TikTok is selling more and more YA books with the hashtag ‘#BookTok’. Love it or hate it, it’s taking YA fiction straight to the top of the bestsellers lists.
The word on the street is that #BookTok is the go-to for trustworthy reads for YA books. The Publishers Association (PA) in the UK said today that total book sales were up by 5 per cent and that among the YA bestseller list, four out of the five top sellers had been recent YA hits on TikTok‘s biggest hashtag, #BookTok.
Although if you ask Twitter what it thinks of said platform, you’d come away knowing less than when you went in, with comments ranging from intense love to major dislike. To help you cut through the mire, we’ve put together a few of our favourites from the #BookTok best sellers and recommendations for the coming of age.
Call Me By Your Name – Andre Aciman
Call Me By Your Name follows the passionate and whirlwind romance that blooms over one summer holiday on the Italian Riviera, between seventeen-year-old Elio and his father’s house guest Oliver. Themes of obsession, fear, and desire grow into love and an experience that will stay with them for a lifetime.
One Of Us Is Lying – Karen M McManus
Part Gossip Girl and part Riverdale, One of Us is Lying tells the story of five students that go to detention, Bronwyn, Addy, Nate, Cooper, and Simon. Only, Simon never makes it out. Before the end of detention, Simon’s dead. According to investigators, on Thursday, he died. But on Friday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in this gossip girl style murder.
Today Tonight Tomorrow – Rachel Lynn Solomon
A romantic comedy about two rival overachievers Rowan Roth and Neil McNair whose relationship completely transforms over the course of twenty-four hours. Today, she hates him, tonight she puts up with him, tomorrow, maybe she’s fallen for him. Rowan realises her chances of besting her long-time rival may be ruined, and that Neil might actually be the boy of her dreams.
Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr
Anthony Doerr does dreamers and outsiders like no one else. Following more than one timeline, in a vast scope of time and space, we follow thirteen-year-old orphan Anna. Five hundred years into the future, in a library in Idaho, we follow Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearsing with five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, which has been preserved against all odds through the centuries. Fast forward again, and we meet the interstellar traveller, Konstance who has never set foot on our planet, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. A love story to librarians, past present, and future everywhere.
