Books That Exceeded Expectations

From Goodreads, These are books that you were pleasantly surprised by. They could be classics that you really loved, or more recent fiction that just caught you off guard by how good it was.

15,838 users · 50,823 views

made by lamom

avg. score: 21 of 70 (30%)

required scores: 1, 12, 17, 23, 30

list stats leaders voteVote print comments

Vote to Rank List Items

Vote items up or down - login not required

#1

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

8

8

0

#2

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

8

9

1

#3

1984 (George Orwell)

8

8

0

#4

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

8

8

0

#5

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

7

7

0

#6

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

7

7

0

#7

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

6

6

0

#8

A Thousand Splendid Suns

6

6

0

#9

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

6

6

0

#10

Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

5

6

1

#11

The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

5

5

0

#12

Ender's Game

5

5

0

#13

The Color Purple

5

5

0

#14

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

5

5

0

#15

His Dark Materials

5

5

0

#16

Sense and Sensibility

5

6

1

#17

The Count of Monte Cristo

5

5

0

#18

The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

4

5

1

#19

My Sister's Keeper

4

4

0

#20

The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)

4

4

0

#21

Life of Pi

4

4

0

#22

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

4

4

0

#23

The Shadow of the Wind

4

4

0

#24

The Secret Life of Bees (South Carolina)

4

4

0

#25

Les Miserables

4

4

0

#26

Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

4

5

1

#27

Graceling

4

4

0

#28

City of Bones (Cassandra Clare)

4

4

0

#29

Of Mice and Men

4

4

0

#30

The Lightning Thief

4

4

0

#31

Harry Potter

3

5

2

#32

The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

3

5

2

#33

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

3

4

1

#34

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

3

4

1

#35

The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

3

3

0

#36

Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

3

3

0

#37

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

3

3

0

#38

Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)

2

2

0

#39

The Help

2

3

1

#40

The Glass Castle

2

3

1

#41

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

2

2

0

#42

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2

2

0

#43

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

2

3

1

#44

A Game of Thrones

2

3

1

#45

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

2

3

1

#46

The Forgotten Garden: A Novel by Kate Morton

2

2

0

#47

Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

1

1

0

#48

The Alchemist

1

2

1

#49

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

1

2

1

#50

The Historian

1

1

0

#51

Atonement (Ian McEwan)

1

2

1

#52

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)

1

1

0

#53

All Quiet on the Western Front

1

1

0

#54

The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)

1

1

0

#55

Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

0

3

3

#56

Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)

0

4

4

#57

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

0

5

5

#58

The Art of Racing in the Rain

0

1

1

#59

Vampire Academy

0

0

0

#60

The Pact

0

0

0

#61

A Great and Terrible Beauty

0

0

0

#62

The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)

0

0

0

#63

I Know This Much Is True

0

0

0

#64

Fountainhead

0

0

0

#65

Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)

-1

0

1

#66

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

-1

0

1

#67

The Shack (Young, William P.)

-1

0

1

#68

Three Cups of Tea

-2

0

2

#69

Love in the Time of Cholera

-2

0

2

#70

The Host

-4

0

4