Colleen Hoover claims a rare chart hat-trick while Yungblud's You Need to Exist sings in Non-Fiction

Boosted by the film adaptation of It Ends with Us, Colleen Hoover notched positions one to three in the Official UK Top 50⁠ – the first time an author has accomplished that feat in nearly a decade. Hoover’s triumph means that her main UK publisher Simon & Schuster has bagged the top three spots in a weekly bestseller list for the first time since accurate records began.

Hoover’s original mass-market paperback of It Ends with Us grabbed the number one, shifting just under 25,000 units through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The book had previously ascended to the summit for two non-consecutive weeks at the height of BookTok-driven “CoHo” mania in August 2022. It Starts with Us moved up from fourth to second place week-on-week, shifting 15,143 units. The "It Ends with Us" tie-in edition⁠ – with Blake Lively plastered on the cover⁠ – sold 14,310 copies to retain third place. Meanwhile, two additional Hoover titles, Verity (Sphere) and Ugly Love (S&S), returned to the Top 50 in 44th and 47th places, respectively. 

The last author⁠ – or rather authors⁠ – to claim the top three spots were Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris in Christmas week 2015 with a trio of their Ladybird adult spoof titles. How it Works: The Husband (Michael Joseph) was tops, shifting just over 57,000 copies.

While Hoover claimed top billing, it was another standout week for Freida McFadden, in an ongoing standout summer. With Never Lie returning and The Perfect Son (both Poisoned Pen) making its debut, the American thriller writer had an impressive six titles in the top 50 last week, led once again by her breakout hit, The Housemaid (Little, Brown), in sixth place. Since the beginning of June, McFadden has shifted almost 325,000 units through the TCM, the only fiction writer to surpass her has been Hoover (329,000 copies).

It was all change in Original Fiction with the top five titles hitting that chart in their launch weeks, the entire quintet in the Science Fiction and Fantasy space⁠ – three of which featured on August promotions with subscription box services Fairyloot and Illumicrate. Fairyloot’s adult August pick, Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil (Orbit), claimed the OF number one, shifting almost 9,000 units.

The top spots in adult non-fiction have been fairly static over the summer, the hardback chart ruled by Kay and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Air Fryer (Bluebird) and paperbacks by Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge (Vintage). While the Pinch of Nommers recorded their eighth non-consecutive HBNF summit last week, Stewart’s quest for an 11th pole position on the paperback list was arrested by Dominic “Yungblud” Harrison, the Doncaster-born singer-songwriter and provocateur to people who think Imagine Dragons is a bit too edgy. Yungblud’s You Need to Exist (Ebury) – a rather clever mash-up of a scrapbook for fans and Keri Smith’s evergreen Wreck this Journal (Penguin)⁠⁠ – sold nearly 5,900 copies in its launch week.

With Taylor Swift’s Eras tour once again returing to the UK in her first concert since the foiled Vienna terror plot, Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara and illustrator Borghild Fallberg’s Taylor Swift (Frances Lincoln Children’s) also returns to the top of the overall Children’s chart for a fifth non-consecutive week.The June 2024-published title, which was the 100th of Sanchez Vegara’s Little People, Big Dreams list is now the third-bestseller of the series on just over 80,000 units. There is still some way to catch David Attenborough (illustrated by Mikyo Noh) which has sold nearly 185,000 copies.  

Meanwhile, Lauren Roberts’ Reckless (S&S Children’s) bagged the Children’s and Young Adult Fiction number one, selling just over 4,000 copies. The top new kid’s title was the newest Ladbaby picture book, with Mark and Roxanne Hoyle and illustrator Gareth Conway’s World’s Funniest Unicorn debuting with a 3,067-unit sale to grab the Children’s Preschool pole position.

It was another solid week overall at the tills for British booksellers, with £30.6m sold through the TCM, a 5.4% bump on the previous seven days and a smidge (0.8%) up on the same period in 2023.