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Announcing the Winners of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards!
The votes are in! More than 3 million votes were cast in the 7th annual Goodreads Choice Awards! Readers rallied to support their favorite books, voting for more than 20,000 different books in the Opening Round, and now just one winner in each of 20 categories remains. Congratulations to the best books of the year!
View the champions & runners-up in 20 categories »
The biggest publishing surprise of 2015, Go Set a Watchman, takes home the top honors in Best Fiction—a testament to the great love readers have for To Kill a Mockingbird's legacy. And the biggest publishing success of 2015, mega-bestseller The Girl on the Train, won Best Mystery & Thriller in a landslide, taking out both Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. Not to be missed, one of 2015's top-rated books, World War II saga The Nightingale, won handily in Best Historical Fiction.
We all must be seeking love, or at least needing to laugh about it, because voters chose Aziz Ansari's dissection of 21st-century dating, Modern Romance, as Best Nonfiction. He's joined by another comedian winner in Best Humor, where Mindy Kaling takes the prize for her essay collection, Why Not Me?. This year's Choice Awards saw a robust crop of books by YouTubers in multiple categories, and voters crowned 23-year-old video star Connor Franta a winner in Best Memoir & Autobiography for his book A Work in Progress. The newcomer earned his stripes alongside long-time reader favorite Erik Larson, who took first place in Best History & Biography for Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
Hop on the train! A big thank you from Best Mystery & Thriller winner Paula Hawkins!
Heart in her hands, Best Humor winner Mindy Kaling.
In Best Romance, it took fan favorite Colleen Hoover, author of Confess, to upset 2012 Choice Winner E.L. James. But repeat winners reigned supreme in Best Fantasy and Best Science Fiction, where Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning and Pierce Brown's Golden Son each delivered a win. And after multiple nominations for their respective series, Dean Koontz won for Saint Odd in Best Horror and Brian K. Vaughan earned first place for Saga, Volume 4 in Best Graphic Novels & Comics.
Here's a whole shelf full of gratitude from Best Romance winner Colleen Hoover!
Heartfelt appreciation from Best Science Fiction winner Pierce Brown.
Age is just a number. The winners of the Young Adult and Children's categories all have major crossover appeal. All the Bright Places tops the list in Best Young Adult Fiction; the latest book in the Throne of Glass series, Queen of Shadows, edged out strong competition in Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction; and another Young Adult Fantasy contender, Red Queen, pulled out a win over in Best Debut Goodreads Author. Voters couldn't contain their excitement for Rick Riordan's new series starter The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #1), making this year's prize in Best Middle Grade & Children's his fifth consecutive win! And finally The Day the Crayons Came Home keeps everyone smiling as the winner of Best Picture Books.
Best Young Adult Fiction winner Jennifer Niven has a Post-it note with your name on it.
Best Young Adult Fantasy winner Sarah J. Maas poses with her Throne of Glass heroine...or is that her alter ego?
Rick Riordan's dog Speedy is pretty excited about The Sword of Summer winning Best Children's.
Other winners include Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish for Best Science & Technology, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime for Best Food & Cookbooks, and The Dogs I Have Kissed for Best Poetry.
How many of the winners and runners-up have you read? Check out the full vote breakdown for the top 400 nominees across 20 categories, and start packing your want-to-read list with award-winners!
Congratulations to our winners! »
Comments Showing 1-50 of 119 (119 new)
A hearty Congrats to all the talented winners. Well Done.
Congrats! I'm sure you all deserved the awards for all your hard work! Keep being talented and keep writing!
Go Set a Watchman was the worst sequel/prequel in the history of books. If Harper Lee had published it before To Kill a Mockingbird, she would never have gotten it published. Wish I had never bought it...gave it away!'
How incredibly disappointing to find To Set A Watchman on this list.
I'm shocked to see Go Set a Watchman on this list! why why why..!
Judy wrote: "Go Set a Watchman was the worst sequel/prequel in the history of books. If Harper Lee had published it before To Kill a Mockingbird, she would never have gotten it published. Wish I had never bought it...gave it away!"Same here. I gave away my copy too.
Wow...loved all the selfies of winning authors...congratulations to u all
WOOHOO!! CONGRATULATIONS TO THOSE WINNERS! =D
The only reason Go Set A Watchman is even a thing is because people love Harper Lee for To Kill A Mockingbird. In fact, people will probably love her for that one novel no matter what her stupid publishers do and that's what the buggers are cashing in on. Shame on them.
Loved 'The Nightingale' it was my book of the year! Well done Kristin Hannah!
OMG!!!!!!!! Congratulations John Hargrove for
!!!! I'm crying!! And......
Paula Hawkins for one of my forever favorites
LOL, calming down to finish reading the blog post.....*breathe*. So so happy for these authors!!
Congratulations to those who won !!!!!! Hope you guys keep writing and amaze us once again :)
Congratzz to all! You're my heroes!
Congratulations to all the Amazing Authors!!!!Especially to my heroes:
- Mr Riordan
- Miss Hoover!!
Congrats all winners.Glad for Pierce Brown (#GoldenSon) and Paula Hawkins (#TheGirlOnTheTrain) winning awards. Well deserved.
There is a decline in total votes cast this year as compared to last year. What can be the reason of it!
3 million votes is still quite a number. :)
OMG. I am on the Happy Highway.Queen of shadows ❤❤ Best series out there.
Glad red queen won the best debut.
OMG! QUEEN OF SHADOWS WON! It totally deserved to win. So happy!
I wish I could say congrats to all but wow, what a disappointment.
So happy not only for everyone who won, but for everyone who was nominated as well, from the first round, right up to the Finals! Every book leaves its mark on at least one person - every book is special to at least that one person. Never forget, and just keep writing =)
Wow, all the books I rated one star turned out to be the winners. Shame, especially that there were a few much better reads out there.
Yay congrats all so happy colleen Hoover won best romance love that woman!!!
Hey, Pierce Brown is hot. Totally not what I should be focusing on, but whatever. :P
Mansu wrote: "Go Set a Watchman won the Best Fiction Award. WTH?! Is this somebody's idea of a joke? There were far better books in that category. Disappointed."
I agree!
Congratulations to all the winners. Well done!
Huge Congrats to everyone, well deserved!!!!
Much as I admire Harper Lee, Watchman was just not the best work of fiction of this year. Congrats to Kristin Hannah, though. Hers in one of the best I´ve read.
It's disappointing to learn that Go Set a Watchman won for best fiction of the year, because it most certainly was not that. I realize that many people read it, but it was a disappointment after all the pre-publication hype, not nearly as good as the book it had spawned, Mockingbird.
The power of advertising - Go Set a Watchman may have been the novel most widely read by the voters, but most certainly not the best piece of fiction this year.
Well, I thought the choices all along were underwhelming, at best, so it's no wonder I am unimpressed with most of the winners. The irony is that I read some absolutely fantastic new books this year. Goodreads, you have disappointed me.
Okay, Pierce Brown is strangely good-looking. Haven't read Red Rising yet, though.
Mansu wrote: "Go Set a Watchman won the Best Fiction Award. WTH?! Is this somebody's idea of a joke? There were far better books in that category. Disappointed."
I just said the same thing. I can't believe it! The fiction winner from last year was a joke too. I give up!
Stephanie wrote: "Much as I admire Harper Lee, Watchman was just not the best work of fiction of this year. Congrats to Kristin Hannah, though. Hers in one of the best I´ve read."I totally agree with both your statements. In fact I lead a discussion at our bookclub for the Nightingale and had a lot of fun doing it. Let's see what 2016 presents.
Zeeshan wrote: "Congrats all winners.Glad for Pierce Brown (#GoldenSon) and Paula Hawkins (#TheGirlOnTheTrain) winning awards. Well deserved.
There is a decline in total votes cast this year as compared to last..."
I voted in fewer categories because I simply hadn't read the books that made it into the finals. One thing did puzzle me, however, in that "my vote" on the final page was from the semi-final round. Does that mean that my final votes weren't tallied because so many of my choices didn't make it into the final 10?
Everyone has to stop expecting the "best" books to win. I think a lot of folks just vote for books and writers they have heard of, and probably very few readers have even read most of the books in their favorite categories. The name of the contest is, after all, "Choice." Most books in the various fields are good books, and the winners reflect the success of publishers in promoting their products. I will use these lists for a number of months in choosing new things to read
The winners I read all got 1 or 2 stars.I agree that Watchman won only because it's the most read book of the year.
I wonder if Winter would've won YA Fantasy if people got at least, say, a month to read it before deciding if it was the best of the year. Though I suspect the fact that it has more than double the votes than it has ratings implies that a bunch of people voted for it before reading, just based off of liking the earlier ones.
Congratulations to all nominated authors, and of course to all these well-deserved victors!
Danielle (Danniegurl) wrote: "Congrats to all the winners, disappointed to not see Ilona Andrews they deserve to be up here too!!"Same here...
But, it was fun, and there's always next year. After all, the awards are only arbitrary...
Annalak wrote: "Congratulations to all the Amazing Authors!!!!Especially to my heroes:
- Mr Riordan - Miss Hoover!!"Thank you Annalak!!! <3
I hope I don't sound mean-spirited, but this contest needs serious changes. For one thing, Goodreads absolutely HAS to stop nominating books that don't publish until the month of the contest. How can we possibly vote on something we don't have time to read? Most of the books on this year's list I hadn't even heard of so I'm not sure how Goodreads compiles its lists for each category. The categories also need revisiting. There is too much overlap and some of the categories are just too broad. I know this is just meant to be fun, but readers are passionate about their books and we all want to feel that we can participate.If there was one thing I would strongly recommend Goodreads does next year is: DON'T INCLUDE BOOKS THAT PUBLISH THE SAME MONTH AS THE CONTEST.
And a big congratulations to the winners, especially Kristin Hannah as I actually voted for that one :-)
Sarah is just so pretty! congratulations to all the winners, you deserve it.
I'd like to congratulate the 84% of voters in the fiction category who did NOT vote for "Watchman", easily the worst book of the last century. Why it was even published is beyond my comprehension.
Trudy wrote: "Mansu wrote: "Go Set a Watchman won the Best Fiction Award. WTH?! Is this somebody's idea of a joke? There were far better books in that category. Disappointed."
I just said the s..."
Trudy, you're right, Mansu is right. And as far as the one that won last year, I'd never heard of it, know no one who read it, and my library never even stocked it!
Judy wrote: "Go Set a Watchman was the worst sequel/prequel in the history of books. If Harper Lee had published it before To Kill a Mockingbird, she would never have gotten it published. Wish I had never bough..."Judy, you're in good company with me. 84% of voters who voted in the fiction category did NOT vote for "Watchman", which is at the top of my list as worst book of last century! (But calling it a book is a stretch.)
But to Paula Hawkins, congrats, "Girl on a Train" was the best mystery/thriller for me.
