What makes a book a hit in the publishing industry? There’s no standard, really. Depending on your point of view, various commercial and critical elements factor in – reviews and sales and the constantly moving wavelengths of pop culture resonance. It’s a tricky business.
 
Nevertheless, we persist. Below is our collection of the biggest “hit” books from the last 10 years, published in the U.S. from 2012 to the present. We factored in overall popularity but also sorted for books with 4-star ratings or above–books enthused about in the Goodreads community, specifically.
 
We’ve selected eight titles from each calendar year, with the goal of creating a kind of interesting jumble–a sampling of the books that made waves that year. Hopefully, this will spark some pleasant memories. Feel free to discuss further in the comments section and add interesting backlist specimens to your Want to Read shelf.