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Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.
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What are the most popular library book checkouts from 2025? While there is no definitive answer, we have a number of tools we can pull from to make some educated guesses. Among them are the increasingly popular “Your Library Wrapped” social posts that circulate this time of year.
Looking at 40 different top library book checkout lists from big and small public libraries across the USA, here are some of the most popular books of the year. What makes looking at public library book popularity fun is that it is year-agonistic, meaning that books published this year might sit alongside books published several years ago. Genre books tend to see more top books lists in libraries than in other outlets who compile or write about the year’s best or top books.
Of particular note this year, books published in 2024 that earned some kind of accolade, that were part of a major celebrity book club, or that had adaptation news arise landed among the most popular nationwide. This isn’t surprising–and we can likely thank ebook access for helping circulate more of these in-demand titles to patrons. When a book is popular, though ebooks are much more costly for libraries than print copies, additional ebook purchases can often be done quicker than print. We’ll see this when we look at next year’s roundup of most popular books, too, as one of the largest distributors of print materials to public libraries went under this fall.
Other interesting trends this year include seeing genre fiction among the most popular titles. They’re a library staple that can too often be overlooked in “best of” lists from non-library outlets. Authors who have immense and long-time followings saw their titles on these lists, such as David Baldacci and Louise Penny. This year, we also saw popular BookTok authors also rise through the ranks, such as Rebecca Yarros and Freida McFadden. Meanwhile, only one library had a Sarah J. Maas title among its most circulated, a change from the last few years.
White authors tend to dominate in these lists, but the lists across the 40 libraries surveyed are more varied than just what’s at the top. This is, of course, a reflection of how publishing is still a predominantly white industry, and the books that tend to get bigger publicity and marketing around them are by white authors. It’s also worth addressing here that some of the biggest genre writers are long-time writers,