bloggers, influencers or other readers. They can be books by popular authors or from big publishing houses, but they just don’t get the same amount of coverage as other extremely popular titles. It’s always shocking when you come across a story that doesn’t seem very popular, yet it is god-tier mind-blowing and you just can’t fathom that no one else is talking about it! 🤭

Did you read any books in 2025 that you think are underrated?

Yes, I read several books last year that (I believe) are underrated. I’m mostly thinking of 2025 or at least 2024 releases that I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about! Did I miss people talking about these books elsewhere? I didn’t see much about them on the blogosphere at least!

Off the top of my head, these were some of my favourites:

I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang, In A Rush by Kate Canterbary, The Scorpion and the Night Blossom by Amélie Wen Zhao, A Song for You and I by K. O’Neill, Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton

Did you read any books with underrated tropes (or micro tropes) or genres?

This one’s a little bit harder for me to answer because if I’m being very honest, I don’t pay that much attention to the tropes or micro-tropes in a book. Or maybe the better way to say is that I’m not very good at remembering them after I finish reading. It’s awesome coming across a micro-trope that I love when reading but most of the time, it goes straight out of my head afterwards. Sorry, boring answer here! 🫣

What were some of your favourite “underrated” reads from 2025 and of all time?

Since I already covered the underrated reads of 2025 in the answer above, I’m sharing a few backlist books that I think are woefully underrated and deserve so much more love. I’m happy to see that some are starting to get more attention now!

Vicious by V.E. Schwab, The Deep by Rivers Solomon, The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary, The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan, Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He, The Goddess of Nothing At All by Cat Rector, Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu, Lunar Boy by Jes & Cin Wibowo, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O’Clover

Don’t forget to check out the other bloggers who joined the discussion this week! 👇🏽

Elle @ Unwrapping Words
Yolanda @ Past Midnights
Emma @ Pages of Emma
Raji @ Worlds Unlike Our Own
Abyssal Librarian
Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly
LaRonda @ Flying Paperbacks

If I’ve missed your post this week, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments, and I’ll add you to this week’s list of community posts ASAP!

Did you read any underrated books in 2025? What are some of your favourite underrated reads? Would any of these also make your list (or are they on your TBR)?

Blog signature that reads: Let's Chat! xoxo, Dini

17 thoughts on “Let’s Talk Bookish: Underrated Reads”

  2. Vicious got a lot of hype when it came out (can’t believe it’s been 12 years since I read it 👵🏻😭) but other than that, I haven’t seen the others being mentioned that much! I did read Words In Deep Blue but I don’t remember anything about it. 😂 I am not Jessica Chen is on my TBR 😊

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    • Okay, I definitely missed the Vicious hype, but all these years later, I still feel like it deserves more hype. It’s like the underrated Schwab book, imho. I hope with the release of the third book in the series, more people will finally pick it up! 🤭 I hope you enjoy Jessica Chen!

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    • Oh, that’s cool! I suppose then that’s just on me for not always being on the blogosphere. I don’t think I see them a lot on social media either, but I still do think all of them deserve more attention. I hope you enjoy Ro Devereux and Jessica Chen when you get to them 😍

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    • Yay! It’s always fun to find someone else who has read a book you think is underrated 🙂 I do think it deserves way more hype! I hope you enjoy Scorpion and the Night Blossom! I’ll probably re-read the first book before finishing the duology and I hope I love it just as much, lol.

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  5. That question about tropes is interesting in that what tropes are underrated? Hmmmm. I loved Ro, Words in Deep Blue, and The Astonishing Color of After. Do you think Check Please was underrated? I think I checked it out from the library because it was everywhere.

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  9. A few years ago, I made a post about underrated series with 5 on the list. I should compile a new one because there are definitely more books to mention. Two of them are Villains by V.E. Schwab (that could change with the growth in the author’s fandom) and The Rook and the Rose by M.A. Carrick.

    As for underrated reads from 2025, one is The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey by Kathleen Kaufman; two, She Who Knows Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor. The latter is a trilogy that serves as a companion series to Who Fears Death. The second book in the trilogy, One Way Witch, takes place immediately after the events in the novel, where the protagonist realizes that not all evil was vanquished by her daughter.

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  11. I did enjoy Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi a lot the year it came out but in this case I believe it was underrated in part because of the marketing it received, it was labeled as Fantasy when it is clearly not fantasy and even the author specifically stated that she didn’t write a fantasy book so I think some people that tried it might have been thrown off because of that and it’s a shame.

    There are a couple of others from your list that I really want to read, too! I adored The Deep and I agree it deserves more love and attention. I also recently got The Goddess of Nothing at All so I’m really happy to see it on your list here!

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  13. I think your definition of underrated is the one most widely used in book blogging, but I also think underrated can mean a book a lot of people have read and thought it was “just fine”. Every now and then I read a book and wonder “Why am I the only one who thinks this is a five star read!” It’s less common and more subjective than a good book not getting enough attention but that experience still has me describing a book as ‘underrated’.

    For me, the quickest way I judge whether a book is underrated is by checking how many Goodreads ratings it has. For the types of books I usually read, this would be maybe less than 1,000 ratings. So sometimes I have quite a skewed sense of whether a book is underrated or not 😛

    Sometimes I’ll also narrow underrated to whether a book is underrated in my online book community and nevermind whether it’s underrated overall. There are many titles I find interest in which other bloggers are checking out, but which still appear underrated on Goodreads or in the world at large. Or vice versa, as appeared to be the case with Wild Dark Shore last year – initially it seemed popular in the ‘offline’ world and then later built some traction among bloggers.

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