Let’s Talk Bookish: Goodreads Choice Awards

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022, with Dini at Dini Panda Reads as co-host from February 2025.

Let’s Talk Bookish 12th December:
Goodreads Choice Awards

 Prompts: The 2025 Goodreads Choice Award winners were announced on December 4th! Do you vote for or keep up with the awards? Have you read any of this year’s winners or nominees? The categories have also changed in recent years, creating some controversy: the Romantasy category was added in 2024, and the Children’s and Middle Grade category was removed. What do you think about these changes? What categories would you like to see go away or come back? Are there any other changes to the awards that you’d like to see?

I didn’t vote nor keep up with the awards. Occasionally I do, however I often find that even in the genres I read widely in or pay attention to, I haven’t heard of/read the majority of books that make it into the voting round. And when I have, it’s often all too predictable which books will win (can authors start like…requesting not to be entered? Please? How often does Stephen King really need a Goodreads Award?). At some point, I honestly just started finding the awards a bit boring.

I do think adding ‘Romantasy’ was a bit strange – it feels too much like following a trend, and Fantasy Romance (as well as Paranormal Romance) has long existed. I don’t think it was the right decision to remove the Children’s and Middle Grade categories, either. These can be really valuable, especially to parents who might go looking for well regarded books for their children. My other concern about adding categories for ‘blended’ genres is that you might get books which slip in here that would be better suited to Fantasy or Romance, or books which would deserve the ‘top spot’ in either of those categories which are now pushed out.

Looking at the results, I think it’s a case of same big names cropping up – Historical has gone to Taylor Jenkins Reid, Romance to Emily Henry, Romantasy to Rebecca Yarroas, which brings me to another point with that particular category – it’s not going to do much except spotlight books which are already incredibly popular! I think this is my general frustration with these awards – it’s not the best books which rise to the top, but it’s the books which happen to be pushed by publishers and have the most marketing behind them. It’s great we have a separate category for YA SFF, but why are they combined when Adult Sci-Fi and Fantasy are separated? And what about (for example) YA Romance? Because if all non-SFF YA is grouped together, I guarantee more often than not it’ll be a Romance which wins, but YA has plenty of different books within it.

It doesn’t seem (to me) like the categories are overly well thought out, if I’m honest, and there doesn’t seem to be any real ‘checks’ in place. How many people voting only nip onto Goodreads to vote for the awards? How many books get overlooked because they don’t have a ‘name’ or big marketing campaign behind them?

I also find it frustrating how wide some categories are, similar to lumping all YA together – there’s Debut Novel (which went to Alchemised) and Audiobook (Onyx Storm, again). A few winning books are on my TBR and I have no doubt they’re strong ones – Grady Hendrix is a good horror writer, and I really enjoy V.E. Schwab’s work. There are two books on my shelves which were nominated and my current audio read, Sunrise on the Reaping, did win for YA Fantasy & Sci-Fi, but the other book – Wish You Were Her – I recently finished and really didn’t think was that great! But it is kind of inevitable that any Hunger Games book will land on the list, if not win.

I do wonder, how many people voting have either read the books, or have only read the ‘big books’, which is likely to skew results? How many people are voting for the books they recognise, familiar names, instead of the books which have been the ‘best’? It’s tricky, for sure, but I remember the Goodreads Awards being much more interesting in earlier years (though that absolutely could be rose tinted glasses!). Maybe I’m just old and salty, but for me, as it stands, the categories are inadequate, and the obviousness of who will win is usually there in the first round. They have, really, just gotten that little bit more boring over the years, which is a huge shame.