The Goodreads Choice Awards have just been announced. This is their 16th annual Awards, and the fans vote for them. Over 6 million people took part in nominating and voting for the final list. Kristin Hannah, T.J. Klune, Sarah J. Maas, Alice Oseman, and Rebecca Ross are winners. This year, we had a few landslide victories, including Hannah’s historical fiction novel The Women, Kelly Bishop’s memoir, The Third Gilmore Girl, and Kaliane Bradley’s debut sci-fi adventure, The Ministry of Time.
The Wedding People: A Novel
The year’s surprise sensation, Alison Espach’s improbably fun novel follows the adventures of a severely bummed out young woman who finds herself accidentally crashing a lavish wedding at a posh Rhode Island inn. Readers love Espach’s twisty tonal shifts—from high drama to screwball comedy of manners—and the ultimate moral of her story: Go with the flow; who knows what might happen?
The Women: A Novel
An insightful meditation on courage, character, and women gone to war, Kristin Hannah’s novel introduces idealistic Army nurse Frances “Frankie” McGrath as she volunteers in Vietnam, circa 1965. Her life is incredibly complicated when she returns to a dangerously divided America. Hannah has two GCA awards on her shelf already, for 2015’s The Nightingale and 2018’s The Great Alone.
The God of the Woods: A Novel
In 1975, troubled teenager Barbara Van Laar vanished from her bunk at the summer camp owned by her wealthy family. Making things so much worse: Her older brother disappeared much the same way 16 years ago. Author Liz Moore expands this intriguing premise into an emotionally engaging mystery that blends elements of crime fiction, psychological suspense, and complex family drama.
Funny Story
Romance queen Emily Henry takes home her fourth consecutive GCA with Funny Story, an instructive modern parable about a heartbroken librarian who attempts a highly tricky maneuver: hooking up with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex. (Very dangerous—don’t try this at home.) Hollywood trade reports suggest Henry will write her screenplay for the upcoming film adaptation.
House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Book 3)
This is the eighth Goodreads Choice Award for genre veteran Sarah J. Maas, who’s made a habit of winning in the YA and Fantasy categories. Maas' first award for Romantasy, House of Flame and Shadow, is the third installment of her popular Crescent City series, featuring sexy fallen angels and the mortals who love them.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles Book 2)
In the sequel to 2020’s much-admired The House in the Cerulean Sea, author T.J. Klune returns to the mysterious orphanage on Marsyas Island and its menagerie of magical children and creatures. Klune’s queer-friendly themes of unconditional love and found family have attracted a loyal readership. (He also won last year’s Science Fiction GCA for In the Lives of Puppets.)
The Ministry of Time: A Novel
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to fall in love with a 19th-century polar explorer, author Kaliane Bradley has the book for you. The Ministry of Time is a delightfully playful twist on the time-travel romance, with workplace comedy, roommate drama, espionage, and temporal physics elements. Stay tuned: It's also Bradley's debut novel.
You Like It Darker: Stories
Maine’s resident gentleman maniac returns with a short story collection on the abiding terrors of the human condition—fate and mortality, tragedy and violence—also, rattlesnakes. King is the king of the horror novel, of course, but he’s a master of short fiction, too, and many are calling this collection his finest yet. This makes his 11th win across Horror, Mystery & Thriller, Fantasy, and Science Fiction.
How to End a Love Story: A Novel
Yulin Kuang’s romance debut features two writers with a tragic past who reunite on the TV adaptation of a famous book series. Like life itself, Kuang’s story gets complicated, but she navigates the tricky terrain with emotional intelligence and an interesting dual-POV approach. Fun crossover trivia: Kuang is the writer-director of the upcoming film adaptation of Beach Read by this year’s Romance and Audiobook categories winner, Emily Henry.
Funny Story
It’s Emily Henry again! This year’s Romance GCA winner scores a double win for Funny Story with the Audiobook award. It's also a win for fellow author and audiobook narrator Julia Whelan. Much beloved in the audiobook community, Whelan is a former actor with that magical ability to deepen and enrich any story she narrates. She’s also a wizard with accents.
Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment Book 2)
A second win for Rebecca Ross! The sequel to last year’s winner in this category, Ruthless Vows, concludes her unique story about the horrors of war, the power of love, and the benefit of regular correspondence. With some magic shimmering around the edges, Ross does interesting new things by crossing the enemies-to-lovers romance template with a steampunk-adjacent setting and heavier themes.
Heartstopper #5: A Graphic Novel
Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series has evolved into a multimedia storytelling institution, with the Netflix adaptation bringing a new generation of fans to the original graphic novel series. Volume Five continues the boy-meets-boy saga of Nick and Charlie, an empathetic coming-of-age story that dares to explore the eternal question of How Love Works.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
In what may be the year’s most discussed book, Jonathan Haidt provides a rigorously researched assessment of adolescent mental health in the 21st century. The depressing diagnosis: The arrival of the “phone-based childhood” essentially rewires the very experience of growing up. The good news: Haidt has some specific suggestions for parents, schools, tech companies, and governments.
The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir
Versatile actress Kelly Bishop authored the year’s most surprisingly resonant memoir, a candid reflection on a remarkable life in Hollywood, on Broadway, and various points. A natural-born storyteller, Bishop dishes on her time as family matriarch in the early-2000s TV touchstone The Gilmore Girls. But she’s got some incredible off-screen stories, too, told with style and humour and hard-won wisdom.
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
Author Evan Friss’ loving chronicle of the American bookstore digs deep into history to illuminate the soft power of these irreplaceable literary institutions. He makes a persuasive case that bookstores nurture and create local communities, each of which branches out into our culture, discourse, and public policy. Also, cats love bookstores—and they’re always right about everything.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
