The Most Read Books on Goodreads This Week

In the era of influencers and day-in-the-life creators, Once in a Timeline will capture your heart with its easy-to-love plot and memorable characters.

Laia Grace is an up-and-coming New York lifestyle influencer. She crafts her days to perfectly fit the aesthetic she wants and films them for people to see. But one day, something glitches, and Laia realizes that she’s inside her latest “day in the life” video, in an infinite loop. With the help of a brooding man who is also trapped inside, they try to figure out how to exit this endless cycle. —Silvana Reyes Lopez

Five years after the massacres in The Only Good Indians, one of the survivors of the revenge murders, Nathan Yellow Tail, is in the hospital. He’s survived an accident that should’ve killed him and his pal Sebby, who is also in the hospital, having barely survived.

Nate realizes he can turn his life around. He’s got a camper van and three older Blackfeet. They’re going to find the bones of the only Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Once they do that, they’ll repatriate the boy home.

Too bad that the bones have allowed something else to escape in the process.

Readers looking for Indigenous horror already know and love Stephen Graham Jones, and this next entry in his catalog of moving and terrifying reads promises to deliver. —Kelly Jensen

This is the newest book from the author of The Help. The Help was a huge bestseller, made into a blockbuster movie, but it received a lot of criticism for its use of stereotypes of Black people and white saviorism, as well as its historical inaccuracies. This criticism didn’t prevent Stockett from snagging a lucrative book deal for her new novel, however, and it looks like it hasn’t hurt its sales. The Calamity Club was read by almost 19,000 users this week and has a 4.6 average rating.

Still in the top five is Yesteryear, which came out in April. It’s one of several buzzy tradwife novels out this year. In this one, a tradwife influencer wakes up one day in the time period she’s been romanticizing, and real-life homesteading turns out to be much more difficult—and dangerous—than it looks on Instagram. Yesteryear was read by 25,000 users this week and has a 3.8 average rating.

Verity was first published in 2018, but it’s back on the bestseller lists following the movie adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, which came out on October 2nd. So far, the movie has a 33% Tomatometer rating from critics, but a 71% Popcorn rating from critics. It was read by almost 28,000 users this week and has a 4.3 average rating.

The reigning queen of thrillers is back, this time with an October-appropriate story. After losing her job, Julia moves in with her elderly grandmother in their family’s 17th-century estate in Massachusetts. Soon, she begins to suspect the house is haunted by a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692. It was read by almost 34,000 users this week and has a 4.1 average rating.

The fourth book in the Empyrean series still doesn’t have a release date, so fans likely have a long time to wait. In the meantime, they can revisit the world in this new novella, which follows 13 characters on their Threshing Days, when they endure a deadly trial in attempts to bond with a dragon. It was read by a staggering 103,000 users this week and has a 4.5 average rating.