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BookTok stars Hoover, Silvera and Kuang lead Book of the Year nominees
The 12 shortlists for The British Book Awards Book of the Year have been revealed, with BookTok favourites from Colleen Hoover, Dr Julie Smith, Bolu Babalola, Adam Silvera and R F Kuang all in the running for accolades.
For Fiction Book of the Year, Kuang’s Babel (HarperVoyager) takes on publishing powerhouse Stephen King’s Fairy Tale (Hodder & Stoughton) in a field which also includes Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (Tinder Press) and Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo (Picador).
Stuart is also shortlisted for Audiobook of the Year for Fiction, vying against Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (Penguin Audio), 2022 Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Bolinda Publishing) and Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed (Penguin Audio) among others.
Osman also appears twice on the shortlists, nominated for Book of the Year: Crime and Thriller alongside Richard Coles’ Murder Before Evensong (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) and Janice Hallet’s The Twyford Code (Viper) among others.
The Discover Book of the Year shortlist, which focuses on underrepresented voices, includes Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan (Rough Trade Books), Paterson Joseph’s The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (Dialogue Books), and Home is Not a Place (William Collins) by Johny Pitts and Roger Robinson.
The fight for Non-Fiction: Lifestyle & Illustrated sees Davina McCall and Naomi Potter’s Menopausing (HQ) up against Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men (Hutchinson Heinemann) Smith’s Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (Penguin Michael Joseph) and Katherine Rundell’s The Golden Mole (Faber), illustrated by Talya Baldwin.
McCall also gets a nod for Audiobook of the Year Non-Fiction alongside “Friends” star Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing (Headline Publishing Group), while Rundell also does the double with a nomination for Non-Fiction: Narrative with her biography of poet John Donne, Super-Infinite (Faber), which is in contention with Edward Enninful’s A Visible Man (Bloomsbury) and Manni Coe and Reuben Coe’s brother.do.you.love.me. (Little Toller Books).
Marcus Rashford and Carl Anka return for this year’s Children’s Non-Fiction shortlist with You Can Do It: How To Find Your Voice and Make a Difference (Macmillan Children’s Books) joining Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara’s Queen Elizabeth: Little People, BIG DREAMS (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books) and Yeva Skalietska’s You Don’t Know What War Is (Bloomsbury Children’s Books).
In Children’s Fiction, TikTok phenomenon Silvera is in the running with The First To Die at The End (Simon & Schuster Children’s) facing stiff competition from A F Steadman’s Skandar and the Unicorn Thief (also Simon & Schuster Children’s) and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Diper Överlöde (Puffin).
The Début Book of the Year sees Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday) up against Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch (Oneworld) and Bolu Babalola’s Honey & Spice (Headline Review) among others.
Julia Donaldson has two nominations for Children’s Illustrated with The Baddies, illustrated by Axel Scheffler (Alison Green), and What the Ladybird Heard at Christmas, illustrated by Lydia Monks (Macmillan Children’s Books), joining Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Rise of the Maniacal Badger (David Fickling Books) and Alice Oseman’s The Heartstopper Yearbook (Hodder Children’s Books).
The shortlist for the Pageturner Award sees Hoover’s Verity (Sphere) up against Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees (Viking) and Dilly Court’s Sunday’s Child (HarperFiction).
The winners will be decided by separate panels, with judges ranging from Channel 4 News lead anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, author Anita Rani, Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho and comedian, actor and entertainer Ellie Taylor.
Alice O’Keeffe, books editor of The Bookseller and overall chair of the Books of the Year, said: “This year’s fiction shortlists run the gamut from fresh new voices, with a pleasing number of débuts from older writers to big brand authors of many years standing with an established readership still going strong.”
