r/YAlit · 2021

Most-mentioned books in r/YAlit during 2021

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/YAlit within the published source unit for 2021. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

118

Books ranked

7,414

Tracked mentions in 2021

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas

Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, gets dragged into the faerie lands as payment, and spends five books choosing a court.

1,472 in 2021

Six of Crows

Leigh Bardugo

Kaz Brekker recruits five other criminal teenagers for a heist inside a supposedly impenetrable ice fortress.

1,194 in 2021

Throne of Glass

Sarah J. Maas

A teenage assassin is pulled out of a slave-labor camp and entered in a kingdom's brutal death-match tournament to win her freedom.

712 in 2021

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

A teenage girl volunteers to fight to the death on live television in place of her younger sister, then spends three books resisting everyone who wants to make her a symbol.

457 in 2021

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

An eleven-year-old orphan gets a letter, a train platform that shouldn't exist, and a scar that makes him famous for something he can't remember.

341 in 2021

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller

Patroclus, exiled and overlooked, grows up shadowing Achilles and follows him to Troy already knowing how the war ends for them.

333 in 2021

The Lightning Thief

Rick Riordan

A twelve-year-old with ADHD and dyslexia finds out both are demigod traits, then gets ten days to stop a war between Greek gods he didn't know were real.

277 in 2021

The Poppy War

R. F. Kuang

A dark-skinned war orphan tests into an elite military academy, discovers she can channel a fire god, and burns her way toward genocide.

146 in 2021

Red Rising

Pierce Brown

A low-caste miner surgically altered to pass as the ruling elite infiltrates the academy that killed his wife, planning to burn the system down from inside.

143 in 2021

#10

Circe

Madeline Miller

Exiled to an empty island for turning a rival into a monster, a minor goddess spends immortality perfecting the one power the gods never bothered to master.

142 in 2021

#11

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Brandon Sanderson

A street thief who can swallow metal and burn it for power gets recruited into a heist crew whose actual target is the immortal emperor who's ruled for a thousand years.

135 in 2021

#12

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern

Two magicians raised from childhood for a duel to the death disguise the fight as a circus that only opens after dark.

132 in 2021

#13

The Priory of the Orange Tree

Samantha Shannon

A queen who cannot risk a female heir, a dragon rider guarding a strait, and an outlawed mage protecting her in secret all move toward the same sleeping fire-breather.

125 in 2021

#14

Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik

A moneylender's daughter out-bargains a winter king to save her family, in a Rumpelstiltskin retelling with a Jewish heroine at its center.

118 in 2021

#15

The House in the Cerulean Sea

TJ Klune

A caseworker is sent to inspect an orphanage of six dangerous magical children, one of them the literal Antichrist, and has to decide whether to file the report that shuts it down.

110 in 2021

#16

Northern Lights

Philip Pullman

A girl crosses into other worlds with a truth-telling compass and a soul that lives outside her body as a shape-shifting animal.

88 in 2021

#17

Uprooted

Naomi Novik

A village girl is taken by an ancient wizard as tribute every ten years, until the year his choice turns out to be a mistake he can't undo.

87 in 2021

#18

The Bear and the Nightingale

Katherine Arden

A girl in medieval Russia keeps the household spirits fed with scraps of bread while a priest convinces her village those same spirits are demons.

78 in 2021

#19

The Hating Game

Sally Thorne

Two rival executives who despise each other are stuck sharing an office, until the hating starts feeling like something else entirely.

74 in 2021

#20

The Name of the Wind

Patrick Rothfuss

A legendary hero narrates his own rise from orphaned street kid to feared arcanist over three days, except Rothfuss never wrote day three.

72 in 2021

#21

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid

A reclusive Old Hollywood icon finally agrees to tell her real story, husband by husband, but insists on giving it only to an unknown magazine writer.

72 in 2021

#22

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

A gardener and three friends carry a cursed ring across a continent at war, because the only way to destroy it is to walk it into the volcano that forged it.

55 in 2021