Winners of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards

It is officially December and the winners have been announced for the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards. Find out who won, who lost, and how your own personal favorites fared among some of the best books of 2015.

Despite my own personal thoughts and predictions, Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee took home the prize for Best Fiction. I of course had voted for Sara Nović's Girl at War, but it looks like it was just meant to be for Lee's recent book. Honestly, I am pleased that a book I managed to cover on this blog in the past year took away the ultimate prize, but I still wonder if people were voting more for Lee rather than the actual book. 

I am definitely excited that Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins won for Best Mystery & Thriller, somehow managing the impossible of beating out the literary juggernaut that is Stephen King. Not only did it win, but it completely blew the rest of the competition out of the water by gaining more than three times the votes of the second place finisher. But really, I am not all that surprised. The book is that good. 

Looks like neither A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson nor In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume had enough fans and followers to win for Best Historical Fiction, as the ultimate honor was given to The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. 

In another category where two Door Stop Novels missed out on the top prize, Golden Son by Pierce Brown has been named Best Science Fiction for 2015, beating both Armada by Ernest Cline, and The Heart Goes Last by the prolific and forever loved Margaret Atwood. 

And while I am not surprised by the loss of Armada in the science fiction category, I am somewhat shocked that Brené Brown's Rising Strong didn't finish higher than 10th place for Best Nonfiction. But I am not shocked that it ultimately lost out to Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance, with Humans of New York: Stories close behind in second place. 

When it comes to Best Debut Goodreads Author, it is all about Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, so Sara Nović's Girl at War loses yet again, along with Jasmine Warga's My Heart and Other Black Holes. This is always a tough and fairly unpredictable category, although the popularity of Red Queen is pretty well-known and widespread, so I knew it was going to make a strong showing regardless.

But despite her own popularity and massive following, Sarah Dessen was unable to come away with the win with Saint Anything, losing out to All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. 

So far only two books that have appeared on this blog have managed to win first place, and there is only one category left: Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. And it appears the seemingly impossible (at least to me) has happened and Rainbow Rowell's Carry On did not win first place. Instead it came in second to Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas. In my small world, this would qualify as an upset, only because Rowell has been such a powerhouse in past Goodreads Choice Awards, one year even managing to take both the first and second places in one category.

In any case, congratulations to all of the winners. Once again, I set off on a year-long journey to find and read the next year's winners. As always, even if I don't succeed in reading winning novels, I will have a hell of a lot of fun trying.