tokconnect
- Kristin Hannah's The Women is the most searched single book on BookTok this week, with 411,323 TikTok searches in 7 days, more than two years after it came out.
- Dark romance leads the tropes: "dark mm romance books" had 366,716 searches, up 55% over the week, and "dark romance book tok" has nearly 2,000 videos.
- Readers still search what SenLinYu's Alchemised is about (about 250,000 searches a week) and for news of Sarah J. Maas, whose next A Court of Thorns and Roses book is due on 27 October 2026.
- "thriller books for beginner", "best romantasy series" and two older Kristin Hannah titles each drew over 100,000 searches with no videos matched: the openings for book creators.
The BookTok books people are searching for most on TikTok this week are Kristin Hannah's The Women, SenLinYu's Alchemised and anything by Sarah J. Maas. The tropes leading search are dark romance (especially dark MM romance, meaning two male leads), standalone romantasy and thrillers for beginners.
We checked this on 27 September 2026 by running nine book searches through TikTok's own search data and reading the top recommendation videos. Every book below turned up in those results. The table shows how many times each search was made in the last 7 days, how it moved over the week and how many videos TikTok has for it.
BookTok books and searches this week
Here are the specific books, authors and tropes TikTok returned, ranked by searches in the last 7 days. "Change this week" compares the last day of the week with the first. "New" means the search barely existed on day one. "Videos" is how many videos TikTok matches to the search.
| # | Book or search | 7-day searches | Change this week | Videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | the women by kristin hannah | 411,323 | +49% | 629 |
| 2 | dark mm romance books | 366,716 | +55% | 690 |
| 3 | booktok hauls | 291,870 | new | 1,125 |
| 4 | dark romance book tok | 283,485 | +29% | 1,935 |
| 5 | sarah j maas and josh | 273,081 | +470% | 385 |
| 6 | what is booktok | 268,773 | +460% | 1,076 |
| 7 | thriller books for beginner | 263,826 | new | 0 |
| 8 | ku thriller book recs | 252,973 | +2% | 563 |
| 9 | what is alchemised book about | 251,474 | +209% | 477 |
| 10 | what is alchemised about | 247,625 | +4% | 481 |
| 11 | stand alone romantasy | 246,426 | −43% | 639 |
| 12 | booktok ideas | 236,481 | +98% | 1,165 |
| 13 | sarah j maas update | 229,468 | −16% | 486 |
| 14 | sarah j maas interview | 223,488 | −18% | 0 |
| 15 | the four winds by kristin hannah | 205,961 | +28% | 0 |
| 16 | booktok men | 195,241 | +58% | 1,125 |
| 17 | the great alone kristin hannah book | 190,319 | +11% | 0 |
| 18 | ya booktok | 150,315 | +4% | 917 |
| 19 | ya thriller books | 119,588 | −60% | 603 |
| 20 | alchemised explained | 113,211 | +68% | 360 |
| 21 | best romantasy series | 112,833 | +1,039% | 0 |
| 22 | booktok mm | 89,955 | +58% | 1,043 |
| 23 | kristin hannah new book | 73,178 | −44% | 285 |
| 24 | romantasy recs | 53,883 | new | 1,176 |
Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights via TokConnect, pulled 27 September 2026 for nine searches ("booktok", "book recommendations", "romantasy", "books to read", "sarah j maas", "alchemised", "kristin hannah", "dark romance books", "thriller books"). Searches are TikTok's 7-day global figure. Topics that were not about books (other people named Sarah or Hannah, for example) are left out. Open the snapshot.
Two things stand out. First, the single most searched book is not new: The Women came out in February 2024 and was the top-selling book of 2024. BookTok keeps a book alive for years. Second, people search for categories more than titles. Readers type a mood ("dark romance", "standalone romantasy") and let videos pick the book.
These numbers are separate from our BookTok trends table, which lists every reading topic TikTok returns for 12 searches and is refreshed weekly. This page picks out the books and explains why they are there.
The books top BookTok videos are recommending
Search counts tell you what people want. The videos tell you which books they are being handed. We pulled the top 16 videos for "booktok recommendations" and "romantasy books", ranked by TikTok's relevance sort. These are the books named in their captions.
- Sarah J. Maas: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Throne of Glass and Crescent City, all on one creator's "master list" of romantasy.
- Rebecca Yarros: Fourth Wing, the first book in the Empyrean series (2023).
- SenLinYu: Alchemised (2025).
- Raven Kennedy: the Plated Prisoner series.
- Rachel Gillig: the Shepherd King duology.
- Kristin Hannah: The Women, named or tagged in two of the eight top "booktok recommendations" videos.
- Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997), on a list of books that "changed my life".
The most watched of these videos had 2.8 million plays. Captions name only some of the books shown on screen, so the full lists are longer than this.
Watch three of the top videos
Tap a card to load TikTok's player.
Videos from TikTok video search, 27 September 2026. Plays and saves as TikTok showed them that day. Snapshot.
Romantasy: Maas, Yarros and the standalone search
Romantasy means fantasy with a romance at its centre. It is the biggest single genre on BookTok, and the search data shows how readers approach it.
Sarah J. Maas pulls three searches of her own: "sarah j maas and josh" (about 270,000, up nearly six times over the week), "sarah j maas update" (about 230,000) and "sarah j maas interview" (about 220,000). Josh is her husband, Josh Wasserman. Fans have been waiting for news: her site lists the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book for 27 October 2026 and the seventh for 12 January 2027.
"stand alone romantasy" gets about 250,000 searches a week. That is people who want one book, not a five-book commitment, though it fell over the week. "best romantasy series" is the opposite request, and it jumped about elevenfold over the week. It has no videos matched to it yet.
Rebecca Yarros is the background to all of this. Her Onyx Storm sold nearly 1.7 million print copies in 2025, the big driver of romance sales that year, according to Publishers Weekly's Circana BookScan report. It also won the 2025 Goodreads Choice award for romantasy.
Dark romance and Alchemised
Dark romance is romance with abusive, violent or morally grey leads. It is the busiest trope in our pulls. "dark mm romance books" (about 370,000 searches, up about half) and "dark romance book tok" (about 280,000) both beat every romantasy search. The second has nearly 2,000 videos, so it is crowded.
That matches sales. Circana reported in June 2025 that readers were moving from romantic comedy to "darker themes", and named H.D. Carlton and Rina Kent, both known for dark romance, among its growing authors.
Alchemised sits between dark romance and romantasy. It is SenLinYu's 1,040-page debut, published by Del Rey in September 2025 and adapted from the author's own Harry Potter fan fiction Manacled. It debuted at number one on the New York Times list, according to Wikipedia. A year on, people still search "what is alchemised book about" about 250,000 times a week, up about three times over the week. That is people deciding whether to start a very long book.
Dark romance and a lot of romantasy include sexual content, abuse or violence, and the cover will not always tell you. Alchemised deals with war and trauma. Before buying for a teenager, or if some topics are hard for you, look up the book's content warnings on the author's site or on StoryGraph. Plot videos often spoil endings too: TikTok even has a topic for "crime thriller book plots and spoilers".
Thrillers: beginners and Kindle Unlimited
Thriller searches are about entry points. "thriller books for beginner" went from almost nothing on the first day to about 260,000 searches, and TikTok has no videos matched to it. "ku thriller book recs" (about 250,000) is people looking for thrillers on Kindle Unlimited, Amazon's reading subscription. "ya thriller books" fell about 60% over the week.
No single thriller title came up in our pulls, so we are not naming one as trending. For sales context, Freida McFadden's The Housemaid sold about 820,000 print copies in 2025, per the same Publishers Weekly report.
Book club fiction: Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah is the one author outside romance and fantasy that BookTok searches by title. Besides The Women, people search The Four Winds (2021) and The Great Alone (2018), about 200,000 times a week each. Neither has any videos matched.
"kristin hannah new book" gets about 73,000 searches. Her site says the answer is The Fire, due in May 2027, and a film of The Nightingale is set for March 2027. Her books sell steadily without a new release: The Nightingale, from 2015, sold about 500,000 print copies in 2025.
What is BookTok?
BookTok is the part of TikTok where people talk about books: reviews, "if you liked this, read this" lists, reading hauls and short edits of scenes. It is a community name and a hashtag, not a separate app. "what is booktok" itself got about 270,000 searches this week.
It moves real sales. Circana BookScan tied about 59 million US print book sales in 2024 to BookTok creators or content, Publishers Weekly reported. In Europe, TikTok says more than 50 million books recommended on BookTok sold in 2025, based on NielsenIQ BookData and Media Control figures, and it now runs a #BookTok bestseller list in several countries.
TikTok's search suggestions for "booktok" show what else people add: "booktok recommendations 2026", "booktok page scene", "booktok for men", "booktokromance" and "booktok español".
For book creators: searches with few videos
If you make book videos, the best openings are searches with real demand and nothing to show. TikTok matches searches to words in your caption, on-screen text and what you say, so use the search wording. These had zero matched videos this week.
| Search | 7-day searches | Videos | Video that would fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| thriller books for beginner | 263,826 | 0 | Five easy first thrillers, one line each |
| sarah j maas interview | 223,488 | 0 | What she has said about the new ACOTAR books, with the source |
| the four winds by kristin hannah | 205,961 | 0 | A spoiler-free review, plus who will like it |
| the great alone kristin hannah book | 190,319 | 0 | "Read this if you loved The Women" |
| best romantasy series | 112,833 | 0 | A ranked list with the number of books in each series |
Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights, 27 September 2026. "Videos" is the count TikTok matches to the search; zero is what TikTok flags as a content gap. Snapshot.
Two broad TikTok topics show the same gap at a bigger scale. "dark romance books and characters" and "crime thriller book plots and spoilers" are phrases TikTok generates to group searches. Each carries more than 4 million searches and no matched videos. Treat those as signs of a category people want, not counts for one book. Our content gap guide explains how to read them, and slideshow ideas covers the list formats that work for books.
An agent can run this check for any book or trope you cover.
Using TokConnect, search TikTok topics for [book, author or trope] and list every search with its 7-day searches, how it changed from the first to the last day of the week, and how many videos TikTok matches. Flag any search over 50,000 a week with fewer than 100 videos, and suggest one video title for each using the exact search wording.
Works in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Gemini once TokConnect is connected. Get a free key (50 credits, no card) or see the setup guides.
How we picked the books
A book is on this page only if it came up in our TikTok pulls: as its own search, or named in the caption of a top-ranking video. We did not copy titles from other lists. Each book's author, year and series were checked against its publisher, the author's site or Wikipedia.
The figures move every week. For the full weekly table, see BookTok trends, and for what is rising across all of TikTok, see today's trends.
Frequently asked questions
What books are trending on BookTok right now?
In TikTok's search data for the week to 27 September 2026, the most searched book was Kristin Hannah's The Women (411,323 searches), followed by searches about SenLinYu's Alchemised and Sarah J. Maas. The top recommendation videos also named Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses and the Plated Prisoner series.
What is BookTok?
BookTok is the community on TikTok that posts about books: reviews, recommendation lists, reading hauls and scene edits. It is a hashtag and a community, not a separate app. Circana BookScan tied about 59 million US print book sales in 2024 to BookTok, Publishers Weekly reported.
What are the best BookTok books to start with?
Start with what matches your taste. Romantasy readers on BookTok point new readers to Fourth Wing or A Court of Thorns and Roses; people who want one book search "stand alone romantasy". For historical fiction, The Women is the most searched title this week. Thriller readers are searching "thriller books for beginner".
What is romantasy on BookTok?
Romantasy is fantasy with a romance at its centre, the biggest genre on BookTok. Rebecca Yarros's Onyx Storm sold nearly 1.7 million print copies in 2025 and won the 2025 Goodreads Choice award for romantasy. Searches this week include "stand alone romantasy" (246,426) and "best romantasy series" (112,833).
Are BookTok books appropriate for teenagers?
Not always. Dark romance and much romantasy include sexual content, abuse or violence, and the cover will not always tell you. Check the book's content warnings on the author's site or on StoryGraph before buying for a teenager. "ya booktok" (150,315 searches this week) is where younger readers' picks gather.
How do I find BookTok recommendations for a specific trope?
Search TikTok for the trope plus "books", for example "dark romance books" or "yearning books", and watch the top list videos. Our BookTok trends table lists the reading topics people search each week, with search counts and how many videos exist for each.
Sources and data
- Print Book Sales Rose Slightly in 2025 (Publishers Weekly, 9 January 2026)
- TikTok Uncertainty Prompts the Book Business to Envision an Even Better Future (Publishers Weekly, 21 January 2025)
- Another Year of Romance, with a Dark Twist (Circana BookScan, June 2025)
- Meet the Winners of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards (Goodreads)
- #BookTok community helps sell more than 50 million books across Europe (TikTok Newsroom)
- #BookTok community helps sell more than 50 million books across Europe (Media Control)
- Alchemised (Wikipedia)
- Latest news (Sarah J. Maas official site)
- News (Kristin Hannah official site)
- The Women: the No. 1 bestselling book of 2024 (Vietnam Veterans of America)
