The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week

This romantasy series about a dragon-riding academy is one of the most popular in the genre. There are often two Empyrean books in the top five, but the holiday romances pushed book two into sixth place. Rebecca Yarros’s new contemporary romance novel, Variation, came out November 19th and is also in the top 50. Fourth Wing was read by almost 15,000 users last week and it has a 4.6 average rating with two million total ratings.

This is book two of the Under The Mistletoe Collection, starring a single mom and a “gentle giant farmer who can’t find jeans that fit” who get into a “friends-with-holiday-benefits” arrangement. Tessa Bailey is best known for her Bellinger Sisters series, starting with It Happened One Summer. This one was read by more than 16,000 Goodreads users last week and has a 2.8 average rating—one of the lowest ratings in the 50 most read books on Goodreads, second only to another story in the Under The Mistletoe Collection.

Since last week, another Christmas romance has appeared in the top five! Unlike the other two, this is a full-length (480 page!) novel, from the author of the Cane Brothers romance series, among others. When Storee moves in next door to grinchy Cole, the two immediately butt heads. Soon, they’re competing against each other in the Christmas Kringle contest, which leads to fake dating, which could lead to something real. It was read by almost 18,000 Goodreads users, with a 3.9 average rating.

Despite the title, The Boyfriend is the only non-romance title in the top five this week (if we’re counting romantasy as romance). Even with the surge of holiday romance reading, that hasn’t stopped people from picking up the newest from the queen of thrillers. It had almost 18,000 readers on Goodreads and it has a 4.0 average rating.

Ali Hazelwood is best known for her STEM romances, like The Love Hypothesis. This new 73-page holiday romance story came out November 12th. In it, Jamie gets snowed in with her brother’s best friend, Marc—who also happens to have grown up to be a tech billionaire. This one had more than 25,000 readers this week, with a 3.7 average rating. Cruel Winter with You is the only story in this collection to currently have a Goodreads average over 3.5.

Using years of research as well as personal and familial history, PEN Open Book Award-winning Shimoda examines the incarceration of Japanese people during WWII and its resounding consequences. The essays here are layered, personal, and even multi-voiced at times, and they all show the throughlines of different instances of oppression and dispossession carried out by the United States.

Keru and Nate met in college and got hitched. Thing is, their families are…different. Keru comes from a strict Chinese family who are perfection-minded, while Nate’s white family is rural and working class. They not only don’t get his desire for education, they also don’t care for his “foreign” wife. It’s a few years into their marriage when the couple and their sheepdog have in-law visits from both sides at their Cape Cod beach house and their luxury Catskills bungalow. The visits have them thinking on what makes a family and even how to contend with disparate sides.