It’s that time of year again. You know, where Goodreads nominates a bunch of books for the Goodreads Choice Awards and many of us are shocked–and not in a good way–by the choices.

This year, the romance choices are… varied. Romantasy is so huge it has its own list. Here’s the list for non-romantasy romance all of which appear to be contemporary romances. 

  • Deep End by Ali Hazelwood (we gave it a B+)

  • The Favorites by Layne Fargo

  • The Gingerbread Bakery by Laurie Gilmore (we gave it a B)

  • Scythe & Sparrow by Brynne Weaver

  • Beg, Borrow, or Steal by Sarah Adams (we gave it an A)

  • Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (we gave it an A-)

  • Rewind It Back by Liz Tomforde

  • Tourist Season by Brynne Weaver

  • Love Arranged by Lauren Asher

  • First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison

  • Story of My Life by Lucy Score

  • Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood (we gave it a B)

  • Spiral by Bal Khabra

  • Till Summer Do Us Part by Meghan Quinn

  • Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan

  • Wild Side by Elsie Silver (we gave it an A)

  • King of Envy by Ana Huang

  • One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune (we gave it an A)

  • If It Makes You Happy by Julie Olivia

  • Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez (we gave it a B+)

Here are the romantasy nominees:

  • Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (we gave it an A-)

  • Alchemised by SenLinYu

  • Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry

  • Silver Elite by Dani Francis

  • The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley (we gave it a B+)

  • The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

  • Mate by Ali Hazelwood (we gave it a B+)

  • Enchantra by Kaylie Smith

  • Rose in Chains by Julie Soto (we gave it a B+)

  • Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

  • Our Vicious Oaths by N.E. Davenport

  • Dire Bound by Sable Sorensen (we gave it a C)

  • On Wings of Blood by Briar Boleyn

  • A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (we gave it a B+)

  • Bonds of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

  • The Songbird & the Heart of Stone by Carissa Broadbent

  • Immortal by Sue Lynn Tan

  • Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross

  • Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer (we gave it an A)

  • The Stars Forgot Us by Rae D. Magdon

So, of the forty books nominated, we reviewed 15 of them. (Kayne did 12!)

How about you? Have you read many or any of these books? And if you did, what did you think about them? 

 

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  1. I take no notice of them whatsoever as they rarely feature any of the books I read or might like to read. (The one exception was the year Boyfriend Material got nominated!) I notice there are no queer romances nominated this year, which – yay for diversity and inclusivity.

    The nomination process is kind of obscure, but it seems to me that it basically boils down to “what books does Amazon think they can make the most money out of this year?” GR says the noms are made according to GR ratings : Nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards are based on the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads each year. It’s basically a popularity contest.

    In one of your recent asks, we had a discussion about how some of our readers (abd reviewers, frankly) feel like we’re out of step with romance as it currently stands. I think the small number of nominations we’ve reviewed – and the even fewer number that we’ve awarded DIKs to – perfectly illustrates that.

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      1. I literally just read (and of course, now I can’t find it again!) that books have to have above a 3.5 star average to be nominated!! How can a book with 3.5 stars be a “best” of anything?? (My tongue is in my cheek there – see my point about what Amazon thinks it can sell most of!)

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  2. I read 3 and have one on my TBR pile. I rarely look at recommendations from most sites, and I like to read comments by readers to help me decide on buying a book. I tend to stick to authors I enjoy, and often go to the blacklist of a new author I’ve enjoyed.

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  3. I have read one. I never seem to be familiar with the books on the Goodreads “Best Of” list. My assumption, without evidence, is that either some kind of payment is made for a book to be placed on it, or the people who make the nominations are a lot younger than me and have wildly different tastes than I do. I read approximately 200 books a year, and most of the books I have not even heard of. I find it kind of strange.

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    1. Their selection process isn’t very transparent. They SAY it’s based on ratings and reviews on GR, that it’s not possible for authors or publishers to nominate books, and that it’s totally based on what the readers are saying. If that’s the case, then I don’t think there’s money involved at that level – but I bet Amazon sales – what books have sold so far and what they could sell given the extra marketing push given to the noms and winners – are also taken into account.

      Like you, I read (and listen to) a LOT of books; my total for 2025 is already over 240 – and it’s quite normal for me not to have read ANY of the nominated books or winners.

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  4. I’ve read one (Mate by Ali Hazelwood), DNF’d one (Accomplice), and have the Abby Jimenez on my tbr pile. I’ll probably get to the Emily Henry and the Kennedy Ryan at some point. But for the most part the rest of the list is a big blank for me, including the other Ali Hazelwoods. Like others here, what is popular at Amazon/Kindle Unlimited isn’t usually my thing. It’d be interesting to know how many of these “nominations” are the result of KU reads vs. book purchases at Amazon or elsewhere vs. public library reads. I’ll bet most of these are KU titles/authors.

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    1. Your question is so interesting, that I have looked into it. The ones in KU are REWIND IT BACK, KING OF ENVY, TILL SUMMER DO US PART and LOVE ARRANGED, so 4 out of 12, one third of the list. REWIND IT BACK by Liz Tomforde is the one with the highest stars, 4.47, of the twelve nominees, with 203.326 ratings.
      Looking into it in Goodreads, I see that although it has quite a number of ratings, it has got one of the lowest ratios rating/review 7.24. So only one of seven readers has left a review. So are the ratings real?
      Having said that, I really liked the first two books I read of this author (solid 4-stars), but the third was a DNF —quite boring. So I haven’t read any more of her books.

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  6. This year, for the first time since I’m in GR, I will not vote the awards. I feel they have nothing to do with me, as they are about novels (or books from other genres) I haven’t read and I’m not interested in.
    The only one I have read is FIRST-TIME CALLER. I gave it 2 stars as I found it terribly boring.
    There are contemporary authors that I enjoy, as Rachel Reid, Tal Bauer, Toni Anderson or Rachel Grant. So it is not that I’m older, it’s just that my tastes differ from the majority, it seems.
    I’m not going to talk about books from other genres, because this isn’t the place for that. But I’m also a reader of essays and literary fiction. And yet, the Goodreads nominees don’t appeal to me either.

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  7. Your comments make me think a lot. You are so wonderful and so clever that my mind is going to explode.
    And you make me ask questions myself.
    How do they really choose the nominees? You have more or less answered it.
    But then I asked myself if any of the romances published in 2025 that I have read and enjoyed have the same number of ratings as some of these and if so, why isn’t it included?
    Then I wondered if AAR made one of those polls that did in the past about the best of this year (I understand why you don’t do it anymore, that’s not the point), would any of those books be included? Or the books that received DIK rviews?
    And would any of them have the same rating and number of reviews as the GR nominees? If so, again, why are they not included?
    And the most obvious question, as Caz pointed, why isn’t there any male/male romance, considering that it is now established as one of the most consistent trends in Romanceland nowadays?
    Amazon? The answer to all these questions if just Amazon?

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    1. It’s a popularity contest. That’s it. Reviews and ratings on GR are, I imagine, largely driven by what’s beloved by BookTokers and Bookstagrammers, and I will be very surprised if Amazon sales nd potential sales aren’t taken into account, not that GR would admit it.

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    2. I would bet that Amazon/Goodreads tries to make sure that the nominees reflect what it perceives is the current zeitgeist in the US. There is a real pull-back from diverse anything in the nation right now and I sense it is reflected in the nominees. I’m not certain about the race of the authors, but it doesn’t look like Black authors are very well represented either.

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      1. I watched part of a video this morning (link below) about this and the maker made some excellent points, saying that the GR awards have always been criticised for a lack of diversity, and that, because they are basically a reflection of the books read and reviewed, that readers are getting what they pay for; if we’re not reading diverse books and rating and reviewing on GR, then it’s not really GR’s problem if the lists aren’t more diverse, for example. Which I get. (It’s a similar issue to the one we had with the last Top 100 poll.)

        Another point is that readers are kind of responsible for the endless diet of mediocre (she used these particular books and authors as examples – not me) Ali Hazelwood and Fourth Wing (books), and the whole thing has become a massive feedback loop; if that’s all people seem to want to read, that’s all the publishers publish, so that’s what we read, and that’s what they publish etc. etc. ad nauseam.

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=-Y9W4C1hmZGy6fVP&v=4oYjG8DIJEw&feature=youtu.be

        I got halfway through before I had to go off and do something else, but she does make some good points on the part I saw. Plus, near the beginning is the video from GR itself (very short) about the awards.

        So basically, everything is pointing to it being a popularity contest in which the nominations are chosen solely for the number of times they’ve been shelved, reviewed and rated. Whether the book is rated highly or not doesn’t seem to matter:

        Books are nominated and voted on by Goodreads users, and a book’s average rating at the time of nomination must meet a certain threshold (historically, 3.5 stars or higher) to be eligible. 

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      2. I’ve always viewed the Goodreads awards as the same as the People’s Choice awards. They aren’t highlighting what is necessarily the best of any given genre, but what is most popular. Honestly, we NEED awards like that. It holds up a giant mirror to our reading community, and if we don’t like the reflection, that’s on us. I am frankly unsurprised to see all three Dramione fanfic books ( The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, Alchemised, Rose in Chains) among the nominees. Many readers today first enjoyed reading because they liked the Potter novels.

        I’ve mentioned it before, but the whole fiasco surrounding RWA and diversity, and the implosion of that organization, was about virtue signalling, not helping authors of color. It did not increase sales of diverse books by even one percentage point. Scolding people won’t get them interested in extending their reading choices. I honestly don’t know what the solution would be, but I agree with the young woman in the YouTube video that the endless whiny posts aren’t it.

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          1. Oops, got my statistics mixed up. 15% is the percentage of non fiction. . Actually, 30% of my fiction reading this year is diverse reads.

        2. But popular and low rated is an odd combo. That says to me people buy BookTok books and then aren’t that thrilled with them. There has to be a better rubric of popular and loved.

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          1. Popular and low-rated often describe People’s Choice nominees as well. Popular, again, doesn’t necessarily mean good or best. In many ways, popular is designed to hit the middle of the road because it appeals to the widest group. So, for example, most people found Rose in Chains okay or good, while only a few totally hated it or loved it. It had a massive audience( over 51,000 ratings), which drove those numbers up, and voila, it’s a Goodreads choice nominee. I’m sure there is a better rubric for popular and loved, but Goodreads has too broad an audience and is too easily accessible to deliver on that. They have no way of keeping people who haven’t read the book from throwing a “review” up and either squeeing about it for xyz reason or trashing it because it contains abc. Many one-star ratings don’t even contain a review; they are just a star, and who knows if that person even read the book?

            I would also add that while a 3.5 here is a low rate, it is not on Goodreads. Most books get a rating somewhere between 3.5 and 4.2. So again, we’re seeing what had a big, generally favorable following reflected in those awards.

            Is that perfect? No, but I think most award systems are flawed. People used to hate the RITA awards, too, because they didn’t like the way the publishers/authors nominated their works to a peer panel. Our own awards system also got hate for various reasons. So again, not sure what the solution is, but I don’t think Goodreads is to blame for the problem.

          2. Oh I don’t really blame Goodreads although I do think under Amazon’s leadership, they only care about making $$$$.

          3. I’ve always been a little amused by the fact that I am just as likely to reread one of my B rated books (3.5 to 4.5 generally) as one of my A rated ones. I find some of the B rated books to be great comfort reads- perhaps not too angsty or sad, but with good writing and enjoyable characters. And if it’s an audiobook, the narrator has a big influence on my relistening. That doesn’t mean I don’t revisit A reads, but I absolutely don’t revisit some of them. The emotionally tough ones are often one-time-only.

            Sometimes I’ve argued with myself that if I’m reading/listening for the third time, then maybe I should change my rating to an A, but the thing is, there is a difference in brilliance between, say C.S. Poe’s Momento Mori books and Lily Morton’s contemporary romances, both of which I’ve relistened to multiple times and enjoy. Rating is actually pretty complicated.

            I think there’s a sweet spot for me for rereads: Solid writing and fun/exciting stories, and a great narrator for audiobooks.

  8. This post has triggered something in me. Numbers! Lists! It’s my catnip.
    So, I have decided to study the data in order to write about it in my blog. But the first conclusion I arrive to is that they consider something else apart from the number of stars, ratings and reviews. There are at least two novels that I can think of that have higher numbers than some of the nominees.
    For instance, IT’S A LOVE STORY, by Annabel Monaghan (DIK A-) has better numbers than SPIRAL 3.88 stars / 68.249 ratings / 11.071 reviews.
    And PROMISE ME SUNSHINE, by Cara Bastone (B+ in AAR) has better numbers than SPIRAL, LOVE ARRANGED or THE GINGERBREAD BAKER: 4.11 stars / 65.301 ratings / 14.057 reviews.
    Some of very popular romance authors are included in other lists. For instance, Sarah MacLean’s THESE SUMMER STORMS (DIK A in AAR) is a nominee in Readers’ Favorite Fiction.
    So yes, if you ask me, AAR still reviews novels that are some of the best of the year. It’s Goodreads who do not nominate the best of the year even with their own data —at least those that are public.
    Apart from that, it’s obvious that they nominate books that are popular, that’s clear.

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  9. My thoughts on what I’ve read from these lists:

    BEG, BORROW, OR STEAL – Liked it, and it’s my favorite “When in Rome” book so far, although Adams’s books are never quite “A” material for me personally.

    GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL LIFE – Liked it a lot, agree with AAR’s rating.

    THE IRRESISTIBLE URGE TO FALL FOR YOUR ENEMY – Didn’t really work for me, and I was annoyed by the unexpected cliffhanger ending. (Though to be fair, maybe I’d have known about the cliffhanger if I’d done more research beforehand.)

    So yeah, I’ve only read three of these, which doesn’t surprise me, since I tend to gravitate more to historical romance and backlist books. And as many have expressed on this site, TikTok and KU seem to be driving a lot of the romance market right now, neither of which I participate in.

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