Goodreads Choice Awards 2018 Winners

Every year I look forward to the Goodreads Choice Awards and this year was no different. Even long before I started book blogging, the GR Choice Awards provided the perfect opportunity to show my love for my favourite books and (of course) increase my TBR by adding some of the biggest book names of the year.

This year was even more special as it was the 10th annual GR Choice Awards and they introduced a special category for it – ‘Best of the Best’ – which I was really excited about. It collected together all 170 previous winners of the GR Choice Award and asked readers to vote for their favourite book of all time.

I am very pleased with some of the winners this year and, as always, there are a few surprises! As I love taking part in the GR Choice Awards each year I thought I would share with you all some of the 2018 winners alongside the books that I voted for! As there are so many categories, I’ll only be focusing on the ones which I voted in.

Best Fantasy

My Vote: Circe by Madeline Miller

This is one of the categories that I felt the tensest about because the competition was absolutely fierce. It had some of the biggest names in Fantasy going up against each other including The Poppy War by R.F Kuang, Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence, and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden including so many other amazing fantasy books from this year. I was honestly really torn between voting for Circe and The Poppy War but in the end, went for Circe as it’s the only one I’ve read yet and I adored Circe.

Best Science Fiction

My Vote: Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

Another category that had me stressed. Science fiction is my favourite genre and, again, there were some incredible books going up against each other for the award. I was quite disappointed (and surprised) when my Record of a Spaceborn Few got knocked out before the final round and looking back over the votes it’s a little disappointing that the more diverse science fiction books of 2018 hardly got any votes when compared with those that did. I haven’t read Vengeful or anything by V.E Schwab so can’t comment any further on the winner! What do you think?

Best Memoir and Autobiography

My Vote: Educated by Tara Westover

I was really surprised when I looked at the winner this morning and saw that Educated won this category as it was going up against the new Michelle Obama book! Again there were some really great nominees here including When they call you a terrorist: A Black Lives Matters memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullers and Asha Bandela. In the end, I voted for Educated because it was the only one I had read in the category and had found it really intriguing.

Best Debut Author

My Vote: Tomi Adeyemi

Perhaps one of the less surprising results, Tomi won this category by a landslide. Given some of the controversy going on at the moment around Tomi and Nora Roberts, I’m feeling a little bit complicated around Tomi but I’m glad to see her win one of the categories for the GR Choice Awards. CoBaB was one of the biggest things to emerge out of 2018 and it was amazing to see how many people supported it.

Best YA Fantasy & Science Fiction

My Vote: Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Before I even begin to respond to this one, it really bugged me that YA Fantasy and YA Science Fiction got smushed together in this category when they deserved to be in their respective categories. This one category had everything from Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, and The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton going up against Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, Wildcard by Marie Lu and Skyward for Brandon Sanderson going up against each other which I don’t think is fair in the slightest. YA Science Fiction is constantly squashed under YA Fantasy and it means that some of the biggest YA Sci-Fi lost out on an award that they might otherwise have won. Also maybe I’m a little bit bitter because the Sarah J. Maas fans really came out in force to vote for Kingdom of Ash and I have some complicated feels about that.

Best of the Best

My Vote: THUG

This was the category that I think I was the most excited about. Not only because it meant that some of my favourite winners from previous years reappeared, but because The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was one of the nominations. In my review of THUG, I remarked that its a classic of our time and I still stand by that today. This book is incredibly important and to see it doing so well makes me very happy. So many congratulations to Angie ❤

As I mentioned before there is also a load of other categories that I didn’t cover here including Horror, Nonfiction, YA Fiction, and Adult Fiction. You can check out the winners of those categories HERE!

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the winners and nominees of the GR Choice Awards 2018, as well as the GR Choice Awards more widely, so drop me a comment below ❤

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