BookTok Books
If you're looking for a book that makes you cry, this might be the list. TikTok has increasingly become a platform for sharing the kind of reading experience that sticks with you. This Collection presents popular BookTok selections, with accompanying Study Guides to help you gain an even deeper understanding of the stories you can't put down.
Published in 2015, V. E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic is a young adult fantasy novel and the first installment of the Shades of Magic series. Kell Maresh, one of the last Antari magicians, possesses the rare ability to travel between parallel worlds. When a dangerous artifact from a forbidden realm falls into Kell’s possession, he and a thief named Lila Bard become entangled in a perilous adventure. The novel—which received a Goodreads Choice... Read A Darker Shade of Magic Summary
All the Bright Places (2015) is a young adult novel with elements of romance written by Jennifer Niven that deals with the topic of teen suicide. The book was winner of the Goodreads Choice award and has become a popular read among the BookTok community. Niven tells the story from two different voices, those of high school students Theodore Finch (who goes by “Finch”) and Violet Markey. The characters first meet at the top of their... Read All The Bright Places Summary
All the Light We Cannot See is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr published in 2014. This historical fiction novel alternates between the lives of its two central characters: Marie-Laure Leblanc, a girl who grows up in Paris and loses her eyesight to cataracts at age six, and Werner Pfennig, a boy from a German mining town who joins the Nazi military to escape working in the mines.In August 1944, Marie-Laure and Werner are... Read All the Light We Cannot See Summary
Book DetailAn Ember in the Ashes, published by Razorbill in 2015, is the first in Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes series. The novel debuted at number two on the young adult New York Times best seller list and was also a USA Today and international bestselling book. In addition, TIME magazine named it one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of all Time. It won the People’s Choice Award for favorite fantasy in... Read An Ember in the Ashes Summary
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz is a young adult fiction novel published in 2012. The novel won a Lambda Literary Award, a Pura Belpre Award, and a Stonewall Book Award. It was also named a Printz Honor Book and has achieved popularity on BookTok. Told from a first-person point of view, the book is a work of realistic fiction set in El Paso, Texas, in the late... Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Summary
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-born Khaled Hosseini, who was granted asylum in the US as a child during the Soviet-Afghan War in 1980. It is the story of Mariam and Laila, two women married to the same man, Rasheed, while the Taliban comes to power. The novel was chosen as one of the American Library Associations’ Best Books for Young Adults in 2008, was number one on the New York... Read A Thousand Splendid Suns Summary
Published in 2018, Circe retells the story of the eponymous Greek mythological figure. The novel is also popular among the online BookTok community. Although traditionally viewed as a heartless, savagely beautiful witch who lures sailors to their deaths, the Circe of Madeline Miller’s imagining is quite different. This Circe is a multidimensional, flawed, and empathetic character struggling to find meaning and worth in her immortal life. Through Miller’s detailed and honest first-person narrative, which takes... Read Circe Summary
Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a coming-of-age novel by Iranian American writer Adib Khorram. Originally published in 2018 by Dial Books, the novel echoes Khorram’s experiences growing up in a multiethnic family with a history of mental illnesses. The book, which is Khorram’s first, won the William C. Morris YA Debut Award in 2019 and is a popular BookTok read. A sequel entitled Darius the Great Deserves Better was published in August 2020. Content... Read Darius the Great Is Not Okay Summary
Heartless, first published in 2016, is a contemporary fantasy Young Adult novel by Marissa Meyer. Meyer is best known for her dystopian sci-fi YA series The Lunar Chronicles, inspired by fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White. Set in a fantasy world, Heartless imagines the backstory of Lewis Carroll’s iconic character the Queen of Hearts from the 1876 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Heartless is also popular among the BookTok community. This guide utilizes... Read Heartless Summary
Monday’s Not Coming (2018) is a young adult novel by Tiffany D. Jackson. She employs a nonlinear narrative to explore issues of race, mental illness, and media bias. Claudia Coleman narrates the story of how her best friend, Monday Charles, disappeared for a year, and no one but Claudia seemed to notice or care.Published by Harper Collins, Monday’s Not Coming earned Jackson the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe award for new talent. It was also nominated... Read Monday's Not Coming Summary
Ninth House is a 2019 contemporary occult fantasy novel by American writer Leigh Bardugo. Inspired by the author’s undergraduate experiences at Yale University, Ninth House is part of the Alex Stern series with the next book planned for release in 2021. The novel is also popular on BookTok, a community of readers and book content creators on TikTok. The story is set in a macabre version of the real world and focuses on the occult... Read Ninth House Summary
One of Us is Lying is a 2017 young-adult thriller by Karen McManus that revolves around the suspicious death of Bayview High School senior Simon Kelleher, author of a gossip app called About That. The story is told from the alternating first person perspectives of four students who served detention with Simon when he died: Bronwyn, Cooper, Nate, and Addy. It explores themes about the corrosive impact of stereotyping and gossip, the value of empathy... Read One of Us is Lying Summary
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic memoir and coming-of-age tale about Satrapi’s experiences growing up in Tehran, Iran, before and after the revolution in 1979. Originally published in France to critical acclaim in four volumes between 2000-2003, it was translated into English in two volumes in 2003 and 2004 and explores themes of Coming of Age During Revolution, Civil Unrest, and War, Family Resistance and Heroism, Joy in Wartimen... Read Persepolis Summary
Published anonymously in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most well-known book. A “novel of manners,” which presents a realistic picture of society through the customs and manners of everyday life, Pride and Prejudice offers a glimpse into 19th-century English social hierarchies, as well as women’s roles and the importance of marriage. While Austen’s books were popular during her lifetime, she died before she was acknowledged as their author; when Persuasion was published posthumously, her... Read Pride and Prejudice Summary
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (Harper Teen, 2015) is the first book in the Red Queen series, which follows one girl’s battle to bring equality to her people in a dystopian fantasy world where the power hungry Silvers oppress the lower Red class. The book won the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Debut Goodreads Author and was nominated for the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. New York Times bestselling... Read Red Queen Summary
Red, White & Royal Blue is the debut novel of author Casey McQuiston. When first published in May of 2019, it created an immediate sensation and rose to the top of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists and earned awards from NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, and others.Red, White & Royal Blue is the story of a gay romance between FSOTUS (First Son of the United States) Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry, a... Read Red, White, and Royal Blue Summary
Salt to the Sea is a historical young adult novel written by Ruta Sepetys and published in 2016. Sepetys is known for similar young adult historical fiction works, such as I Must Betray You (2022) and Between Shades of Gray (2011). Set during World War II, Salt to the Sea is a coming-of-age story that follows four protagonists as they make and resist the journey to adulthood in a world characterized by war and trauma... Read Salt to the Sea Summary
Neal Shusterman’s 2016 YA science fiction novel Scythe tells the story of two teenagers in the dystopian future who live in a world where death has been defeated. Weighty existential and philosophical questions abound in this first entry of the Arc of the Scythe Series, which has been highly praised for its insight and readability. The second book, Thunderhead, was released in 2018, and 2019’s The Toll completed the trilogy. This first installment explores themes... Read Scythe Summary
Shadow and Bone (2012) by Leigh Bardugo is a young adult fantasy adventure and romance novel. It is Bardugo’s debut novel and the first book in her Shadow and Bone trilogy, also called the Grisha trilogy. Inspired by 19th-century Tsarist Russia, Bardugo creates a darkly magical world characterized by strange armies, extreme wealth and poverty, and personifications of light and shadow. The novel was a New York Times best seller, a Los Angeles Times best... Read Shadow and Bone Summary
Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects tells the story of Camille, a crime reporter living in Chicago. After a little girl goes missing in Camille’s hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille’s boss talks her into going home to report on the disappearance. Although she is reluctant to revisit her hometown, a place she hasn’t seen in over ten years, she is eager to please her boss and gives in to his pleas. Most the novel takes place... Read Sharp Objects Summary
Shatter Me is a young adult dystopian novel by Tahereh Mafi. The book was first published in 2011, and soon afterward, 20th Century Fox bought the rights for a film adaptation. Exploring the themes of The Impact of Physical and Emotional Isolation, The Importance of Resisting Tyranny, and Embracing Hope as a Form of Defiance, the novel has become a bestseller in young adult fiction. It is followed by two other books, Unravel Me and... Read Shatter Me Summary
Published in 2015, Leigh Bardugo’s young adult fantasy novel Six of Crows, the first in a two-part series, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, VOYA, and Kirkus Reviews. A fantasy heist story, the novel shifts between the alternating points of view of five teenagers who team up to pull off the ultimate prison break.Six of Crows begins in Ketterdam, an invented version of 17th-century Amsterdam, and the novel’s main characters hail from the seedy criminal... Read Six of Crows Summary
Published in 2018 by Nebula Award-winning author Naomi Novik, Spinning Tales is a modern take on coming-of-age fairy tales. The novel explores the dangers of pride and the complexity of responsibility set in a Slavic fantasy world made of the familiar and the fantastic alike. While the story centers around Miryem Mandelstam, other character perspectives demonstrate the quintessentially human experiences of life—frustration, longing, confusion, and growing up.Plot SummaryThe teenage Miryem finds herself in a do-or-die... Read Spinning Silver Summary
Such a Fun Age (2019) is a debut novel from Kiley Reid, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons (an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC). The novel quickly garnered critical acclaim, including a NY Times Bestseller spot, and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in 2020. Another novel by Reid is Come and Get It. Plot Summary Though it starts with Emira’s perspective, Such a Fun Age alternates almost evenly between Emira Tucker and Alix Chamberlain... Read Such a Fun Age Summary
The Book Thief (December 2007) is a young adult novel by Australian author Markus Zusak. Other titles by Zusak include Underdogs (1999), I am the Messenger (2002), and Bridge of Clay (2018). All his works have received multiple literary prizes and reader’s choice awards from countries around the world.When first published, The Book Thief became a #1 New York Times bestseller and was a nominee of PBS’s The Great American Read as one of America’s... Read The Book Thief Summary
The Great Gatsby is a fiction novel published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s experiences during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby captures the prosperity and the hedonism of the era through a cast of characters who reside in the fictional Long Island towns of West Egg and East Egg. Despite a cold reaction from critics and audiences upon its release, many modern scholars include The... Read The Great Gatsby Summary
The House in the Cerulean Sea (2020) is a queer fantasy novel by TJ Klune, Lambda Award-winning author of The Extraordinaires and the Green Creek series. Klune is a queer author whose works often explore supernatural elements. Many mythological species feature in this novel, while other books focus on werewolves, ghosts, and the like. The book explores themes of Nature Versus Nurture, The Perpetuation of Prejudice, and Found Family.Klune’s work, particularly The House in the... Read The House in the Cerulean Sea Summary
The Hunger Games is a best-selling young adult dystopian novel, the first in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. It details the life of teenage heroine Katniss Everdeen as she fights to the death for the entertainment of her fascist government. Since its publication in 2008, the trilogy has sold more than 65 million copies in the United States alone and, in 2019, was listed as one of 100 most influential novels by BBC News. The... Read The Hunger Games Summary
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a historical fantasy novel by the American author V.E. Schwab published in 2020. It chronicles the story of Addie LaRue, an 18th-century Frenchwoman who gains eternal life through a bargain with a demonic entity. However, the deal comes at a great cost: Everybody who meets Addie immediately forgets her. A New York Times bestseller, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue received a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award nomination for... Read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Summary
The Maze Runner is a young adult dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. The story begins in a dark metal elevator, where a teenage boy awakens with no real memories other than the fact that his name is Thomas. When the elevator stops and the doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by teenage boys. Their leader, a boy named Alby, welcomes Thomas to the Glade. Thomas quickly sees that the Glade is surrounded by... Read The Maze Runner Summary
The Selection is the first book in the titular romance trilogy by American author Kiera Cass. First published in 2012, The Selection was pitched as a dystopian interpretation of the hit television show The Bachelor, and as Publisher’s Weekly stated in their review, the Selection is “[a] cross between ‘The Hunger Games’ (minus the blood sport) and ‘The Bachelor’ (minus the blood sport).” In a future set in the land of Illéa (formerly the United... Read The Selection Summary
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017) is a work of historical fiction by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel follows Monique, a journalist struggling to make a name for herself until she receives an offer to interview the mysterious and reclusive 1960s Hollywood starlet, Evelyn Hugo, about fame, scandal, and love. The novel is a study of human nature that explores The Cost of Fame, The Oversexualization and Commodification of Women’s Bodies, and the difficulty... Read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Summary
The Silent Patient (2019) is a contemporary psychological thriller from author Alex Michaelides. It tells the story of Alicia, who killed her husband, Gabriel, six years earlier—and hasn’t spoken since. The bulk of the novel takes place in the present-day, narrated by Theo Faber, a forensic psychoanalyst who recently began working with Alicia at The Grove, the mental institute where she resides following Gabriel’s murder. The novel uses the epistolary technique, interspersing Theo’s narrative with... Read The Silent Patient Summary
The Song of Achilles, author Madeline Miller’s bestselling novel, retells the events of Homer’s Iliad. Published in 2012, the book reimagines the relationship between ancient Greek Trojan war heroes Achilles and Patroclus. Narrated in the first person by Patroclus, the narrative explores themes central to ancient Greek mythology, notably the immutability of fate and the pursuit of glory.The novel begins with Patroclus narrating his birth and early childhood. Son of King Menoitius, the undersized and... Read The Song of Achilles Summary
Published in 2016, Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star is a young-adult novel and National Book Award Finalist. Told from multiple character perspectives, the novel tells the story of the romance that transpires over one day between two young people, Natasha Katherine Kingsley and Daniel Jae Ho Bae, and the impact they have on the people around them. Natasha and Daniel come from different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Natasha is an undocumented... Read The Sun Is Also a Star Summary
The Ten Thousand Doors of January (2019) is a fantasy novel by Alix E. Harrow. In this coming-of-age story, Harrow uses her background as a historian to recreate early 20th-century America, particularly its ways of thinking and societal rules. She employs magical realism to create new worlds alongside those of her eponymous main character, January, and to point out the relativity of societal laws and expectations. Harrow’s commentary on the past century’s political ideologies such... Read The Ten Thousand Doors of January Summary
The Vanishing Half, published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The... Read The Vanishing Half Summary
The Way of Kings (2010) is the first book in Brandon Sanderson’s ongoing epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive. The Way of Kings won Best Novel at the 2011 David Gemmell Legend Awards for fantasy literature and is considered an exemplary and influential entry to the epic fantasy genre. DMG Entertainment purchased the rights to a film adaptation of The Stormlight Archive in 2016, and Arcturus VR released a videogame adaptation of the novel in... Read The Way of Kings Summary
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera is a young adult, science fiction novel published in 2017. Set in a dystopian alternate version of New York City in September 2017, the book follows two teenagers, Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio, who both have been notified by Death-Cast that they will die by the end of the day. Death-Cast, the defining feature of Silvera’s dystopia, is a company that predicts citizens’ deaths and notifies... Read They Both Die at the End Summary
This Is Where It Ends is the 2016 young adult novel by Marieke Nijkamp. As Principal Trenton concludes the annual first-day-of-spring-semester speech at Alabama’s Opportunity High School, Tyler Browne locks students inside the auditorium and commits a school shooting that leaves thirty-nine people dead. Narrated in four different first-person accounts, by seniors Autumn, Sylv, Tomas, and Claire, This Is Where It Ends traces the fifty-five minutes, from 10:00 to 10:55 a.m., that encompass moments before... Read This Is Where It Ends Summary
Turtles All the Way Down (2017) is a young adult novel by John Green, author of the successful novel The Fault in Our Stars. The story is narrated in the first person by Aza Holmes, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety, which greatly impact her daily life and her ability to maintain relationships. The story has been heralded as an accurate and personal depiction of OCD by the author, who has openly written... Read Turtles All the Way Down Summary
We Were Liars is a 2014 young-adult novel by E. Lockhart, a pen name of writer Emily Jenkins. The book tells the story of Cady (short for Cadence), who is nearly 18, as she recounts the story of her life. She is a member of the wealthy New England Sinclair family whose patriarch and matriarch, Harris and Tipper, still dominate the family as the story begins. The Sinclair family is so wealthy that it owns... Read We Were Liars Summary
When We Collided is a young adult novel written by Emery Lord and published in 2016. The novel explores themes of mental illness, grief, and familial bonds. Lord presents the story to her readers through alternating chapters between two characters: Vivi and Jonah. They are the main protagonists of the novel who find themselves in a summer romance that changes them forever. Through their bond, both Jonah and Vivi learn more about themselves, their families... Read When We Collided Summary
British-American neuroscientist Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (2017) provides an in-depth exploration of the science of sleep health. Walker argues that sleep loss is an epidemic and one of the most serious public health issues of the 21st century. Drawing from a wealth of data and scientific studies, including his own innovative scientific breakthroughs during his time as a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Walker illustrates the... Read Why We Sleep Summary
