Readers' Hit New Books of the Year (So Far)
Believe it or not, it's time once again for our annual midyear assessment of the year's most popular books, so far, according to Goodreads members.
As always, these selections are based on the total number of reader reviews and which titles are making their way to members' Read and Want to Read shelves.
Below, we've sorted out the top new books of 2025, in each of the usual categories, in order of popularity. So, for instance, Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy, currently holds the overall top spot in contemporary fiction. Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor, is the most popular book of the year so far in science fiction. Like that.
We've followed the same routine for the other usual genre suspects.
This can be an interesting way to see which new books, topics, and themes are resonating with Goodreads' omnivorous reading community.
