6 Million Votes Later: These Are the 15 Best Books of the Year, According to Readers

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?

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. Incredibly, her life gets even more 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.

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.

Romance queen Emily Henry takes home her fourth consecutive GCA with Funny Story, an instructive modern parable about a heartbroken librarian who attempts an extremely 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 that Henry will be writing her own screenplay for the upcoming film adaptation.

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’s 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 fae who love them.

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.

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 elements of workplace comedy, roommate drama, espionage, and temporal physics. Stay tuned: It’s also Bradley’s debut novel.

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 the Horror, Mystery & Thriller, Fantasy, and Science Fiction categories.

Yulin Kuang’s romance debut features two writers with a tragic past who reunite on the TV adaptation of a famous book series. Kuang’s story gets complicated—like life itself—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.

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.

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 a little 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.

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.

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” is essentially rewiring the very experience of growing up. The good news: Haidt has some specific suggestions for parents, schools, tech companies, and governments.

Versatile actress Kelly Bishop authored the year’s most surprisingly resonant memoir, a candid reflection on a remarkable life in Hollywood, Broadway, and various points between. 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 humor and hard-won wisdom.

Author Evan Friss’s 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 fractals out into our culture, discourse, and public policy. Also, cats love bookstores, and they’re always right about everything.