My Favourite Books With Under 1000 Ratings

Hi everyone, it’s Sabrina 🙂  Today I wanted to talk about some underrated books that I’ve really enjoyed.  Specifically, I’ve picked books on Goodreads that have less than 1000 ratings* – so though you may have heard a few people talk about these, the numbers are still really low!  I’ve grouped the books into a fiction and nonfiction, so hopefully something in this list will capture your interest!  So, without further ado…

*As of writing this post

fiction

🌸 Freedom Swimmer by Wai Chim

I’m starting off strong with an incredible YA historical fiction that I read in July.  This book is inspired by the author’s own family history and you can tell that there was care put in to every word.  I loved the dual perspective format and how easy it was to read.  I felt deeply for the main characters, and it was so interesting to see how their relationships shifted over the course of the book.

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🌸 The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling by Wai Chim

What do you know – another Wai Chim book!  From what I understand, this book isn’t available until November in some parts of the world, so I’m hoping the number of ratings will skyrocket soon!  I cannot recommend this YA contemporary enough – I enjoyed it even more than Freedom Swimmer.  The main character’s story and her relationship with her family touched my soul and even got a few tears out of me on several occasions.

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🌸 The Inventors by Alexander Gordon Smith and Jamie Webb

This is a charming middle grade book about child inventors that earn the opportunity of a lifetime.  My brother has owned this book and its sequel (which I have yet to read) forever, but I’d never even considered picking it up until he recommended it to me.  I wasn’t expecting to be all that impressed by it, but I ended up giving it five stars.  I loved the two main characters and the unexpectedly scary way the plot turned – perhaps not so surprising if you consider the author also wrote the Escape from Furnace series, which has way more ratings.  I definitely think this is a middle grade that can be enjoyed by all ages.

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🌸 You Don’t Even Know by Sue Lawson

It’s been quite some time since I read this book, but I remember how it made me feel as if it was yesterday.  It packs an emotional punch.  I have to admit, I’ve written in my one-sentence review that “a few things didn’t sit right with me,” but I can no longer recall those things, and I did give it four stars.  I remember being super intrigued by the family dynamics, even if the relationship between the main character and his dad could have perhaps used some more subtlety.

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🌸 Every Move by Ellie Marney

My final pick for the fiction section is perhaps cheating, because it is the third book in a trilogy and the only one to have less than 1000 ratings – even so, I do think the series deserves more love.  The first book has just a fraction over 3000 ratings, which isn’t all that many.  In case you don’t know, the Every series is a loose Sherlock Holmes retelling set in Melbourne – my city!  I thoroughly enjoyed reading about places I knew.  Of course, the most important thing though was that the book was great.  The characters were multifaceted and the plot was thrilling.

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nonfiction

🌸 Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

I’m going to start this section off with a book I read and loved recently.  This discussion of fairytales and disability is amazingly done and I rated it a full five stars.  It was written in such an engaging and immersive way that I struggled to put it down.  I enjoyed the snippets included about the author’s own experience with disability over the course of her life and what different fairytales had meant to her.  I highly recommend it!

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🌸 Literary Listography: My Reading Life in List by Lisa Nola

In my humble opinion, every reader should receive this book!!  I got it as a gift from a friend of mine and fell in love with it right away.  It’s full of pages of prompts for you to fill in with books that you’ve read over your lifetime.  It’s a great way to keep track of things you otherwise wouldn’t – like your favourite characters and which books have made you cry.  There’s plenty of space in there and the pages are quite durable in my experience.  If you have a reader friend that has a birthday coming up, let me suggest this as a present!

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🌸 What On Earth?: 100 of Our Planet’s Most Amazing New Species by Quentin Wheeler and Sara Pennak

I picked this book up a couple of years ago, and it was exactly what I was hoping it would be.  It was so fun to read through and see all the photos of some truly bizarre creatures that had been semi-recently discovered.  I loved that there were all kinds of species included in the book too, as promised – not just plants and animals.  It’s definitely one I would pick up again.

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🌸 Paint Yourself Positive by Jean Haines

I loved the whole experience of this watercolour book.  Not only did it get me to discover and play with new techniques, but it helped put me in a good mood.  It was particularly good at getting me to accept that watercolour sometimes has a mind of its own, and it’s not always beneficial to try controlling it completely – of course, it made some corny comparisons between watercolour and life, but they weren’t too obtrusive in my opinion.  I still think back to and repeat some of the activities from this book, so it was well worth a read from me!

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What do you think?

Have you read any of these books?  What are some of your favourite books with a low number of ratings?  Have you read any with less than a thousand ratings? Let me know!

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