There are so many different books on the Goodreads list (Stock Image) (Image: Getty)
How many books have you managed to read so far this year? Whether you’ve managed 100 or just one, the likelihood is that you may have picked up one of the Goodreads top 12 most read books, because they’re seriously popular, and with good reason.
They’re the books that have been logged the most during the 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge. Some of them are viral, while others are classics, but they’re all brilliant stories you should add to your bookshelf ASAP.
Sadie, who shares content about books, shared how many she’s read from the list, as she managed a whopping seven out of 12, which isn’t bad going whatsoever! And, not every book is a new release! So how many of these books have you managed to read? Let us know in the comments, and tell us which ones you fancy after you reading all the blurbs from Goodreads…
12. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from… or why… His name is Theo. And he asks a lot more questions than he answers.
Theo visits the local coffeehouse, where 92 pencil portraits hang on the walls, portraits of the people of Golden done by a local artist. He begins purchasing them, one at a time, and putting them back in the hands of their “rightful owners”. With each exchange, a story is told, a friendship born, and a life altered. A story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.
11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Heathcliff, an orphan, is raised by Mr Earnshaw as one of his own children. Hindley despises him, but wild Cathy becomes his constant companion, and he falls deeply in love with her. When she will not marry him, Heathcliff’s terrible vengeance ruins them all – but still his and Cathy’s love will not die…
10. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.
But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late – and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
9. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, without luggage, alone. Everyone in the lobby mistakes her for one of the wedding people at an impending wedding on the site, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t there for the big event.
Phoebe is there because she’s dreamed of coming for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan – which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
8. Heart the Lover by Lily King
Our narrator understands good love stories – their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.
She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined – with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love.
Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.
There are so many different books to choose from (Stock Image) (Image: Getty)
7. The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart – she’s in New York City and he’s in their small hometown – but every summer for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows without a doubt it was on that ill-fated final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together – lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
6. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
5. My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeny
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.
One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person’s date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
4. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
Nothing interferes with Shane Hollander’s game – definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate.
Pro hockey star Shane Hollander isn’t just crazy talented; he’s got a spotless reputation. Hockey is his life. Now that he’s captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won’t let anything jeopardise that, especially the sexy Russian whose hard body keeps him awake at night.
Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane’s not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he’s as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him – except Shane. They’ve made a career on their legendary rivalry, but when the skates come off, the heat between them is undeniable. When Ilya realises he wants more than a few secret hookups, he knows he must walk away. The risk is too great.
As their attraction intensifies, they struggle to keep their relationship out of the public eye. If the truth comes out, it could ruin them both. But when their need for each other rivals their ambition on the ice, secrecy is no longer an option.
3. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.
Sybil Van Antwerp has, throughout her life, used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has – a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realises that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
2. Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden
Sometimes, enough is enough…
Debbie Mullen is losing it. For years, she has compiled all of her best advice into her column, Dear Debbie, where the wives of New England come for sympathy and neighbourly advice. Through her work, Debbie has heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled, or even abused by their husbands. And Debbie does her best to guide them in the right direction.
These days, Debbie’s life seems to be spiralling out of control. She just lost her job. Something strange is happening with her teenage daughters. And her husband is keeping secrets, according to the tracking app she installed on his phone. Now, Debbie’s done being the bigger person. She’s done being reasonable and practical. It’s time to take her own advice.
And now it’s time for payback against all the people in her life who deserve it the most.
1. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realises that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
How many have you read in total?
Sadie, who did this particular video, had read seven out of 12, which isn’t bad going whatsoever! So how many have you read? Maybe after checking out the blurbs, it might encourage you to add these new novels to your bookshelves!
