The Nominees Are In…
A look into this year’s nominees for the GoodReads Choice Awards
One of the longest-running book award programs that directly deals with readers, the GoodReads Choice Awards are synonymous with what the best in books are for a particular year. Every November, close to 300 books are nominated as being the best of the best for their particular category and are subjected to a popular vote by GoodReads users until one book is chosen as the winner.
However, despite the long-running efforts of the GoodReads Choice Awards, critiques over the awards have been ongoing for many years, including the following:
Lack of diversity among nominees in certain categories
The sudden removal of long-standing award categories with little notice to readers.
Concerns over the sheer nature of the awards and how it often results in being a popularity contest rather than an honest look into what the best books are in a given year.
Regardless of your thoughts on the GoodReads Choice Awards, it’s still, and probably always will be, a major aspect of bookish online spaces and how these awards ultimately serve as a play-by-play highlight reel of what readers have been reading and talking about in any particular year.
2024 GoodReads Choice Awards Nominees
I’m not going to dive into every single nomination and book that was selected for consideration in this year’s awards (if you want to do that, you can just go on GoodReads yourself and look). However, I will be sharing some highlights of what titles got nominated.
Yes, those no-brainer titles/authors got in
Usually every year in the lead-up to the GoodReads Choice Awards, there always seem to be titles and authors up for nomination where it is very likely for them to get that nomination, especially with those big name authors that everyone raves about every single year. You know who these authors/titles are, but to catch up everyone up to speed, here are this year’s no-brainer nominations that got in.
Emily Henry
Ali Hazelwood (for both Bride and Not in Love)
Abby Jimenez
Stephen King
Sarah J. Maas
Kristin Hannah’s The Women
Christina Lauren
Sally Rooney
Callie Hart’s Quicksilver
Freida McFadden
Riley Sager
Highlights of the 2024 GoodReads Choice Awards Nominations
Best Romantasy
Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Quicksilver by Callie Hart
The Games Gods Play by Abigail Owen
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
The Veiled Kingdom by Holly Renee
Best Romance
Funny Story by Emily Henry
Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
Play Along by Liz Tomforde
Daydream by Hannah Grace
Best Fiction
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
Swan Song by Elin Hildebrand
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
Best Mystery/Thriller
Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown
Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
Best Fantasy
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune
An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
Best Horror
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim
House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias
Best YA Fantasy
The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross
So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole
Here’s What I Think…
Is this category even necessary??
One of the most notable differences in this year’s award lineup is the addition of the Best Audiobook category, hereby replacing the Humor category. While the idea of this category isn’t necessarily a bad one, I don’t think it’s the right fit for these awards.
Not many people talk about audiobooks on GoodReads and there’s no feature on the platform that specifically highlights audiobooks. Additionally, almost all the nominees for the inaugural award are also nominated in different categories with only a small handful of titles not nominated elsewhere and/or ineligible for nomination in other categories.1
Audiobooks are subjective for readers, just like books are, but the problem lies in over the fact that there may not be many people that are listening to these audiobook editions and thus be able to make informed decisions on the quality of the audiobook. Especially considering audiobooks with good narration can make a mediocre book good and less than stellar audiobook narration can make a good book go bad or ruin the reading experience for a person.
Personally, I think GoodReads might have been better off reinstating one of the categories it axed in past years, such as Best Graphic Novel/Comic2 or Best Children’s/Middle Grade3, instead of having a Best Audiobook category, but there’s not much we can do about it now.
If Audible wanted to do something like this with the audiobooks on their platform, both audiobooks of popular books and their original productions, they are more than welcome to do so. I just don’t think that GoodReads is the right place for having readers decide what is the best audiobook of the year.
Blurred lines between genre distinctions
Another topic that came to the top of my mind while I was going through the nominations for this year’s GoodReads Choice Awards is that there seems to be some blurred lines between genre distinctions when it comes to selecting nominees for each category. It’s not something that hasn’t been noticed before during past awards, but I think those blurred lines are more pronounced ever since the addition of Best Romantasy as a GoodReads Choice Awards category.
For example, as some readers like to do, I tend to make predictions about what books are most likely to get a nomination for the GoodReads Choice Awards. When I was comparing my notes on what predictions I made to the actual nominations in both the Best Romantasy and Best Fantasy categories, there were some predictions that I thought would go towards Best Romantasy but ended up in Best Fantasy and vice versa. Additionally, Ali Hazelwood’s Bride was nominated in the Best Romance category but one would think that a paranormal romance would fall under Best Romantasy due to its romantasy-adjacent elements.4
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I think there might need to be some clear distinctions about what kind of books would fall under Best Romantasy, Best Fantasy, and Best Romance due to the ever-evolving nature of the genre.
Let’s talk about diversity.
Mentioned earlier in this post, one of the more striking critiques of the GoodReads Choice Awards is the lack of diversity among the selected nominees in each year’s awards line-up. Part of my research for this article delved into getting the numbers on diversity data and seeing what kind of information or trends we’re getting as more people are talking about the awards’ diversity issue, with my research primarily focusing on BIPOC Authors and how often they get nominated.
All the numbers and graphs are from my own work and research5, and I’ve done my best to accurately depict this data from what I could find on this year’s nominees. I apologize in advance if any inconsistencies may be found in these graphs.
From what I’ve been able to gather and compare to last year’s numbers, the percentage of BIPOC authors being nominated has risen from last year’s awards, with 89 unique titles and 85 unique authors being nominated for the 2024 GoodReads Choice Awards. BIPOC Author nominees comprised of little over 35% of all nominations, compared to almost 65% of non-BIPOC author nominees.
Breaking down the data of BIPOC authors being nominated across category, the bulk of nominations for BIPOC authors fell under the Best Debut Novel and Best YA Fantasy categories. Most other categories had similar percentages of the number of BIPOC authors nominated, with Best Romantasy and Best Mystery/Thriller having the least amount of BIPOC authors being nominated with only 3.1% each.
So what can we get out of this information?
It does seem like there are more BIPOC authors getting nominated in these awards, though not as much equal representation between non-BIPOC authors.
I could go on about publishing trends and statistics about how BIPOC authors are promoted and how many are published in a given year, but considering how the GoodReads Choice Awards are considered by many as a popularity contest, you also have to recognize that you as a reader play into that role of scouting out what books ultimately get onto these nominations list for the GoodReads Choice Awards.
How we read and promote books can influence what we get to see as nominees for these awards, and that will take time to see the changes that we want to see.
That would mean actively reading diverse stories from diverse authors, including BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled/neurodivergent authors, and promoting them online. You can make conscious choices to vote for diverse authors if you decide to vote for the 2024 GoodReads Choice Awards so we can let GoodReads know that we want to see more diverse stories and more diverse authors get selected as nominees for future GoodReads Choice Awards. How we read and promote books can influence what we get to see as nominees for these awards, and that will take time to see the changes that we want to see. Yet, it’s an investment worth fighting for.
Epilogue
I know this is a longer article than you’re used to receiving from me (I know I’m shocked by how much I wanted to say), but I hope you enjoyed this article and truly got something out of it.
If you have seen the nominees for the 2024 GoodReads Choice Awards, what were your reactions to them? Were there any books you were excited to see on the nomination list? Any books you felt were snubbed? Let me know in the comments since I would love to keep this discussion going.
And if you want more in-depth thought pieces like this, make sure to like and subscribe.
Happy reading!
An example being the Audible Original production of George Orwell’s 1984 starring Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Ervivo, since George Orwell’s 1984 was originally published in 1949 and thus ineligible to be nominated in a category such as Best Science Fiction.
Especially since you have Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper #5 nominated in Best Young Adult Fiction and I don’t necessarily think a graphic novel should be compared against a bunch of novels in order to determine what’s been the best of the best in YA for 2024. It’s almost like comparing apples to oranges, in my opinion.
Though, for any of you kidlit or middle grade fans, the CYBILS Awards has a great awards program for recognizing the best of the best in kidlit during a given calendar year if you want to check them out on their website or Substack page.
On a side note, there was for a period of time a paranormal fantasy category for the GoodReads Choice Awards during (from what I could find in past nominations) 2011-2013. Not that it necessarily has much relevance to the topic, I thought it would provide some context on how paranormal fiction (whether romance or otherwise) were categorized in past awards. Also, I thought it would be a little fun fact if you were interested in those.
I will take a moment to say that you are welcome to share these numbers and graphs with proper credit is due, of course.
"Personally, I think GoodReads might have been better off reinstating one of the categories it axed in past years, such as Best Graphic Novel/Comic2 or Best Children’s/Middle Grade3, "
We're a little biased, but we totally agree.