Three Surprisingly Popular Books on BookTok

The month of August has been all about a new adventure for me: BookTok! As someone who communicates much more easily through the written word instead of spoken, I’ve been trepidatious about jumping into video formats. Somehow I worked up enough nerve to give TikTok a try, and I’ve been liking what I’ve created so far! You can check out my account here: realmsofmymind

Now, I’ve only been exploring BookTok for about a month, so I am far from an authority on the overall trends of the app. But I definitely went in with some preconceptions about the audience and what they did and didn’t like. While some of those preconceptions have proven true (Sarah J. Maas and her books like A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES dominate significantly), I’ve been a bit surprised to see some other books that are repeatedly recommended.

I want to be clear that this article is not intended to throw shade at the BookTok community. My surprise at the popularity of these books came from some of my own stereotypes I had about BookTok going in, and I’ve discovered a vast range of content creators who like everything from YA to epic fantasy. It’s simply a matter of finding “your people” (much like any social media app). If anything, I hope that spotlighting some of these “surprisingly” popular books might dispel some of the stigma around BookTok.

THE POPPY WAR by R.F. Kuang
Maybe this just goes to prove that all book readers love to be hurt, but I did not expect the incredibly dark series THE POPPY WAR to be one I saw over and over (and over) again. It’s perhaps most surprising to me because the final book in the trilogy came out nearly two years ago, so it isn’t even a current release getting coverage through ARC reviews. It’s a backlist series that seems to be buoyed by word of mouth in the community, and I’m glad to see this one getting love!

THE PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE by Samantha Shannon
This is one I’m puzzled by mostly because it seemed to come and go on Book Twitter without too much fanfare. I saw a range of reviews from so-so to LOVE IT and had an overall positive impression of the book (I haven’t read it myself), but in my feed at least, it isn’t one that gets talked about a lot. BookTok, on the other hand, can’t get enough of PRIORY. If they aren’t raving about it, then they’re talking about how intimidated they are by its length (827 pages) or ashamed that they haven’t read it yet. This is another backlist title (first released in 2019) that seems to be doing gangbusters on BookTok; the community is especially ecstatic that the prequel will be coming out next year, so I expect to see this get even more traction in the months ahead.

THE SHADOW OF THE GODS by John Gwynne
If you feared that BookTok is “only” a place for YA content, then you might be surprised to see how much John Gwynne and his various books come up. I absolutely LOVE this series, but didn’t expect a Viking saga to be getting significant coverage. Instead, I was mistaken once again as this book has tons of people gushing about it, praising Orka as one of their favorite characters and generally being blown away by the sheer epicness of it all.

So those are a few of the books that have helped proved to me that I was wrong about my initial thoughts about BookTok. Sure, you can easily fall into a silo of “all SJM all the time,” but I’ve carved out a great little community of adult fantasy BookTokers to follow and share thoughts with. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, perhaps you’ll find more to love than you thought!