Weekly E-Ranking: Eleanor Oliphant is no longer Completely Fine

And with that, the Honeyman is over. Peter James’ Dead If You Don’t has ended Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’s record run in the Weekly E-Ranking number one spot, at 14 weeks (15 in total), becoming the first new number one in the e-book chart since the second week of February—and only the third title this year (along with Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and Jojo Moyes’ Still Me) to ascend straight to the top spot in its first week.

Though Eleanor Oliphant... is, cruelly, a scant five weeks away from swiping the all-time record number of weeks at the top from Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, this may not be the end—James’ two previous Roy Grace titles have reliably hit the top spot in May for the last two years, though neither has lasted more than one week. Either Dead If You Don’t will break the trend or there could be a second Honeyman on the horizon.

Paige Toon’s Five Years From Now made its début in fourth place, pushing Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt into fifth. This is Toon’s third title in a row to chart in the Weekly E-Ranking, and her highest ever chart position. Veronica Henry’s A Family Recipe also entered the list in ninth place, in the week leading up to the Royal Wedding—maybe e-book buyers were feeling romantic as a result.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, another gentle romance, notched up a seventh week in the top 20, long outlasting its film adaptation’s run in the UK box office charts.

Then again, those sick of Royal Wedding fever may have been drawn to Death is Not Enough, the sixth in Karen Rose’s Baltimore series, which débuted in 10th, three places below fellow gritty crime thriller Jeffery Deaver’s The Cutting Edge. Tim Weaver’s You Were Gone charted 12th, the author’s first appearance in the e-book top 20 since July 2016. You Were Gone’s cover had a decidedly The Couple Next Door-esque look to it, in contrast to the previous David Raker series cover designs, but it seems to be working—Shari Lapena’s début did rack up 37 weeks in the Weekly E-Ranking over 2016 and 2017.

Wilbur Smith is a regular in the e-book chart, with his last title, The Tiger’s Prey, making its entrance in September 2017—but this chart saw his first e-book hit in non-fiction, with his memoir On Leopard Rock charting 14th.