The Votes Are In: Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 Winners

In regards to diversity amongst the winning books this year, only three authors of color and one Hispanic author were chosen, despite a number of authors of color amongst the nominees in each genre. These winners include Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter, and Elena Armas’ The Spanish Love Deception. Last year, eight authors of color won the Goodreads Choice Awards, while only one won in 2019.

This year Goodreads also shared a list of The 51 Most Read Books of the 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge. Each year, Goodreads poses the Goodreads Reading Challenge to its members, in which readers can select a goal number of books they’d like to read during the year. In 2021, 5,599,418 members opted to participate, with an average of 53 books pledged to read during the year.

Amongst the 51 Most Read Books of the 2021 Goodreads Challenge, only seven were written by authors of color and only three of the books were selected as Goodreads Choice Awards Winners this year. However, the Goodreads Choice Awards include only books published this year, while the most read books included books from any publication year.

In this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards winners, a couple interesting voting patterns emerged as well. In Romance, the votes came exceptionally close between the winner and the runner-up, with 88,755 votes going to People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry and 88,192 votes to The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. The race for the Middle Grade and Children’s winner came close too, with 24,836 going to Rick Riordan’s Daughter of the Deep and 24,368 votes to Victoria Schwab’s Bridge of Souls.

Now, without further ado, here are the Goodreads Choice Awards of 2021! Don’t forget to check out the nominees in each category to find a truly exceptional selection of books from this year.