Winners of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards

Finally! The winners have been announced for the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards. It has been a slow and somewhat painful couple of weeks waiting for these results to come out, but they are here and the readers have spoken. 

Although I did not vote for it, I am still thrilled to say that The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead has won for Best Historical Fiction. But the one I did vote for, Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, did end up coming in second, narrowly missing the win by less than 200 votes. For anyone who thinks their vote does not matter, this close race shows how untrue that is.

And it should be a surprise to no one that J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child blew away the rest of the competition in the Best Fantasy category, with my personal pick of All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders coming in sixth. 

While I had high hopes for Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Cosmos, I am not too surprised it did not end up winning for Best Science Fiction. It did still manage to come in fourth, however, and I think that is a fairly strong showing.

Another close call comes from the Best Horror award, with Joe Hill's The Fireman edging out my choice of The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. I knew that Hutchison's haunting tale deserved to be in this category, and if there was an underdog that I really believed had a chance, it was this book. But hey, there is no shame in losing to Stephen King's son. 

I had sincerely hoped for a better showing for All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister in the History & Biography category; instead, it ended up coming in fifth, with The Midnight Assassin by Skip Hollandsworth coming in eighth. And the winner? Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man by William Shatner.

And again, Lilac Girls end us coming in second place in its second category, Best Debut Goodreads Author. This time it comes in behind Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner, which is the book I actually voted for, came in eighth. 

Aside from Best Historical Fiction, much of this blog post has been me listing off a bunch of near misses and close races for many of the books that have appeared on this blog. But I am beyond thrilled to say that Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys has taken home the award for my absolute favorite category of Best Young Adult Fiction. It feels right that the two categories that a Door Stop Novel would win for are Best Historical Fiction, a category that no Door Stop Novel has ever won before today, and Best Young Adult Fiction, my favorite category. Congratulations to Sepetys.

So now, we once again wait 12 more months until the next Goodreads Choice Awards nominees are announced. I certainly enjoyed discovering the 15 total Door Stop Novels that ended up being nominated this year, and I am sure I will enjoy the process of searching, finding, discovering, and guessing all over again in 2017.

'Till next year.