These are the books blowing up on TikTok this year
Whether you’re looking for romance, thriller, or what publishing likes to call “book club reads,” BookTok has something for you. What’s more, the books recommended by the community’s huge amalgamation of readers, writers, and book enthusiasts will give you something to discuss with plenty of people. Find something to sit with in this list of the best books of BookTok, and enjoy works from authors like Sarah J. Maas, Tahereh Mafi, Kennedy Ryan, and others.
A Court of Thorns and Roses
BookTok loves a series of hefty books, and A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) always delivers. The promise of two additional books in the series in Spring 2027 has driven new readers to start the series, and loyal readers to go back and reread in time for the next releases. This fantasy series opens with Feyre, a human hunter, having to choose between immediate death or living her life out in the Fae realm—obviously, she chooses the latter. Everything that happens after that just gets wilder and wilder.
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Atmosphere
This book never really left BookTok, but has rocketed back up in the conversation (see what I did there) now that there are real-life astronauts making headlines again. Atmosphere takes place in the 1980s, when space shuttles were taking Americans into space on such a regular basis it had almost become routine. In Taylor Jenkins Reid’s story, amidst the stress of a massive scientific undertaking being attempted with the work on the space shuttle, our central characters are very inconveniently falling in love. For readers whose love of space and romance is longstanding or newly-launched, this book is highly recommended.
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A Vow in Vengeance
The first in a duology, this book seems to be making its way up the chain, especially with romantasy readers looking for something that gives ACOTAR vibes but also offers something completely new and different. Rune has lost her entire family to the annual selection that the ruling immortals hold every year, and this time she’s going to make sure she gets chosen. What she doesn’t expect is to end up in Tarot College, learning how to control an incredibly powerful gift and living with the only other person who shares her arcana: the horned, winged prince of the immortal realm she’s been taken to.
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Heated Rivalry
The Heated Rivalry television show has driven people towards the series Game Changer in droves. Heated Rivalry is actually the second book in the series, but is, because of the show, the most popular. It takes us through a forbidden relationship over the course of nearly a decade. The longing, the secrets, and the spice draw people back to the book—and the series it hails from—again and again.
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The Hunger Games
With the release of Sunrise on the Reaping last year, new and returning readers are looking towards The Hunger Games. The dystopian adventure and romance trilogy is a modern classic, and now a new generation of readers are bringing their expectations and perspectives to it. The story of Katniss Everdeen and the cruel competition put on every ten years by an oligarchical ruling class hits differently now, and the expanding arc of the narrative continues to blow readers’ minds.
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Project Hail Mary
It should be no surprise that Andy Weir’s third (and dare we say best book?) has taken BookTok by storm, especially now that we have a film version starring the brilliant Ryan Gosling as protagonist Ryland Grace. Launched into space as part of a team representing Earth's last hope, he wakes up from a long, deep sleep unable to remember who he is or why he’s on a spaceship. Much as he did with The Martian, another book that got the full Hollywood treatment, Weir takes us on a thrilling last-chance against-all-odds mission into the furthest reaches of space.
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Daggermouth
A self-published phenomenon that recently caught the attention of a major publisher, this dark dystopian romance has all the best things going for it: an assassination gone wrong, a forced marriage, forced proximity, literal enemies to lovers, and, of course, all the trappings that come with a corrupt political society. Add super-interesting worldbuilding and prose that kicks you in the face, and you’ve got a book that will continue to be talked about for several more seasons to come.
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Shatter Me
The Hunger Games isn’t the only 2000s series to have new installments that led people to the original. With the release of Watch Me and Release Me, curious readers started with the first in the series and were blown away by Mafi’s page-turning storytelling. The first introduces us to Juliette, a young woman with a horrible power. The power to kill easily with a touch leads to her imprisonment, but she is determined not to become a pawn of the Reestablishment. Dystopia is truly back, friends!
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The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
In a world full of warrior fae, sometimes it’s nice to have a cozy book about found family and magic lessons. There are plenty of hard moments in this book and Mandanna’s other books, but the lower stakes, character-over-plot kind of magical story is a big draw for readers who need a bit less of the enmity, less of the drama, and more of the cozy and loving.
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The Last Letter
If there’s another thing popular books on BookTok are doing, it’s leading readers to the authors’ backlist. In the case of Fourth Wing, it’s got readers picking up Rebecca Yarros’s contemporary romances, which are all high angst, high drama, cue-the-waterworks types of books. The Last Letter seems to be the one inspiring the highest number of tear-filled reaction videos, with two broken, grieving people reluctantly helping each other and helping themselves in the process.
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Before I Let Go
And speaking of tears, Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go has found its way back to BookTok now that the full trilogy has been released. The first in the Skyland series, it introduces us to a divorced couple who separated at a moment of grief and now continue to share their lives between coparenting and running a business together. But is it time for both of them to move on romantically, or can they find their way back to each other?
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We Who Will Die
This Roman-inspired romantasy novel has a lot going for it—and that’s before the vampires show up! Arvelle is a human woman trying to do what’s best for herself and her younger brothers when she’s coerced into a plot to kill the corrupt, immortal emperor that involves entering the selection trials for the elite royal guard and wheedling her way into the royal household. But of course, there is a man. And another man. And between the three of them, all kinds of houses of cards are going to come crashing down.
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