Don't know how popular it is but I always rec The Chaos Walking Series.

Humans inhabited a planet and the result was all their thoughts since became vocal, you could hear what everyone around you was thinking. Strangely women weren't affected by this and the village the Protagonist starts in solved that problem by killing them all.

Anyways, the characters are good, the whole trilogy is actually really solid and it doesn't lag in book two, which is probably my favorite of the three.

Other Recs: Power of Five by Horowitz (Last book was just fucking amazing)

House of the Dead by Dostoevsky

And Man and Superman by Shaw is superb, it's a classic so I'm assuming most people know of it though.