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The best books of 2024, according to Goodreads
Wintertime is the season for curling up under a fleecy blanket with a good book, but if your to-be-read list needs some sprucing up, here's some news you'll enjoy: Goodreads just unveiled its top books of 2024, as chosen by readers. The annual Goodreads Choice Awards are the only major book awards chosen by readers for readers, and this year over 6.2 million votes were cast by book lovers for their favorite page-turners of the year across more than a dozen literary categories such as Best Fiction, Best Romance, Best Horror and more.
Included in this year's list are several highly-anticipated sequels such as "Ruthless Vows," Rebecca Ross's follow-up to "Divine Rivals" and TJ Klune's "Somewhere Beyond The Sea," which continues the story in "The House in the Cerulean Sea." The list also includes one book that won two categories: Romance queen Emily Henry's "Funny Story" was readers' pick for both "Best Romance" and "Best Audiobook," which was a newly introduced category for 2024.
Speaking of romance, there are some interesting trends to be gleaned from readers' favorite books of the year. Namely, that readers were thumbing through romantasy books — those with elements of romance and fantasy — more than ever in 2024.
“Overall, romantasy, which weaves together the imaginative worlds of fantasy with the highs and lows of two people falling in love and working through relationship challenges until they find their ‘happily ever after,’ continued to gain new fans in 2024," said Suzanne Skyvara, Goodreads VP of Marketing & Editorial to AOL. "Sarah J. Maas not only won the readers’ favorite Romantasy category with "House of Flame and Shadow," but her beloved ACOTAR ("A Court of Thorns and Roses") series continued its reign with four of the top 10 most-read books overall on Goodreads this year.”
If that wasn't enough to get you excited to update your TBR list, here's one fun fact you can pull out during your next dinner party: Yulin Kuang, who won readers' choice for Best Debut novel with "How to End a Love Story," is also the writer and director of the upcoming film adaptation of Emily Henry's "Beach Read." Small world, huh?
Whether you're getting situated for a cozy start to the new year or building out your 2025 reading list, take a look below at readers' top books of 2024, according to the annual Goodreads Choice Awards.
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?
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.17-star rating among 150,000 reviews.
Penguin Publishing Group
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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.42-star rating among more than 50,000 reviews.
Romance queen Emily Henry takes home her fourth consecutive Goodreads Choice Award 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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.24-star rating among over 740,000 reviews.
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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.26-star rating among more than 50,000 reviews.
In 1975, troubled teenager Barbara Van Laar vanished from her bunk at the summer camp owned by her wealthy family. Oddly, 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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.18-star rating among more than 200,000 reviews.
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 Goodreads Choice Award for his novel "In the Lives of Puppets."
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it already has a 4.25-star rating among 10,000 reviewers.
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 mortals who love them.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.21-star rating among more than 465,000 reviews.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to fall in love with a 19th-century polar explorer, debut 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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 3.81-star rating among more than 80,000 reviews.
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 Goodreads Choice Awards on her shelf already, for 2015’s "The Nightingale" and 2018’s "The Great Alone."
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.62-star rating among more than 850,000 reviews.
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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.48-star rating among more than 160,000 reviews.
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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.02-star rating among more than 290,000 reviews.
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 fact: Kuang is also writer and director of the upcoming film adaptation of "Beach Read" by Emily Henry, who won this year's category for Best Romance!
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 3.68-star rating among more than 75,000 reviews.
Kelly Bishop's resonant memoir is 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.
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.41-star rating among more than 35,000 reviews.
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!)
Read more about it on Goodreads, where it has a 4.05-star rating among over 2,000 reviews.
