Too often I see people only reading books that get popular. While the Harry Potters and the A Song Of Ice And Fires of the world are amazing books that are worth all the popularity they get, some of the best books I’ve ever read have been barely known stories that I randomly decided to pick up off the shelf in the library. I’ve chosen my favorite nine books or series that I think everyone should read at least once.

1. The "All For The Game" series ("The Foxhole Court", "The Raven King", "The King’s Men")

This series centers around Neil Josten as he goes to college on an exy scholarship and plays on a very well known team even though he is trying to hide from his crime boss father. Exy is a fictional sport that is basically a more violent version of lacrosse. Neil’s team, the foxes, are all people that their coach recruited because they had problems in their lives, ranging from physical abuse to drug problems to rejection from their parents. Be careful picking up these books though, at the end, I felt the need to adopt all the foxes as my own children so someone would look out for them.

2. The "Six of Crows" series ("Six of Crows", "Crooked Kingdom")

These two books center on Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Wylan Van Eck, and Matthais Helvar as they try to break into the most secure prison in their world. Most of the crew is part of Kaz’s street gang but there are a few wild cards in there. Also, Nina is magic because in this universe there are people born with magic, some who can control metal, some who can control the elements, and some who control people’s organs. This is another series that will make you want to protect all the main characters from everything.

3. The "Raven Cycle" series ("The Raven Boys", "The Dream Thieves", "Blue Lily Lily Blue", "The Raven King")

This series focuses on Richard Gansey the Third (but he goes by Gansey), Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch, and Adam Parrish. Gansey is a rich private school boy who is obsessed with a dead welsh king, Glendower, and wants nothing but to find him. Blue is from a family of psychics but has no psychic abilities of her own, she just amplifies others abilities. She also has a prophecy hanging over her head that says if she kisses her true love, he’ll die. Ronan is the resident scary boy in the group, he doesn’t care about his classes and he has a pet raven named Chainsaw. Adam is in the same private school as Gansey and Ronan but he’s there on a scholarship so he’s juggling his classes, a job, and the boys quest to find a long dead king. These books are modern fantasy, they take place in a modern setting but have all the magic of a fantasy story, which makes them an insanely enjoyable read.

4. The "Lunar Chronicles" series ("Cinder", "Scarlet", "Cress", "Winter")

This series is a retelling of classic fairytales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White, respectively) in a futuristic setting where we have cyborgs and androids and there are people who live on the moon who can change their appearance at will and can control the minds of humans. Each book builds on the last, so even though Cinder is not the focus of the second book, she is still very much a part of the story, and so on and so forth as the series goes on. There are also so many novellas with side stories published by the author that I could be reading things in this universe for my entire life if I wanted too, but the four books I mentioned are the main story.

5. The "To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before" series ("To All The Boys I Loved Before", "P.S. I Still Love You", "Always and Forever, Lara Jean")

These three books follow Lara Jean Covey through high school as her love life goes from nonexistent to insane with one simple mistake. Lara Jean has always dealt with her feelings in one way, she writes a letter to the boy and says everything she wants to say to their face, then seals it in an envelope and writes their address as if she is going to send it, but instead just stores it in a box in her room. But of course, her letters accidentally get mailed and she has to deal with the fallout of these five boys now knowing she had a crush on them, one of which is her next door neighbor and sister’s boyfriend. Lara Jean now has to find a way to deal with this, and following her love life will make you forget how dry yours is.

6. "We Were Liars"

I didn’t pick this book for myself, my sister bought it for me for Christmas, and I wasn’t sure if I would like it based on the description on the back cover. This book follows Cadence Eastman, a member of the rich Sinclair family, a family so rich they have their own private island they go to every summer. Cadence spends her summers hanging out with her cousins Mirren and Johnny and Johnny’s friend Gat, who call themselves the liars. The book follows the summer when she is seventeen, trying to deal with something tragic that happened the summer when she was fifteen that she can’t remember in her first summer back to the island since. The writing is so engaging that you’ll be unable to put the book down and you’ll be guessing what happened on summer fifteen until the very last second.

7. "I’ll Give You The Sun"

"I’ll Give You The Sun" is a book about twins Jude and Noah who are both artists who originally are inseparable but later end up barely talking. The early years are told through Noah, the latter years are told through Jude. Both characters have their own struggles that are interwoven in their relationship. The characters are captivating and the story bouncing between the past and the present is an interesting tactic that keeps the reader looking for multiple points of resolution, we want to know what pushed Jude and Noah’s relationship apart and we want to see if they can ever put it back together.

8. "The Sun Is Also A Star"

I bought this book because it looked interesting and finished it within a day of starting and all I can say is “I laughed, I cried, it moved me Bob.” If that’s not enough to get you to read, I’ll say something else, but it won’t sum it up as well as those words. The book follows Natasha and Daniel on one day in New York City that changes both of their lives when they met right before everything gets turned upside down for them. Natasha’s family is about to be deported and Daniel is being forced to go to medical school to please his parents, even though he wants to be a poet. This book is a powerful read that you’ll immediately want to scream from the rooftops about how life changing it is.

9. "Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda"

Simon is a closeted gay boy going into his junior year of high school who’s been secretly emailing back in forth with another boy, Blue, that are getting increasingly more and more flirtatious. Problems arise when Simon logs into a school computer to check his email and forgets to log out, leading to one of his classmates finding out Simon’s secret and using it to force Simon to do what he wants him to. From there it plays out much like a typical high school novel, but when the main love story is between two boys, nothing that might be cliche can be because it has never been done like this before.