{"id":7319,"date":"2026-09-18T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7319"},"modified":"2026-09-18T10:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:05:00","slug":"the-most-read-books-on-goodreads-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7319","title":{"rendered":"The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, Theo of Golden<\/a> <\/em>by Allen Levi has been bumped out of the #5 spot by the gothic romantasy novel The Knave and the Moon<\/em><\/a> by Rachel Gillig\u2014the second book in the series that started with The Knight and the Moth<\/a><\/em>. Romantasy is in an interesting spot at the moment. It continues to show up frequently on the bestseller lists and most read lists, but there hasn\u2019t been a breakout title in a while. Sarah J. Maas\u2019s backlist continues to dominate.<\/p>\n

Get 15% off annual All Access memberships<\/strong> for a limited time in celebration of Book Riot\u2019s 15th anniversary! Savings amount to more than 3 months of free unlimited access<\/strong> to our entire content archive, plus features like Collections and the New Release Index. Claim your savings and start leveling up your reading life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two New Books Out This Week You Should Know About<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately, the most read books on Goodreads tend not to be diverse by any definition of the word. So, here are a couple of new books out this week that deserve wider readership.<\/p>\n

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Anger Is Only a Shadow<\/a> by Elizabeth Acevedo<\/h3>\n
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She\u2019s back! After a several-year hiatus, Acevedo returns to YA, and it\u2019s a good one.<\/p>\n

Lil always seeks freedom, and she\u2019s not afraid to admit to being a little rebellious. Currently on probation through a DC juvenile detention facility and wearing an ankle monitor, Lil feels the weight of other people\u2019s opinions on her\u2013just as much as she feels guilt and worry over the one person in her life who she thinks could understand her: Aldwin, her older brother.<\/p>\n

Away at college, Aldwin has felt distant, and his behavior has felt erratic to Lil. She knows the risks of breaking her probation agreement\u2013and the importance of an upcoming court date\u2013but Lil has to find out what\u2019s going on with her big brother. Does she follow the rules or does she break them, knowing her brother\u2019s life might be on the line? \u2014Kelly Jensen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hometown<\/a> by Shaun Tan<\/h3>\n
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Award-winning author and artist Shaun Tan has created a new book of striking art, about a young girl in an unusual world who questions if she really belongs there after a stranger appears. \u2014Liberty Hardy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week<\/h2>\n

#5:<\/h2>\n
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The Knave and the Moon<\/em><\/a> by Rachel Gillig<\/h3>\n
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This is the second book in the gothic romantasy series that started with The Knight and the Moth<\/a><\/em>. Approximately a third of the top 50 most read books on Goodreads this week are romantasy novels, the vast majority by Sarah J. Maas. The Knave and the Moon<\/em> was read by almost 15,000 users this week and has a 4.4 average rating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#4:<\/h2>\n
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The Correspondent<\/a> by Virginia Evans<\/h3>\n
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This turned out to be the sleeper hit of 2025: it has kept growing in popularity, seemingly just from word-of-mouth recommendations. Katie Couric also named it the first pick for her new book club<\/a>. It\u2019s about a woman who has written letters daily her whole life. When someone from her past writes back, she has to reevaluate a painful period in her life and find a way to forgive. This was read by almost 16,000 users this week and has a 4.4 average rating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#3:<\/h2>\n
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Mad Mabel<\/a> by Sally Hepworth<\/h3>\n
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In this 2025 thriller, 81-year-old Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is trying to live a quiet life in the suburbs, but when one of her neighbors turns up dead, all eyes turn to her. When Elsie was 14, she was Mad Mabel, the youngest convicted murderer in Australia. Now, with the help of a couple of podcasters, she\u2019s ready to tell the story in her own words. 17,000 users read it this week, and it has a 4.4 average rating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#2:<\/h2>\n
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The Calamity Club<\/em> by Kathryn Stockett<\/h3>\n
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This is the newest book from the author of\u00a0The Help<\/em>.\u00a0The Help<\/em>\u00a0was a huge bestseller, made into a blockbuster movie, but it received a lot of criticism for its use of\u00a0stereotypes of Black people<\/a>\u00a0and white saviorism, as well as its historical inaccuracies<\/a>. This criticism didn\u2019t prevent Stockett from snagging a lucrative book deal for her new novel, however, and it looks like it hasn\u2019t hurt its sales. The Calamity Club<\/em> was read by almost 29,000 users this week and has a 4.6 average rating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#1:<\/h2>\n
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Yesteryear<\/a> by Caro Claire Burke<\/h3>\n
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At the top of the list is Yesteryear<\/em>, which came out in April. It\u2019s one of several buzzy tradwife novels out this year. In this one, a tradwife influencer wakes up one day in the time period she\u2019s been romanticizing, and real-life homesteading turns out to be much more difficult\u2014and dangerous\u2014than it looks on Instagram. Yesteryear<\/em> was read by almost 35,000 users this week and has a 3.9 average rating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

If you\u2019re looking for more buzzy books, check out The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Keep up with all the latest book news by signing up for the\u00a0Book Riot Newsletter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi has been bumped out of the #5 spot by the gothic romantasy novel The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig\u2014the second book in the series that started with The Knight and the Moth. Romantasy is in an interesting spot at the moment. It continues to show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}