Top Ten Tuesday #199

Hi everyone! I hope you had a good week since I last did one of these, I’m back at home for reading week this week and I’ve been having a great time so far, I was in London on Saturday for the Hot Key Bloggers Brunch, which if you haven’t seen my wrap up of it, was awesome. I’ve also been back in London today, going to an exhibition on the Romanovs at the Queen’s Gallery near Buckingham Palace, which was AMAZING and made my history nerd heart incredibly happy. In fact, it’s a very London centric week because I’ll be back there on Thursday with my friend Nicola for some sightseeing and most importantly, TO SEE HAMILTON. Only two days to go, and I’m so ridiculously excited I can’t even, I’ve been wanting to see Hamilton for almost two years, and I can’t believe it’s actually finally happening.

Anyway, if I start talking too much about Hamilton, I will never stop, so as it’s Tuesday, that means another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re talking Books We Enjoyed That Have Fewer Than 2000 Ratings on Goodreads. I was a bit apprehensive of this topic since we have done it before and I wasn’t sure how much my list would have changed since the last time, but it turns out, it has changed quite a lot and I have 10 brand new underrated books to share with you guys. So here we go, Books I Enjoyed That Have Fewer Than 2000 Ratings On Goodreads:

1. Firestarter-Tara Sim-222 ratings-My Rating: 5 Stars

Granted, Firestarter was only released just over a month ago, so it hasn’t really had time to build up a mass of ratings, but I think this series is just criminally underrated in general. This was an incredible, explosive finale of a brilliant trilogy, if you like steampunk gay Victorian boys and an alternate Victorian London (& India) where the world’s time is run by clock towers, then you should definitely try this trilogy.

2. The Enchanted Sonata-Heather Dixon Wallwork-321 ratings-My Rating: 3 stars

I didn’t exactly love The Enchanted Sonata, it read a little young for me (even more than the YA audience it was aimed for) but I did enjoy it and was surprised that it didn’t have more ratings, it’s quite a unique little story, a retelling of both The Nutcracker and The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

3. By A Charm and A Curse-Jaime Questell-495 ratings-My Rating: 4 stars

This was one of my favourite books of last year and given how popular Circus/Carnival books have been in the last few years, I’m quite surprised it has as few ratings as it does, especially since it’s a great book, kind of like Pinocchio crossed with your classic Disney Princess story. It’s so rare to get a standalone fantasy story these days and this one is an amazing one.

4. Charlotte Says-Alex Bell-549 Ratings-My Rating: 3 stars

Charlotte Says is quite an odd little horror book, it’s the prequel to Frozen Charlotte, a story all about haunted Frozen Charlotte dolls, this book shows how the dolls came to be that way. I enjoyed this book but I can understand why it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, things do take a turn for the weird and horrific, even moreso than in the first book!

5. Enchantee-Gita Trelease-641 Ratings-My Rating: 5 stars

This book is incredibly new, it only released at the beginning of the month, and it’s not out till Thursday here in the UK, so I can understand why it’s not as highly rated yet, not as many people have had the chance to read it yet. I’m sure once it’s been out for a little while longer, it will burn way past the 2000 ratings mark set by this week’s topic, because it has everything, History, a gorgeous backdrop in Versailles of the 1780s, an amazing heroine and a simple but incredibly effective magic system.

6. For A Muse of Fire-Heidi Heilig-718 Ratings-My Rating: 3.5 stars

The start of Heidi Heilig’s new fantasy trilogy is a wonderfully diverse, incredibly creative story with a mentally ill main character. The magic system was awesome, the main character is able to bind souls of the dead to shadow puppets and control them which was something I have never seen in fantasy before. It’s an interesting mix between French Colonialism and Asian culture and I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with the next book, A Kingdom For A Stage.

7. Chainbreaker-Tara Sim-780 Ratings-My Rating: 5 stars

As I have already established in this post, I love Tara Sim’s Timekeeper trilogy and think more people should read it. The second book in the series takes us to Victorian India and really dives deep into British colonialism and explores the biraciality of one of the main characters (Sim herself is also biracial) and we get to see a lot more of Colton’s emotional backstory, as well as his relationship with Danny. I will never forgive her for that cliffhanger though. EVER. If you read Chainbreaker, do yourself a favour and have Firestarter on hand straight afterwards.

8. Fawkes-Nadine Brandes-1,649 Ratings-My Rating: 4 stars

This was another of my favourite books of last year, the combination of the Stuart era setting, the Gunpowder plot re-imagining and the super cool magic system of colours being controlled by masks was a complete and utter winner for me and I cannot wait to read Brandes next historical fantasy re-imagining,  Romanov, this year.

9. The Exact Opposite of Okay-Laura Steven-1,668 Ratings-My Rating: 4 stars

Another of my favourite books of last year, The Exact Opposite of Okay was uproariously funny, amazingly feminist and just one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. I seriously want to be friends with Izzy O’Neill, I think we would have a lot of fun together. I cannot wait to read Izzy’s next adventure when A Girl Called Shameless comes out-only 3 weeks to go!

10. A Thousand Perfect Notes-C.G. Drews-1,776 Ratings-My Rating: 3.5 stars

I enjoyed Cait’s debut novel, not as much as I hoped I would, it took rather longer than I’d have liked to get into considering how short it was, but I did like the characters and I thought the story was good if not amazing. I’m looking forward to seeing what Cait does with her next novel, The Boy Who Steals Houses, out in April.

So there we go, Books With Under 2000 Ratings On Goodreads that I enjoyed. Have you read any of these? Did you enjoy them? Let me know in the comments!

I will be back next Tuesday, with a topic that I’m hugely excited for, Places Mentioned In Books That I’d Like To Visit, I always love thinking of where I’d go if I got the chance to step into my favourite fictional worlds. It’s been quite a heavy week so far on the blog this week, with 3 posts in 3 days, so I doubt I’ll have anything else for you till my next Top Ten Tuesday next week, so stay tuned for that!