Goodreads Choice Awards 2021: the most popular books this year
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission.
The results are in and the winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 have been announced! There were many books on this year’s list, but these are the ones that stood out to users.
Pick your Favorite Winner
With so many books being published every year, it can be hard to keep up with what’s worth reading and what isn’t. Luckily, the Goodreads Choice Awards have been awarding favorite books across a variety of genres since 2011. If you’re a fan of fiction, true crime, or even children’s books, the Goodreads Choice Awards list of winners is a great place to start. There’s something for everyone on the list and fans can vote for their favorite books in order to see what might win next year.
In this post, you’ll find a list of all the winners from this year’s awards along with some information about why they’re so great.
Happy Reading!
If you’re looking for new books coming out this year, take a look at
2021 Upcoming Releases
Best Fiction Winner 2021
Most Voted Nominees
Dial A For Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
Once There Were Wolves
Charlotte McConaghy
The Paper Palace
Miranda Cowley Heller
The Wish
Nicholas Sparks
Best Mystery & Thriller Winner
The Last Thing He Told Me
by Laura Dave
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother…
Most Voted Nominees
The Maidens
Alex Michaelides
Billy Summers
Stephen King
The Push
Ashley Audrain
Arsenic and Adobo
Mia P. Manansala
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
Goodreads Awards 2021: Best Historical Fiction
Malibu Rising
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
It’s August 1983, and the Riva clan’s famed end-of-summer party in Malibu is swiftly heading off the rails. With the explosive nature of family secrets, terrible heartache, and AMAZING characters, Malibu Rising is Taylor Jenkins Reid’s unmissable homage to the 1980s and her second win for the Historical Fiction category, after Daisy Jones & the Six in 2019.
Most Voted Nominees
The Four WInds
Kristin Hannah
The Lost Apothecary
Sarah Penner
The Rose Code
Kate Quinn
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
The Paris Library
Janet Skeslien Charles
Best Fantasy Winner
A Court Of Silver Flames
by Sarah J. Maas
With this fourth book in the wildly popular A Court of Thorns and Roses Series(already optioned for Hulu’s adaptation), author Sarah J. Maas earns her sixth GCA prize. Ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, Nesta Archeron struggles to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can’t seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it.
Most Voted Nominees
Under the Whispering Door
TJ Klune
The Crown of Gilded Bones
Jennifer L. Armentrout
She Who Became The Sun
Shelley Parker-Chan
Ariadne
Jennifer Saint
The Last Graduate
Naomi Novik
Save for Later
Best Romance Winner 2021
People We Meet on Vacation
by Emily Henry
Most Voted Nominees
The Love Hypothesis
Ali Azelwood
One Last Stop
Casey McQuiston
The Spanish Love Deception
Elena Armas
Actor Your Age, Eve Brown
Talia Hibbert
The Ex Hex
Erin Sterling
Best Science Fiction Winner
Most Voted Nominees
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
Light of the Jedi
Charles Soule
The Echo Wife
Sarah Gailey
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
Winter’s Orbit
Everina Maxwell
Goodreads Awards 2021: Best Horror
The Final Girl Support Group
by Grady Hendrix
Most Voted Nominees
Later
Stephen King
The Last House on Needless Street
Catriona Ward
A Dowry of Blood
S T Gibson
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones
The Book of Accidents
Chuck Wendig
Best Humor Winner
Broken
by Jenny Lawson
Impossibly funny and beautifully empathetic, Jenny Lawson’s writing works like medicine. It makes you feel better. With Broken, Lawson brings her delightful style of deliberate lateral thinking to a new batch of topics: marriage, lizards, dentists, experimental transcranial magnetic stimulation…
Most Voted Nominees
How Y’all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived
Leslie Jordan
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
Nick Offerman
Yearbook
Seth Rogen
Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes
Phoebe Robinson
You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey
Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar
Best Nonfiction Winner 2021
The Anthropocene Reviewed
by John Green
John Green’s uniquely structured collection of articles, adapted from his renowned podcast series, blends history, science, and personal to create a new sort of nonfiction approach—brainy and captivating. The Anthropocene is the geological era in which human activity has had the most significant impact on the planet’s environment. After The Fault in Our Stars in 2012, this is Green’s second GCA win.
Most Voted Nominees
The Comfort Book
Matt Haig
Hope
by Jane Goodall & Douglas Carlton Abrams
The Cultish
Amanda Montell
What Happened to you?
Bruce D. Perry & Oprah Winfrey
Mediocre
Ijeoma Oluo
Save for Later
Best Memoir & Autobiography Winner
Crying In H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
Michelle Zauner reveals herself to be far more than a great singer, songwriter, and guitarist in this captivating story of family, food, grief, and endurance. With wit and compassion, she recounts her experiences as one of the few Asian American students at her school in Oregon, her mother’s high expectations, her painful adolescence…
Most Voted Nominees
Taste: My Life Through Food
Stanley Tucci
Somebody’s Daughter
Ashley C. Ford
Between Two Kingdoms
Suleika Jaouad
Unfinished
Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Notes on Grief
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Goodreads Award 2021: Best History & Biography
The Wish
by Nicholas Sparks
This year’s winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for History/Biography, Empire of Pain is an exhaustively researched profile of the Sackler family, the aristocratic American clan that made its fortune making and marketing the painkiller OxyContin. Patrick Radden Keefe is a master of the kind of narrative reporting style that brings novelistic intensity to rigorous nonfiction reporting.
Most Voted Nominees
The Woman They Could Not Silence
Kate Moore
The Code Breaker
Walter Isaacson
Four Hundred Souls
Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Anderson Cooper
Come Fly the World
Julia Cooke
Best Graphic Novels & Comics
Lore Olympus
by Rachel Smythe
The Greek gods are a famously rowdy pantheon, vulnerable to the same faults and foibles that plague us mortals. Rachel Smythe’s groundbreaking series Lore Olympus chronicles the forbidden romance between Hades and Persephone, but with a compelling contemporary approach and richly detailed artwork. The Volume One compilation collects episodes 1 through 25 of the original online comic series.
Most Voted Nominees
Dune
Brian Herbert
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Faith Erin Hicks
The Girl from the Sea
Molly Knox Ostertag
ExtraOrdinary
V. E. Schwab
The Sad Ghost Club
Lize Meddings
Best Poetry Winner 2021
The Hill We Climb
by Amanda Gorman
Amanda Gorman, the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate, earned worldwide acclaim when she delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration. It’s not easy to upstage a president, but she managed it. The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country features the full text of Gorman’s composition, along with a foreword from Oprah Winfrey.
Most Voted Nominees
Black Girl, Call Home
Jasmine Mans
Shine your Icy Crown
Amanda Lovelace
You Better Be Lightning
Andrea Gibson
I Hope This Finds You Well
Kate Baer
Where Hope Comes From
Nikita Gill
Best Debut Novel Winner
The Spanish Love Deception
by Elena Armas
With this debut novel, Spanish author Elena Armas brings several new twists to a classic rom-com setup, which has already won a devoted following in the Goodreads community. Catalina Martin is taking her new American boyfriend to her sister’s wedding in a small Spanish town. Aaron Blackford is tall, handsome but, most of all, a fake boyfriend.
Most Voted Nominees
The Lost Apothecary
Sarah Penner
Firekeeper’s Daughter
Angeline Boulley
The Push
Ashley Audrain
The Gilded Ones
Namina Forna
She Who Became the Sun
Nikita Gill
Goodreads Awards 2021:
Best Young Adult Fiction
Firekeeper’s Daughter
by Angeline Boulley
Winner of this year’s award for Young Adult Fiction, Firekeeper’s Daughter introduces a compelling new heroine to the YA scene. As a biracial and unenrolled tribal member, 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine feels like an outsider both on and off the local Ojibwe reservation. But she soon finds a higher purpose when she witnesses a terrible murder—and decides to go undercover with her own investigation.
Most Voted Nominees
The Hawthorne Legacy
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Ace of Spades
Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Concrete Rose
Angie Thomas
As Good as Dead
Holly Jackson
Best Young Adult Fantasy
Rule Of Wolves
by Leigh Bardugo
Perennial contender Leigh Bardugo earns her second GCA win with Rule of Wolves, the concluding book in her King of Scars duology, set in the innovative and sprawling Grishaverse. Bardugo’s nuanced stories and elaborate world-building continue to break new ground in YA fantasy, and she’s expanding the empire, too: Netflix’s Shadow and Bone series is likely the first of many TV and film adaptations.
Most Voted Nominees
The Last Hours: Chain of Iron
Cassandra Clare
Lore
Alexandra Bracken
Any Way the Wind Blows
Rainbow Rowell
How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories
Holly Black
Iron Widow
Xiran Jay Zhao
Best Middle Grade & Children's Winner 2021
Daughter of the Deep
by Rick Riordan
Most Voted Nominees
Bridge of Souls
Victoria Schwab
Eyes That Kiss in the Corners
Johanna Ho
Amari and the Night Brothers
B.B. Alston
Starfish
Lisa Fipps
Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales
Soman Chainani
Now that all the most popular books are revealed, what are your thoughts on the winners? Even if I loved Malibu Rising, I’d probably pick another title in the Historical Fiction category, but I’m happy with both the best fiction and mystery & thriller winners. The best debut surprised me, and I’m looking forward to reading it; also, I agree with a couple of other nominees.
At this point, I would be pleased if you have found some books that sound great to you. Still, please remember that, also in reading life, diversity makes this world beautiful, and even if many of these titles aren’t your typical books, this might also be your good chance to try something out of your comfort read!
Happy Reading!
