While browsing the infinite world of Bookstagram and BookTok can be a great way to fill your TBR and find your next favorite read, the internet is so expansive that every great story can’t always take center stage! Sometimes obscure books slip through the cracks and aren’t given the recognition they deserve, especially when these stories belong to underrated genres.
Here, we explore my personal favorite recommendations, a collection of hidden gems — ranging from the obscure, to the heartwarming, to the absurd — that I think deserve endless praise from online book lovers.
Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of substance abuse. Additionally, some of the recommended books contain topics that may be triggering. Please read the TWs prior to purchasing.
Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White
Trigger Warning: This book contains descriptions of abuse, transphobia, and self-injury. Please read the full list of TWs prior to purchasing.
A new favorite of mine, Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed with Us, is a great pick to start off this list. On a recent trip to New York, I stumbled across this book while browsing the cluttered shelves of a secondhand bookstore, and the cover immediately jumped out at me — I just knew I had to read it. After devouring White’s novel in a matter of days, it quickly earned a spot on my ever-growing list of obscure favorites. Queer, angry, and heartfelt, this novel is for anyone who has ever wanted to embrace the monster within. While I’ve seen a handful of mentions about this book circulating on social media, I don’t believe it has received the attention it truly deserves.
World-destroying bioweapons, monsters made of human flesh, and a fundamentalist cult responsible for the rise of Armageddon — White’s dystopian novel Hell Followed with Us is not a critique of the past but a scathing warning for the present. Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is furious at the cult that raised him, enough so that he escapes their fundamentalist prison and finds himself at the center of a group of queer teens who have made their home in a local LGBTQ+ center.
Together, Benji and his new friends must take action against their oppressors and rediscover hope in the face of unimaginable destruction, taking out both human and non-human monsters along the way. All the while, Benji must hide the fact that he’s infected with the cult’s bioweapon and may or may not be mutating into the most deadly monster of them all.
The Great American Suction by David Nutt
Trigger Warning: This book contains descriptions of substance abuse. Please exercise personal care while reading.
An all-time favorite from the author of all things weird, David Nutt’s The Great American Suction was unlike any book I’ve ever read. The entire narrative reads like a bizarre fever dream, brimming with a slew of similes and vivid imagery that immediately drew me into the dark, uncanny, and warped recesses of the main character’s reality — a perspective shaped mainly by his addiction to huffing glue. Nutt’s novel perfectly captures the absurd, Sisyphean feeling of being trapped within the prison-like landscape of American suburbia.
Reeled in by Nutt’s ability to spin stories that are both dark and endlessly witty, I could not escape the uphill treadmill of these characters’ disasters — stranger still, I wanted to see them succeed. While online bookish spaces often boost stories that deserve to be read, it is rare to find a piece of fiction as surreal and comedic as The Great American Suction thrown in among the popular mix. Nutt’s prose is subversive and never fails to take my breath away, making his debut novel the perfect recommendation for this list of obscure stories.
Huffing glue, building giant trash monuments, and getting mixed up with his ex-wife’s doppelgänger — Shaker’s life is a bumbling, aimless struggle and collection of hilarious, occasionally devastating shenanigans sandwiched together by Nutt’s unforgettably dark prose. Accompanied by a slew of strange characters who find themselves in the throes of even stranger disasters, Shaker and his uncanny world exist as a necessary mirror held up to the absurd reality of everyday American life. Gritty, violent, and surprisingly tender, Nutt’s black comedy The Great American Suction refuses to shy away from strangeness and recognizes it as the condition that allows the world to keep on turning.
Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Trigger Warning: This book contains descriptions of grief, homophobia, and racism. Please read the full list of TWs prior to purchasing.
While Ocean Vuong is no stranger to the online hype surrounding his popular novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I’ve seen very little attention given to his lesser-known poetry collections, particularly the one I want to include in this list — the unforgettable Time Is a Mother. While poetry is a genre that always grabs my attention, it’s definitely not as popular as the typical novels that book lovers tend to embrace the most in online spaces. That said, readers should leap out of their comfort zones!
Don’t be discouraged if you’re not a poetry nerd — Vuong writes in a wide, sprawling array of poetic forms, sometimes ditching the traditional stanzas in favor of poetry with movement and words that leap off the page. After stumbling across this collection in a local bookstore and peeking at a handful of lines, I immediately knew this collection had to be my next read.
An exploration of queerness, Vuong’s Vietnamese identity, and what it means to be born out of violence, this painfully tender poetry collection should not be overshadowed by Vuong’s more popular works. Time Is a Mother definitely deserves a spot in every bookish corner of the internet.
Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff
Another star favorite of mine, Steve Brezenoff’s Guy in Real Life, came at a time when I needed it most, and I stumbled across this hilarious, subversive high-school romance while browsing the YA section of my local library. While bookish social media spaces embrace thousands of YA romance books, I’ve never seen mention of Brezenoff’s work anywhere online, and I believe this story would appeal to anyone looking for an endearingly awkward, nerdy romance to geek out over. The pixelated characters on the cover jumped out to me instantly — gamer romance?! — and combined with the intriguing blurb on the back about two teenagers who are stark opposites of each other, I knew I had to pick it up.
The narrative shifts between the two perspectives of Lesh and Svetlana, a pair of Minnesota teenagers who become unlikely companions after a ridiculously funny series of events. Achingly real and full of heart, Brezenoff perfectly captures the lived experiences of anyone who’s ever felt like a stranger in their own body, and those brave enough to embrace their weirdness despite it all — making this the perfect book to end off the list!
On the outside, it would appear that the pair of Minnesota teenagers have nothing in common: Lesh, with his black trench coats and headphones blasting heavy metal, and Svetlana, who embroiders her skirts and dungeon masters her high school club’s RPG. However, through a strange series of events, they find their lives unexpectedly entangled, becoming unlikely acquaintances, then friends, then something more. Ultimately, Guy in Real Life is a story of navigating friendships, social expectations, and gender identity. Together, Lesh and Svetlana retreat from the awkwardness of high school life into fantasy worlds of their own creation, discovering what it takes to come out stronger on the other side.
Here at Bookstr, we recognize the undeniable importance of online bookish spaces like BookTok and Bookstagram in popularizing amazing titles; however, browsing the shelves of lesser-appreciated genres and stepping out of your comfort zone is always a recipe for finding your next unexpected favorites! Keeping obscurity and weirdness in mind, this list of book recommendations is full of hidden gems that should definitely be added to your TBR!
Browse our Bookstr Recommendations page for more incredible books just like these!
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