The opening round nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards have been announced. More than a dozen have previously appeared on Fanfare.
Within each category, the nominees are sorted here to approximate very roughly how many Goodreads users have read the book and its reception to date, but with more than six weeks left in the year, the titles from 2021 that will emerge as most popular remain unclear.
Best Debut Novel: Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter; Elena Armas, The Spanish Love Deception; Ashley Audrain, The Push; Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois; Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water; Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby (Fanfare link); Kirstin Valdez Quade, The Five Wounds; Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones; Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water; Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace; Everina Maxwell, Winter’s Orbit; Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun; Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary; Tracey Lange, We Are the Brennans; Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets; Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev; Morgan Rogers, Honey Girl; Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck (Fanfare link); Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt; Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets.
Best Fantasy: Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Silver Flames; Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate (Fanfare link); Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Crown of Gilded Bones; T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door; John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods; Tasha Suri, The Jasmine Throne; Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic; Helene Wecker, The Hidden Palace (Fanfare link); P. Djèlí Clark, A Master of Djinn; Genevieve Gornichec, The Witch’s Heart; Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun; Heather Walter, Malice; Zoraida Córdova, The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina; Jennifer Saint, Ariadne; C.L. Clark, The Unbroken; Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland; Alix E. Harrow, A Spindle Splintered; Hannah F. Whitten, For the Wolf; Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful; Ava Reid, The Wolf and the Woodsman.
Best Fiction: Nicholas Sparks, The Wish; Elin Hilderbrand, Golden Girl; Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot; Steven Rowley, The Guncle; Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land; Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves; Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby (Fanfare link); Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace; Patricia Engel, Infinite Country; Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List; Richard Powers, Bewilderment; Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!; Tracey Lange, We Are the Brennans; Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You (Fanfare link); Jennifer Weiner, That Summer; Jesse Q. Sutanto, Dial A for Aunties; Laurie Frankel, One Two Three; Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck (Fanfare link); Louise Erdrich, The Sentence; Leesa Cross-Smith, This Close to Okay.
Best Graphic Novels & Comics: Rachel Smythe, Lore Olympus; Clint McElroy, The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom; Molly Knox Ostertag, The Girl from the Sea; Catana Chetwynd, In Love & Pajamas: A Collection of Comics About Being Yourself Together; Crystal Frasier, Cheer Up; Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (Fanfare link); Kami Garcia, Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven; Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts; John Lewis, Run: Book One; Kat Leyh, Thirsty Mermaids; Jordan Morris, Bubble; Kristen Radtke, Seek You; Faith Erin Hicks, Avatar: The Last Airbender – Toph Beifong’s Metalbending Academy; Brian Herbert, Dune; Lize Meddings, The Sad Ghost Club; Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray; Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Squad; Margaret Kimball, And Now I Spill the Family Secrets; Brandon Sanderson, Dark One; V.E. Schwab, ExtraOrdinary.
Best Historical Fiction: Kate Quinn, The Rose Code; Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds; Lynda Rutledge, West with Giraffes; Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (Fanfare link); Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising; Sadeqa Johnson, Yellow Wife; Lisa Scottoline, Eternal; Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois; Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words; Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water; Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library; Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle; Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads; Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian; Clare Chambers, Small Pleasures; Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary; Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets; Chris Bohjalian, Hour of the Witch; Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev; Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt.
Best History & Biography: Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America; Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty; Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls; Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Daniel James Brown, Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II; Kate Moore, The Woman They Could Not Silence; Carol Leonnig, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service; Rachel Maddow & Michael Yarvitz, Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House; Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War; Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night ; James Patterson & Matt Eversmann, Walk in My Combat Boots: The Stories from America’s Bravest Warriors; Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth; Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire; Anna Malaika Tubbs, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation; Judy Batalion, The Light of Days; Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty; Annalee Newitz, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age; Julia Cooke, Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am; Janice P. Nimura, The Doctors Blackwell; Matthew Pearl, The Taking of Jemima Boone: The True Story of the Kidnap and Rescue That Shaped America.
Best Horror: Stephen King, Later; S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood; Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman; Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street; Ronald Malfi, Come With Me; Jess Lourey, Bloodline; Darcy Coates, The Whispering Dead; Mark Edwards, The Hollows; Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents; Jennifer McMahon, The Drowning Kind; Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group; Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons; Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart Is a Chainsaw; Christina Henry, Near the Bone; Rachel Harrison, Cackle; Mona Awad, All’s Well; Scott Carson, Where They Wait; Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples; LaTanya McQueen, When the Reckoning Comes; Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us.
Best Humor: Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar, You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey; Seth Rogen, Yearbook; Jenny Lawson, Broken (In the Best Possible Way) (Fanfare link); Casey Wilson, The Wreckage of My Presence; David Sedaris, A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020; Leslie Jordan, How Y’all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well …; Meichi Ng, Barely Functional Adult; Kliph Nesteroff, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy; Amber Share, Subpar Parks; Simon Rich, New Teeth; Phoebe Robinson, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes; Quinta Brunson, She Memes Well; William Evans & Omar Holman, Black Nerd Problems; D.L. Hughley & Doug Moe, How to Survive America; Helen Ellis, Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light; Nick Offerman, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play; Brent Spiner & Jeanne Darst, Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events; Kelly Conaboy, The Particulars of Peter; Sophia Benoit, Well, This Is Exhausting; Jen Spyra, Big Time.
Best Memoir & Autobiography: Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Fanfare link); Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms; Brandi Carlile, Broken Horses; Cicely Tyson & Michelle Burford, Just as I Am; Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement; Laura Coleman, The Puma Years: A Memoir of Love and Transformation in the Bolivian Jungle; Ashley C. Ford, Somebody’s Daughter; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief; Stanley Tucci, Taste: My Life Through Food; Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country; Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Alexi Pappas, Bravey; Ly Tran, House of Sticks; Melissa Gould, Widowish; John Paul Brammer, ¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons; Hunter Biden, Beautiful Things; Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks; Kat Chow, Seeing Ghosts; Andrew McCarthy, Brat: An 80’s Story; Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished.
Best Middle Grade & Children’s: Joanna Ho, Eyes That Kiss in the Corners; B.B. Alston, Amari and the Night Brothers; Lisa Fipps, Starfish; Roshani Chokshi, Aru Shah and the City of Gold; Rajani LaRocca, Red, White, and Whole; Rick Riordan, Daughter of the Deep; Graci Kim, The Last Fallen Star; Victoria Schwab, Bridge of Souls; Jasmine Warga, The Shape of Thunder; Sarwat Chadda, City of the Plague God; Justina Ireland, Ophie’s Ghosts; Alan Gratz, Ground Zero; Megan E. Freeman, Alone; Eden Royce, Root Magic; Wendy Monica Winter, Where’s My Joey?; Karah Sutton, A Wolf for a Spell; James Patterson & Chris Grabenstein, Best Nerds Forever; Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty; Melissa de la Cruz, The Thirteenth Fairy; Gordon Korman, Unplugged.
Best Mystery & Thriller: Stephen King, Billy Summers; Ashley Audrain, The Push; Sally Hepworth, The Good Sister; Chris Whitaker, We Begin at the End; Lisa Jewell, The Night She Disappeared; Mary Kubica, Local Woman Missing; S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears; Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me; Alice Feeney, Rock Paper Scissors; A.R. Torre, Every Last Secret; Liane Moriarty, Apples Never Fall; Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot; Shari Lapena, Not a Happy Family; Rachel Hawkins, The Wife Upstairs; Jane Harper, The Survivors; Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle; Alex Michaelides, The Maidens; Mia P. Manansala, Arsenic and Adobo; Paula Hawkins, A Slow Fire Burning; Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets.
Best Nonfiction: Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together; John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed; Bruce D. Perry & Oprah Winfrey, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing; George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life; Ijeoma Oluo, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America; Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance; Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (Fanfare link); Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know; Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster; Matt Haig, The Comfort Book (Fanfare link); Lisa Genova, Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting; Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism; Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future; Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfir; Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It; Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred; Jane Goodall & Douglas Carlton Abrams, The Book of Hope; Michael Pollan, This is Your Mind on Plants; Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law; Elon Green, Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York .
Best Poetry: Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country; Jasmine Mans, Black Girl, Call Home; Kate Baer, I Hope This Finds You Well; yung pueblo, Clarity & Connection; Martina McGowan, I Am the Rage; Rudy Francisco, I’ll Fly Away; Safia Elhillo, Home Is Not a Country; Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning; Amber McBride, Me (Moth); Amanda Lovelace, Shine your Icy Crown; Morgan Harper Nichols, How Far You Have Come: Musings on Beauty and Courage; Elisabet Velasquez, When We Make It; Jasmin Kaur, If I Tell You the Truth; Nikita Gill, Where Hope Comes From; Maggie Smith, Goldenrod; Colby Cedar Smith, Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit; Mahogany L. Browne, Chlorine Sky; Catherine Cohen, God I Feel Modern Tonight; Joyce Carol Oates, American Melancholy; Andrew Shaffer, Look Mom I’m a Poet (and So Is My Cat).
Best Romance: Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis; Elena Armas, The Spanish Love Deception; Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation; Talia Hibbert, Act Your Age, Eve Brown; Abby Jimenez, Life’s Too Short; Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop; Alison Cochrun, The Charm Offensive; Tessa Bailey, It Happened One Summer; Christina Lauren, The Soulmate Equation; Helen Hoang, The Heart Principle; Tia Williams, Seven Days in June; Rachel Lynn Solomon, The Ex Talk; Katee Robert, Neon Gods; Denise Williams, How to Fail at Flirting; Jasmine Guillory, While We Were Dating; Angie Hockman, Shipped; Sally Thorne, Second First Impressions; Erin Sterling, The Ex Hex; Sara Desai, The Dating Plan; Beth O’Leary, The Road Trip.
Best Science Fiction: Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (Fanfare link); Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry (Fanfare link); Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace (Fanfare link); Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Fanfare link); Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth; Matthew FitzSimmons, Constance; Everina Maxwell, Winter’s Orbit; Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun; Charles Soule, Light of the Jedi; Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars; J.S. Dewes, The Last Watch; Nnedi Okorafor, Remote Control; Christina Sweeney-Baird, The End of Men; Sarah Gailey, The Echo Wife; Nicole Kornher-Stace, Firebreak; Terry Miles, Rabbits; Sara Flannery Murphy, Girl One; S.B. Divya, Machinehood; Matt Bell, Appleseed; Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock.
Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction: Cassandra Clare, Chain of Iron; Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves; Sabaa Tahir, A Sky Beyond the Storm; Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories; Hafsah Faizal, We Free the Stars; Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes; Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow; Rainbow Rowell, Any Way the Wind Blows; Stephanie Garber, Once Upon a Broken Heart; Chloe Gong, Our Violent Ends; Adrienne Young, Namesake; Krystal Sutherland, House of Hollow; Shelby Mahurin, Gods & Monsters; Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones; Lexi Ryan, These Hollow Vows; Alexandra Bracken, Lore; Brigid Kemmerer, A Vow So Bold and Deadly; Victoria Aveyard, Realm Breaker; Aiden Thomas, Lost in the Never Woods; Joan He, The Ones We’re Meant to Find.
Best Young Adult Fiction: Angie Thomas, Concrete Rose; Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter; Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Ace of Spades; Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club; Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Hawthorne Legacy; Holly Jackson, As Good As Dead; Maureen Johnson, The Box in the Woods; Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World; Adiba Jaigirdar, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating; Tashie Bhuiyan, Counting Down with You; Tess Sharpe, The Girls I’ve Been; Nicola Yoon, Instructions for Dancing; Kelly Quindlen, She Drives Me Crazy; Sophie Gonzales, Perfect on Paper; Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk; Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After; Karen M. McManus, The Cousins; Loan Le, A Pho Love Story; Emma Lord, You Have a Match; Courtney Summers, The Project.
Previous winners recorded at Wikipedia.