The 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards Winners
The Goodreads Choice Awards Winners have been announced, and we couldn’t be happier for the winners. Even though MBC covers Science Fiction and Fantasy, we love to see books in other genres win!
Some of the books we have read have won. Some books we have chosen for next year won too! If you haven’t read the books listed below, then it’s time to add them to your TBR for next year! All the books nominated have made an impact this year! We can’t wait to read some of them as a community.
BEST FICTION 2025
Swedish author Fredrik Backman celebrates the redemptive power of art with this story of a remarkable painting and the eternal ache of adolescence. This is the first GCA win for Backman. Speaking of the redemptive power of art, Backman’s 2020 novel, Anxious People, placed second in this category…by five votes, the narrowest margin in a GCA contest ever. - Goodreads
Bachman received 167,509 votes, while Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy received 107,486 votes, and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans received 41,827 votes.
Best Historical Fiction 2025
Taylor Jenkins Reid returns to her stomping grounds of richly drawn historical fiction with Atmosphere, set in and around NASA’s Space Shuttle program in the 1980s. This is Reid’s fourth win in this category, following Daisy Jones & the Six (2019), Malibu Rising (2021), and Carrie Soto Is Back (2023). - Goodreads
This came in first with 254,774 votes, and Clare Leslie Hall’s Broken Country garnered 97,131 votes, coming in second. Andrea Catalano’s The First Witch of Boston came in third with 31,832 votes.
Best Mystery & Thriller of 2025
With her first adult mystery-thriller, YA specialist Holly Jackson assembles a scenario where our desperate heroine must solve her own murder. It gets weird. Impending aneurysms are involved. Jackson was previously nominated for her 2019 YA thriller, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. - Goodreads
It was a tight race this year for the best Mystery/Thriller of 2025. Not Quite Dead Yet garnered 77, 149 votes while Freida McFadden’s The Tenant followed closely behind with 70, 021 votes. Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune came in third with 65,953 votes.
BEST ROMANCE OF 2025
Reigning queen of the romance genre, Emily Henry notches her fifth consecutive GCA win with Great Big Beautiful Life, a tale concerning a sunny aspiring writer, a cranky literary icon, a shady octogenarian heiress, and lots of tension, sexual and otherwise. - Goodreads
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry garnered 117,054 votes with Abby Jimenez’s Say You’ll Remember Me following close behind with 93,945 votes, while One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune came in third with 93,098 votes.
BEST ROMANTASY OF 2025
Also, the winner in this year’s Audiobook category, Onyx Storm, continues author Rebecca Yarros’ complete domination of the Romantasy genre since Fourth Wing flew onto everyone’s radar in 2023. Old bonds are tested and new alliances forged in this latest chapter of the smash-hit Empyrean series. - Goodreads
Yarros received 298, 565 votes winning by a landslide as SanLiYu’s Alchemised garnered 86,230 votes, while Rachel Gillig’s The Knight and the Moth came in third with 67,786 votes.
Book Chat: Onyx Storm
Best Fantasy of 2025
Veteran fantasy and sci-fi author V.E. Schwab delivers a sweeping sapphic vampire epic that moves from 16th-century Spain to 1827 London to contemporary Boston. Schwab incorporates elements of horror, historical fiction, and gender politics as well. This is Schwab’s third GCA prize, with previous wins in both the YA and adult categories. - Goodreads
This was the toughest category due to the presence of notable authors in the race. Schwab garnered 102,408 votes, with R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis coming in second with 87,125 votes, and Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth came in third with 50, 158 votes.
BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF 2025
The go-to description for this startling debut novel from author Aisling Rawle is that it’s Love Island meets Black Mirror: Beautiful young people compete in a ruthless reality show as the outside world burns. But just beneath the plot, you’ll find sharp observations on consumer and performance culture. - Goodreads
The Compound by Aisling Rawle garnered 45,287 votes, with Hayley Gelfuso’s The Book of Lost Hours coming close and receiving 40,446 votes, while The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick came in third with 37,483 votes.
Best HORROR of 2025
Set in Florida circa 1970, Grady Hendrix’s old-school horror novel centers on a sinister group home for pregnant teens where shame has been weaponized. But when a friendly(?) librarian introduces the girls to witchcraft, the power balance shifts violently. Hendrix continues his impressive run as a modern horror master. - Goodreads
Horror was a tight race this year, with Hendrix garnering 59,603 votes, while Stephen King’s Never Flinch came in second with 57,375 votes, and Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter came in third with 39,229 votes.
Best Young Adult Fantasy 2025
The latest chapter in Suzanne Collins’ epic Hunger Games series flashes back 24 years before the events of the first novel to offer the (sad, doomed) origin story of Haymitch Abernathy. - Goodreads
Needless to say, it’s hard to compete with a Hunger Games novel. Sunrise on the Reaping garnered 300,427 votes and won in a landslide. Coming in second was Lauren Roberts’ Fearless, which received 65,594 votes, while Kristen Ciccarelli’s Rebel Witch garnered 59,072 votes.
Have you read any of the books listed above? If you have, let us know which one is your favourite! If you have any recommendations drop them in the comments below.
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