 Hi everyone. Hello. What do you want? Welcome back to my channel. I hope that you are well. Today I thought we would come outside and be in the sun. Today we're going to chat about my favourite underrated books. So these are all books which I love but I don't really hear anyone else talking about very often and so I want to raise awareness and I want to be the one to tell you this book is great because some of these books I didn't even hear from anyone else. A lot of my recommendations and books I read come from me hearing about that book from another booktuber but quite a few of these were just books that I picked up on my own because I thought they looked interesting and so I just want to share the love and I want you to read them too because when someone tells me that they're reading one of these books it makes me so happy. Okay so first is The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Now I keep going on about this book. I spoke about it last week as one of the best books I read in the last three months during my quarterly wrap up which I'll link and I'll also link the vlog where I vlog myself reading this whole book. So this book is so good and this is the one I feel like I've had the greatest success with. A lot of people have told me that they rather bought this they've read this or it's on their radar because of me. The Guest List by Lucy Foley. I had not had this on my radar at all until two of my friends Gabby and Megan both just glowing reviews. It comes from Megan's channel The Guest List by Lucy Foley and she said that if you were to take anything away from that video it would be to read this book so I did take that away from this video. Yes! Yes! Yes! But honestly this book is incredible so it is a murder mystery kind of like an Agatha Christie style murder mystery set on a really remote island off of the country island. We're at a wedding of this really rich couple and we find out that on the first page that a body has been found at the wedding reception and then we kind of go back in time to the day before and move through to find out how someone has been killed, why someone's been killed, who's been killed, who's killed someone and it's just such a good mystery. Lucy Foley is great at creating a really remote atmosphere and making you feel like the kind of elements and the weather is against you and she's great at making you not trust anyone. The group of people are kind of like not nice people, not people I don't want to be at a wedding with. But she has one character Hannah who is the plus one so she's kind of an outsider in the group and she is kind of our eyes into the situation. She's the one who we kind of think thinks normally and I think having her as a character really helps because she's able to comment on what the other guests are doing whereas when I read The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley I did not like it because the whole group were kind of bad people and so you didn't have those eyes in and I think it really helps to have someone being almost a voice of reason within the book but everyone has crazy secrets which are revealed slowly and some of them you think you know what their secret is and then like another secret gets revealed and you're just gagged. I love this book so much that when I saw it was a book of the month pick this month I may be getting someone's suspended to me from America even though I already own the book. It really is a low moment in my life like that I can't even justify it I can't even try to justify it. If you're looking for a murder mystery great cut that's just such a good book like I don't think anybody understand enough go watch my vlog and you'll see me just totally caught off guard by how great this book is it's wonderful so you definitely should go read it. The next book I want to mention is Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan so this is a light YA book I just read it actually in my video reading light YA books and we follow Jasmine and Chelsea as they decide to start up a women's rights club at their school after meeting lots of different forms of discrimination within the school and feeling like the clubs already exists aren't there to actually promote the social justice that they're supposed to so it's about them kind of figuring out what feminism means to them what activism means to them whilst still having a really great friendship and tackling other issues like grief and loss and it's just a really nice young adult book. I read it in a day and it's just very wholesome and the characters are just wonderful I really want to read more from both of these authors their characters feel very fleshed out and also very realistic they feel very much their age they feel very much like 16 I think at 16 everyone becomes a bit of an activist and thinks that they can do anything but these girls actually like trying to do something. Thank you. Alright then see you later. Bye. You've been a great out today. That's alright thank you. Bye. She hadn't done shit for the last couple of days. I've read some YA recently, turtles all the way down, where to me the characters felt very young like younger than they were supposed to be you know they were supposed to be 16 but they felt 13 whereas in this the girls seem very mature but still teenagers who are trying to figure everything out. Sometimes I still think I'm a teenager and I remember I'm 20 and it's a sad moment for everyone. I would recommend this if you're looking for some YA contemporary with a bit of like you know feminism twist to it that you haven't heard much talk about I've had a few people talk about this but not loads and I think it should definitely be on people's radar more because it's just such a solid book. So the next series I have to recommend I don't think anyone will be surprised and it is the Bear the Nighting Girl by Catherine Arden this is the first in the winter night trilogy okay in my defense quite a lot of people talk about this book but still not enough. I always say this until the day I die I think about this series in my first video I will speak about it in my last video and I never know which is gonna be my last video you never really know so like maybe I'll just keep mentioning it in every video. Pretty legendary if you ask me I love it. In this we follow Vasya who lives in old Russia and she kind of discovers magic and sorcery and religion plays a big part in this but like not an overwhelming part of it. This first book in particular is looking at how old Russian folklore is becoming overpowered by religion and how she's trying to nurture the old Russian myths because they're kind of real we have like the house spirits in this we have old legends being alive and it's just this book in particular is kind of very insular it's her in her village with her family trying to save the people she loves and as each book progresses we start to see her trying to save cities or into the whole world and this book is so good. I just love seeing her grow and become more powerful and realising her worth more and the family relationships are really great and this they follow I don't want to spoil anything but they do follow us through in some ways throughout the whole novel and I just think that the language that Catherine Arden uses is so incredible because when you read it it feels like you're reading a Russian fairy tale you feel like you're listening to old Russian folklore and you're like how is this new? It's just one of the best things I've ever read I think it's just so magical and if you haven't picked this up yet please do. Oh god even looking at it makes me want to cry. My next recommendation if you're looking for underrated books would be The Strange Case of the Alchemist Daughter by Theodora Goss so this is set in Victorian England and we follow Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's daughters. We follow a lot of female characters from kind of the Victorian era of literature or daughters of those characters and it's another murder mystery kind of vibe. For me this is so underrated I had not heard a single person talk about this and I had to read a murder mystery for that video and I was searching through Scribd trying to find a book that I had access to because after a certain amount of books read Scribd limits your access and so I didn't have many books to choose from and I just was like I'll read this it'll probably be a three star it's not going to be that good and then I read it and I loved it. This book is great at having a full cast of female characters who are very different from each other who all bring something really unique to the table. Some really like femininity, some kind of like want to be with the boys, some are very academic, some are very serious, some are very fun and they really become a found family these girls together throughout the course of the novel and it is a series I haven't read the rest of the series I've only read the first one but I've spoken a lot about how it reminds me of Stalking Jack the Ripper and kind of like the reason I wanted to read Stalking Jack the Ripper and the reason I still want to continue this series is that kind of like Victorian era vibe but in a modern novel. But I didn't really like Stalking Jack the Ripper and something a lot of people critique it for is kind of like how it claims to be feminist but it's not very feminist when you actually read it because it shames women being interested in like makeup and clothing whatever whereas in this one you've got representations of like every kind of woman. Something that I really love about this is that it's written or suppotent it's not actually written but it's like supposed to be written by the girls themselves and throughout it will break the fourth wall and they'll kind of like pop in and say and comment on what someone's written or be like that's not right this is what happened or whatever and it just adds so much more vibrancy to these characters. For some of the characters that's how you meet them through those cutting in comments because they kind of don't appear until maybe I'd say like halfway through the book and so you kind of know them before you meet them and it makes me even more excited to meet them. This also has Sherlock and Holmes in it they play quite a big part in like helping the girls access places which they wouldn't be able to access and again I think it's nice to have these characters which we have a lot of reference for throughout pop culture. It kind of aids the story get on quicker if that makes sense and I think everyone likes to read about Sherlock. I think Sherlock is one of the most adapted things in the world and so we all have an idea of Sherlock Holmes in our head and I think it just is a great addition to the story. Yes thank you for your input. And I think it does really well at not retracting from the girls at all like the girls are still the main part of the story and although Sherlock and Holmes still play a big part in the story they don't overwhelm it at all and then the last recommendation I have is Charlie Cox's poetry so she has She Must Be Mad and Validate Me. I think I prefer She Must Be Mad which is her first one but I love them both. Her poetry I think poetry is really underrated in general but she's a British poet so I think she's quite underrated outside of the UK and her poetry is just so unique and I think very relevant for young girls today particularly I think it talks a lot about self-image, about relationships, about mental health particularly and I think it's just something we should all read. Do you know what I mean? I think it's just poetry that should be required for reading. It's very powerful poetry and I think she often knows how to get at the heart of the issue. I think she's incredible and when I met her she was one of the loveliest people ever so that means I want to like talk about all the time as well. Hearing stuff you've thought yourself said back to you in poetry is very powerful and I think it's just really healthy to talk about mental health in the way she does be so open about it. I believe on Scribd, I know at least in the UK I don't know if on all the Scribd you know platforms across the world but in the UK she narrates her audiobooks and I think I'm going to reread them soon, listening to audiobooks because I've only ever read them physically but her reading her poetry is amazing. When I went to one of her poetry readings she reads her poetry so well and so I think it's probably really great to listen to her read it and so yeah I'd really recommend looking into that if it's available in your country on Scribd. So there we have it that is all my underrated book recommendations, let me know down below if you're interested in any of these because the whole point of this video is me trying to get you to read the books I like. I'm always like why has no one done one of those book reading booktubers favourite books yet for me. I just want people to read my favourite books and let me know what some of your favourite underrated reads are. I would love to know because I think I tend to read really hyped up books a lot and I want to be reading kind of some more underground underrated ones. Thank you as always for watching and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye!