Fiction: Sparring Partners fights to the top

John Grisham’s Sparring Partners (Hodder) elbowed Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (S&S) out of the Mass-Market Fiction top spot, outselling the 2022 bestseller of the year by just 232 copies.

But Hoover’s prequel It Starts with Us claimed the Original Fiction pole for a seventh week in total. Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent (Gollancz) stormed into second place, as its predecessor Ninth House notched up 14th place.

Jane Fallon’s Just Got Real (Penguin) débuted in the Mass-Market Fiction chart in sixth, with Rosie Goodwin’s A Season for Hope (Zaffre) hitting 12th place. Ian Rankin’s The Falls (Orion), Karen Rose’s Quarter to Midnight (Headline), Tom Bradby’s Yesterday’s Spy (Penguin) and Susan Stokes-Chapman’s Pandora (Vintage) also entered the top 20.