By Paige Jensen-Rutter March 2, 2023
Booktok. The reading recommend sensation, and for some readers, a literal godsend. For others, a nightmare of books to sift through. Below is a far-from-perfect compilation of some of the titles that have been trending on the strange social media phenomenon, organized to the best of my ability by genre, with an analysis of the list as a whole. Obviously, the majority of these books have several genre overlaps, but here is where the list stands.
Romance:
1. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
2. Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman
3. Book Lovers by Emily Henry
4. The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller
5. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
6. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
7. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
8. It Starts With Us By Colleen Hoover
9. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
10. Shatter Me by Taherah Mafi
11. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
12. Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover
13. People We Met On Vacation by Emily henry
14. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
15. Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert
16. Beach Read by Emily Henry
17. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
18. It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey
19. The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
20. Punk 57 by Penelope Douglas
21. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
22. Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake
23. They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
Fantasy Fiction:
24. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
25. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
26. The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
27. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
28. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
29. Circe by Madeline Miller
30. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
31. The Selection by Kierra Cass
32. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
33. Daughter of The Pirate King
34. These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
35. Babel by R. F. Kuang
36. The Night and It's Moon by Piper CJ
37. You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
38. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
39. Dance of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson
40. The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
41. From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
42. Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin
43. Caraval by Stephanie Garber
44. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Fiction:
45. If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin
46. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
Young Adult Fiction:
47. Stolen by Lucy Christopher
48. The Sun is Also a Star Nicola Yoon
49. All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Sci-Fi:
50. Cinder Marissa Meyers
51. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
52. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
Mystery:
53. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
54. The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
55. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
56. One of us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
Thriller:
57. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
58. Verity by Colleen Hoover
59. When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
Psychological Fiction/Thriller:
60. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
61. Normal People by Sally Rooney
62. How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale
63. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Horror:
64. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Historical Fiction:
65. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
66. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Realistic fiction:
67. Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma
Dark Humor:
68. Bunny by Mona Awad
Coming-Of-Age:
69. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Let’s begin.
Of the almost 70 books provided on this list (of which I compiled by scouring Booktok itself as well as various lists online) roughly 35% is made up of Romance Novels.
I’d also hazard a guess that within the Romance and Fantasy genre combined, a third of the books recommended consist of sexual material, which is dubbed “spicy” by many content creators with a few books in other genres falling into the same category. As far as reading trends go, this seems on par given that Booktok is a mixed bag of reading material. While Booktok - as well as TikTok and other short form content in general -is a great publicity tool to market books towards a younger audience, I’ve given quite a few of these books a try and gotten bored too quickly. I’ve tried to entertain the authors work, as well as my friends who’ve sworn by the book. However, when the writing falls flat, or when the character is a strong female protagonist who’s not like the other girls and the standard fictional guy is her love interest, I want to throw the bloody book across the room. While this is a generalization of a fair amount of fiction, YA Fiction included, I’m getting bored and depressed by the mediocre options being shoved into the spotlight. Meanwhile perfectly wonderful quality books are sitting neglected in their shelves. But hey, the masses want what the masses get, and everyone has their own form of escapism. Booktok’s version clearly gravitates towards romance filled fictional escapades mixed with purple prose, poor communication, explicit romances, and the struggle to understand actual good writing . It’s basic. It’s lacking in depth. Booktok is its own library, and like every library, it’s up to us readers to sort the good from the bad, the morally grey from the overly righteous. And while it’s up to each reader to decide when they’ve hit their breaking point, one can only read so many mediocre novels before reaching their limit.
Thank you Booktok, for the recommendations I never really wanted, but appreciated reading the ruthless reviews of.
Personally, I’ve reached my limit.