My 5-part Year-In-Review Series has become a treasured staple for me to wrap up my year ever since the dawn of this blog. Usually the categories have been (a variation of) Favourites, Worst, Surprising, Underrated (Indies and books with <1000 ratings on Goodreads) and Anticipated Releases for the next year. This year, I ran into some trouble with that format: I found myself with too many favourites…
To curb that luxury problem, my Surprising- and Underrated list are cuddled up together to make room for an Honourable Mentions list too, coming up later this week. Today, we're starting strong with my top 5 surprising- and top 5 most underrated reads of the year, as well as some quick stats.
Quick Stats
Number of Books Read: 135
Master-TBR update: I can't believe it, but I actually managed to read all 24 of my Master-TBR books, so I won't be carrying any over to 2025.
Most read Genre: a fairly even mix of SSF, literary, horror and the occasional non-fiction and middle-grade, as ususal.
Longest Book: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (1008 pages)
Shortest Book: Undead Folk by Katherina Silva (75 pages)
Household rules regarding all of the upcoming lists: no rereads, no ARC’s/manuscripts of books that haven’t been published at the time of posting this, and multiple books within the same series go into the same spot. With those out of the way: let’s talk surprising and underrated reads:
Top 5 Most Surprising:
1. The Hexologists – Josiah Bancroft
Kicking off the list is a book I expected not to love, based on the author. Despite the incredible popularity of The Books of Babel Series, I couldn’t get into those, largely because of the writing-style. Both book 1 and 2 ended up on a Most-Disappointing list at some point, so I’m happy that Bancroft revanches himself by an appearance on a different list. The Hexologists is the start of his new fantasy series, in which we follow a team of magical ghost-hunters (think Ed and Lorraine Warren, except they’re not a scam), solving a string of supernatural mysteries. This was whimsical, witty and delightful, and I actually enjoyed my read a whole lot. Many of my problems with Bancrofts writing are still there (his character work is surface-level, the humor doesn’t always hit for me etc), but it suits the who-dunnit-genre better, and the chemistry between the main couple makes up for a lot.
2. The Spell Shop – Sarah Beth Durst
Another book I didn’t expect to love, this time based off its genre, was The Spell Shop. Cozy mystery and I have not gotten along this year, and although I want to like the genre, I might need to admit that it isn’t for me. The Spell Shop was, so to say, the exception to prove the rule. Kiela has lived a sheltered and isolated life as the dedicated librarian of the Great Library of Alyssium, caring for a vast amount of magical spell books with her assistant (a sentient spiderplant named Caz). When a revolution breaks out in Alyssium, and her beloved library is set ablaze in the commotion, Kiela and Caz barely escape with their lives and the few spell books they can grab. Returning to the remote island where she’s born, Kiela attempts to start a new “low-key” life as a jam-maker. Soon however, she’s selling spells out the back of her shop and finding a new home amongst to the townspeople. The tagline of this book says “low-stakes market of illegal spell-selling and the high-risk business of starting over”, and it’s those stakes that set the book apart from other cozy fantasies for me. Despite being distinctly cozy and whimsical, The Spell Shop still manages actual stakes and consequences with its revolution-plotline, and helped me build investment in both the characters and their trials and tribulations. I’m happily anticipating the continuation in this world, scheduled for release in 2025.
3. We Used to Live Here – Marcus Kliewer
We’ve had an author I expected to dislike, a genre I expected to dislike an now… A social medium I expected to dislike… We Used to Live Here was a TikTok-darling upon its release, and I’ve personally never gotten a good book recommendation from there, until today.
We Used to Live Here is a knock-out horror debut about a young, queer couple who flip houses, who’ve just moved into their latest project. As one of the women spends her first night alone in the house, the doorbell rings. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in…This was tense, sinister and absolutely pageturning. You can read my full review here.
4. Lost in the Garden – Adam K. Leslie
Like We Used To Live Here, Lost in The Garden garnered quite a bit of social media hype around it’s release. Unlike We Used To Live Here, I had absolutely no idea what to expect going in… I saw people describe it as folk-horror, cottage-core whimsy, Alice-In-Wonderland-like and akin to Midsomar. I saw talk of zombies, poppyfields and icecream-trucks, and somehow all of those things are true, and none capture how actually strange this book was. The plot is set in a surreal and dystopian nearby future version of the idyllic English countryside, and follows three friends on a roadtrip to Almanby. None of them have a good clue what is in Almanby, as no-one ever returns from it. During their fever-dream roadtrip we explore their extremely strange friendship-dynamic, as well as slowly glimpse into the world outside the car windows. A world that holds equal parts spring-flower-meadows and corporeal ghosts… Lost in the Garden nails its atmosphere that’s somewhere between a heatstroke-induced fever dream and a warped version of nostalgic childhood memories. Somehow that combination makes for a unique feeling of horror, strangely akin to liminal space horror, that I haven’t encountered before in my reading.
5. Impossible Creatures – Katherine Rundell
Last but not least, a book I sort of expected to like, but didn’t expect to love. Whenever a middle-grade book is hyped as being “a modern classic ala Philip Pullman”, I instinctively respond with skepticism. This is one of the few times where I sort of get the comparison. We follow a boy traveling to the magical isles of Archipelago; a cluster of unmapped islands where magical creatures of every kind have thrived for thousands of years—until now. Alongside a baby-griffin and a mysterious girl he meets along the way, he must fight the threat that plagues these magical lands. Rundell created that perfect blend of whimsical and wise that good children’s fiction can have. It makes for the perfect kind of buddy-read between parent and child, as each will love the story and get something different from it. Those books will always have a place in my heart.
Top 5 Underrated:
1. Not Quite a Ghost – Anne Ursu
Although it has the highest number of Goodreads-shelvings out of the five books featured, 1000 ratings is still criminally low for a middle-grade novel that’s só good and impactful as this one. We follow Violet, adjusting to life after a big move with her family. Before long, she begins to suspect that their new home, specifically her room, is haunted by the ghost of a sickly girl. Parallel to that, Violet sometimes feels like her own body is a haunted house too after falling ill and never quite recovering. This is a beautiful middle-grade novel that combines the story of a girl who moves into a haunted house, with themes of friendship, family and chronic illness. Especially in the age of post-viral illnesses like Long-COVID, it’s wonderful to see them get coverage in middle-grade literature too.
2. Chronicles of Ludwich – Jeff Noon & Steve Beard
Switching gears completely from middle-grade to adult fantasy, The Chronicles of Ludwich took me by surprise this year. Published by Indie-press Angry Robot this fantasy duology was just the perfect mix of weird, humorous and original. We follow Cady Mead, an elderly woman with an enigmatic past as a river-taxi captain, who now lives her retirement days out drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort and trading her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport across the dangerous river Nysis to the city of Ludwig. Intrigued by their story and request, Cady accepts perhaps the most treacherous quest of her career: ferrying a ragtag group of misfits across a murky river possessed by the ghost of a long deceased dragon… From that synopsis alone, you’ll get a taste of how original this worldbuilding is, and it only gets better from there. You can read more of my thoughts in my full review of Gogmagog or that of its sequel Ludlula. Highly recommended for fans of Jeff Vandermeer or Neil Gaiman.
3. Absorbed – Kylie Whitehead
Another Indie-title that deserves a lot more love is this literary horror novel by Kylie Whitehead. In this, a young woman struggles with her codependent relationship with her boyfriend, feeling him slowly slip away from her. Panicking one night, not knowing what to do without him, she absorbs him. Literally… Soon she begins taking on his best qualities, becoming the person she always thought she should be. Where does she end, and where does he begin? Delightfully humorous, but razor sharp in its critique of codependent relationships, body and even genderroles, I wished more people would pick this one up, if only so I’d have someone to discuss this with.
4. Towards Eternity – Anton Hur
Although there was some buzz leading up to its release, Towards Eternity seemed to disappear from the radar completely after dropping. Undeservedly so, as it was a very strong 4-star read for me that’s well worth a read for fans of contemplative sci-fi. I described this as How High We Go in the Dark meets Cloud Atlas, meets Never Let Me Go, with the caveat that it’s not as impactful as either of those, but I do think it captures the feeling of the book well. The story interweaves multiple plotlines set in a near future where nano-technology has paved a way to curing cancer, and cell replacement therapy is making immortality more and more feasible. Through multiple POV’s (mainly, a prominent nano-technology researcher, a literature professor teaching poetry to AI-constructs, and a product of their conjoined creation), we explore questions of what makes us human when our cells and DNA are no longer the defining marker. Hur’s stunning prose is the absolute standout here, even more impressively so considering that English is not the authors first language and his previous literary work has been as a translator.
5. The Archaeology of Loss – Sarah Tarlow
Finally, I wanted to highlight an underrated non-fiction memoir themed around grief and caregiving. As you know, this topic is fully up my alley and as an editor and sensitivity reader on this topic, I tend to be fairly critical. Sarah Tarlow passed all my scrutiny with flying colours though. In this beautifully written and deeply honest memoir, she recounts her experiences as a caregiver for her husband with an undiagnosed neurodegenerative illness, up until the point where he takes his own life to end the deterioration of his body and quality of life. Considering the incredibly heavy subject matter, I won’t push this book on anyone, and I highly advice to reflect critically on whether or not you’re up for the read at the current time. That being said, this is a topic I’m incredibly passionate about, and desperately wish was not such a taboo. Tarlow wrote a phenomenally honest, raw, nuanced and loving account of their experience in a country where euthanasia and/or assisted suicide are not legal, and all the challenges that come with that. I hate calling memoirs “brave”, but I struggle to find a different word to describe the author, as well as the people she wrote about.
Check back in tomorrow for my next post, all about the worst and most disappointing books I've read. Despite my overall good-feelings about this year, there's still plenty to cover, unfortunately...
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