Six For Sunday – My Favourite Books You’ve Never Heard Of

Six for Sunday is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Steph at ALITTLEBUTALOT. You can find a list of the 2018 prompts here

Favourite books people never seem to know about

We’ve all got our favourite books that everybody else knows about – the Harry Potter series, To Kill A Mockingbird – You may have heard Steph is fond of The Sin Eater’s Daughter… But what about those books that you love, and you’re just met with blank stares whenever you mention them? These are the books that Steph is asking us about for today’s Six for Sunday…

The books below aren’t all current books, in fact they’re not individual books, they’re series.  They’re some of my favourites from across the years, and should you go adventuring and look into some of the older ones I bear no responsibility for how good they actually are, I just remember loving them at the time – Perhaps I should find some of them and do a re-read….

Fearless Series by Francine Pascal – Mention Francine Pascal to someone of a certain age and they will be able to tell you all sorts about Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield – the twins at the centre of several book series, and don’t get me wrong I read most of them, Sweet Valley High, Kids and University but for me a far more interesting character was Gaia Moore – the star of Francine’s much lesser known Fearless series. Unlike Jessica and Elizabeth, Gaia was not your average American high school student, Gaia is fearless, literally, she was was born without the fear gene, her father is a CIA operative and his brother heads up an underground criminal organisation – he’s literally the evil twin. It sounds a little contrived now been teenage me adored this series, it was so full of action and intrigue with a bad ass female lead who regularly protected the guys in her life – I mean it was kinda her fault they landed in the middle of trouble anyway but I loved the fact that there was a female character who wasn’t constantly being rescued by guys, she was the one doing the rescuing. Charlotte is the only person I’ve ever come across who’s actually read these books!

Making Out Series by K.A. Applegate – This was a series about a group of high school seniors who lived on a island off the coast of Maine. I remember feeling so grown up reading the series, I think between my school library and the one in town I managed to read them all. I remember them being relatively diverse, especially for the time… One of the main characters was black and another was blind, they also dealt with some pretty substantial issues, from divorce and death, to abuse and addiction. Maybe I’m remembering it with rose-tinted glasses but at the time this series was everything

The Sally Lockhart Quartet by Philip Pullman – This is another series I loved that has been rather overshadowed by another series by the same author, pretty much everyone knows the His Dark Materials Trilogy, but despite the first book being adapted for the BBC the Sally Lockhart books still seem to fly under the radar and I think I loved these just about as much.

The Dark Gifts Trilogy by Vic James – Finally Sarah gets to something current I hear you all sigh with relief! The first two books of this trilogy Gilded Cage and Tarnished City have already been released, with Bright Ruin scheduled for publication some time in 2018. The series isn’t flying completely under the radar, it’s being championed by the lovely Liv, and she’s certainly the reason I picked up Gilded Cage, I absolutely loved it and the trilogy definitely deserves more love in the world – If bookish merch existed I’d be all over it – and if it does exist please point me in its direction!

Inspector McLean Series by James Oswald – Moving away from YA this is a crime series with a slight supernatural twist, set in Edinburgh and the surrounding area I absolutely love it! I’ve been lucky enough to attend the last two book launches as they’ve taken place in the Edinburgh Waterstones and James is a genuinely lovely guy! I think the books are growing in popularity but they’ve not yet reached Inspector Rebus, Ian Rankin territory and they so deserve to!

Inspector Karen Pirie Series by Val McDermid – The third and final series on my list which is written by a well known author but isn’t the go to series whenever that author is mentioned… Thanks to the Wire in the Blood TV series everyone knows the Carol Hill and Tony Jordan books about the detective and criminal profile / forensic psychologist that work together. I do really enjoy those books, forensic psychology was something I actually wanted to study until I discovered once I had my psychology degree the combined MSc and PhD would cost me about £30,000 in tuition fees alone, and that was before all the undergrad fees went up, add in the fact there was no student funding for it and that became a huge no go for me… Anyway back on topic I prefer the Karen Pirie series, and I’m not sure if it’s because she focuses on cold cases or because these books are based in Scotland, and I’m biased… I love a book that’s set somewhere I know, a book that uses real places and I know I’ve walked down that street, or gone in that shop… There’s a car chase at the beginning of Out Of Bounds which takes place in Dundee, I went to uni there and I knew every road that car sped down and I love being totally immersed like that.

Maybe some of these series aren’t quite as unknown as I think they are, most of them you’ve probably heard of, there just not as well know as I think they maybe deserve to be, in a lot of cases they’ve perhaps been overshadowed by an incredibly popular series by the same author, those books that everyone seems to rave about, books that I love too but I do love a good underdog!

They were my #SixforSunday! Have you read any of them? Let me know your favourites that seem to have passed the rest of the world by! If you’ve taken part leave a link to your post below and I’ll be sure to check it out!