- Dark romance leads BookTok search: "dark romances book recs" had 452,773 TikTok searches in 7 days, and TikTok matches no videos to it.
- Kristin Hannah's The Women is still the most searched single book, with 280,884 searches, though that is down about a third on the week before.
- Sarah J. Maas readers are searching how to read her books in order (272,927 searches) ahead of the 27 October 2026 date its author site listed for the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book.
- New thriller searches have no videos yet: "2026 thriller books" (272,963) and "dark thrillers books" (210,936) are open for book creators, along with "booktok uk" (257,022).
The BookTok books people search for most on TikTok are dark romance picks: "dark romances book recs" got 452,773 searches in the 7 days to 5 October, worldwide, and TikTok matches no videos to it. The most searched single book is Kristin Hannah's The Women (280,884 searches), with Sarah J. Maas reading-order searches close behind (272,927).
Every book below came up in nine book searches run through TikTok's own search data, or in the top recommendation videos. New 2026 thrillers are climbing, and many searches come from people getting back into reading. For the full live table, see BookTok trends; this page explains the week's biggest searches.
BookTok books and searches, week to 5 October
Here are the specific books, authors and tropes TikTok returned, ranked by searches in the last 7 days. "Day 1 to day 7" 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 | Day 1 to day 7 | Videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dark romances book recs | 452,773 | +145% | 0 |
| 2 | dark romances book | 300,969 | +4% | 1,629 |
| 3 | books to get into reading | 296,029 | +57% | 769 |
| 4 | the women by kristin hannah | 280,884 | +46% | 629 |
| 5 | best romantasy | 275,762 | +811% | 784 |
| 6 | 2026 thriller books | 272,963 | new | 0 |
| 7 | how to read sarah j maas books | 272,927 | −5% | 574 |
| 8 | booktok uk | 257,022 | new | 0 |
| 9 | kristin hannah new book | 248,525 | +12% | 285 |
| 10 | the four winds by kristin hannah | 246,874 | −15% | 0 |
| 11 | sarah j maas tattoo | 245,873 | +10,590% | 273 |
| 12 | what books should i read | 228,585 | +408% | 1,844 |
| 13 | what is alchemised about | 212,936 | +85% | 481 |
| 14 | books dark romance | 212,378 | −15% | 0 |
| 15 | dark thrillers books | 210,936 | +250% | 0 |
| 16 | the women kristin hannah | 206,179 | −31% | 0 |
| 17 | the great alone kristin hannah | 202,539 | −30% | 0 |
| 18 | dark romantasy recs | 179,210 | −37% | 804 |
| 19 | booktok men | 177,246 | +64% | 1,127 |
| 20 | alchemised explained | 145,814 | +41% | 360 |
| 21 | what is booktok | 137,386 | +15% | 1,078 |
| 22 | sarah j maas update | 76,723 | −65% | 486 |
| 23 | ya thriller books | 59,794 | −76% | 603 |
Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights, 5 October 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, or alchemy in games, for example) are left out. Open the snapshot.
Three things stand out. First, dark romance was the biggest search on BookTok in the week to 5 October, and its top search, "dark romances book recs", has no videos matched to it at all.
Second, the most searched single book is not new. The Women came out in February 2024 and was the top-selling book of 2024, with nearly 1.5 million print copies (Publishers Weekly, from Circana BookScan). Its main search fell from 411,323 a week earlier to 280,884, but no other title comes close. BookTok keeps a book alive for years.
Third, many searches come from people starting out: "books to get into reading" (296,029) and "what books should i read", which grew about fivefold over the week to 228,585. Readers type a need 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 show what people want; videos show which books they are handed. The top videos for "booktok recommendations" and "romantasy books", ranked by TikTok's relevance sort, number 13. 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), on the same master list and tagged on a "top-tier yearning" video.
- Jasmine Mas: The Emperor's Enemy, named on a list of new romantasy books to add to your to-be-read pile.
- Raven Kennedy: the Plated Prisoner series.
- Rachel Gillig: the Shepherd King duology.
- Kristin Hannah: The Women, tagged in the most watched "booktok recommendations" video.
- Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997), on the same list of books that "changed my life".
The most watched of these videos had 6.8 million plays, a "god tier" favourites list from 2024. The newest big performer is a fall reading list posted on 29 September, already at 500,366 plays. Captions name only some of the books on screen.
Watch three of the top videos
Tap a card to load TikTok's player.
Videos from TikTok video search, 5 October 2026. Plays and saves as TikTok showed them that day. Snapshot.
Romantasy: Maas, Yarros and the reading-order 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's biggest search that week was practical: "how to read sarah j maas books" (272,927), meaning which order to read her series in. Her site listed the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book for 27 October 2026, about three weeks after our 5 October pull, so this is the run-up to that date, and the seventh for 12 January 2027. "sarah j maas tattoo" jumped from 2,300 searches on day one to 245,873, almost all of it on the last day. "sarah j maas update" fell to 76,723, about a third of the week before.
"best romantasy" got 275,762 searches, but it swung hard, dipping to 1,699 one day. "dark romantasy recs" (179,210) fell over the week. Last week's "stand alone romantasy" and "best romantasy series" dropped out of TikTok's top results for romantasy entirely.
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 romances book recs" had 452,773 searches and never dropped below 171,514 a day. "dark romances book" (300,969) has 1,629 videos, so that wording is crowded. "books dark romance" (212,378) has none.
The wording moved since last week: "dark mm romance books" (two male leads) led a week ago and has dropped out of TikTok's top results. The demand for dark romance 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 is a number one New York Times bestseller, its publisher says. A year on, "what is alchemised about" still gets 212,936 searches a week, and "alchemised explained" rose to 145,814 from 113,211 a week earlier. 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: 2026 releases and dark thrillers
Thriller searches turned to what is new and what is dark. "2026 thriller books" barely registered for six days, never above 2,098 a day, then hit 272,963 on the last day. TikTok has no videos matched to it. "dark thrillers books" went from 60,281 on day one to 210,936, also with no videos.
Last week's beginner searches faded: "thriller books for beginner" dropped out of the top results, and "ya thriller books" halved to 59,794.
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, which also gets 206,179 searches as "the women kristin hannah", people search The Four Winds (2021) 246,874 times and The Great Alone (2018) 202,539 times. Neither has any videos matched. Even her 2006 novel Magic Hour drew 66,766 searches.
The big mover is "kristin hannah new book": 248,525 searches, more than three times the 73,178 of a week earlier. Her site says the answer is The Fire, due in May 2027, and a film of The Nightingale is set for 19 March 2027. Her backlist sells without a new release: The Nightingale (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" got 137,386 searches in the week to 5 October, about half of the week before. "booktok uk" appeared from nothing to 257,022, with no videos matched yet.
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 trend", "booktok recommendations 2026", "booktok page scene", "booktok romance" and "booktok viral".
For book creators: searches with few videos
The best openings for book creators are searches with real demand and nothing to show. TikTok matches searches to words in your caption, on-screen text and speech, so use the search wording. These had zero matched videos in that week. If you write or sell books, TokConnect for authors shows how to run this check on your own genre.
| Search | 7-day searches | Videos | Video that would fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| dark romances book recs | 452,773 | 0 | Five dark romance picks, with the content warnings for each |
| 2026 thriller books | 272,963 | 0 | The 2026 thrillers worth your time, one line each |
| booktok uk | 257,022 | 0 | What UK BookTok is reading, with UK prices or shops |
| the four winds by kristin hannah | 246,874 | 0 | A spoiler-free review, plus who will like it |
| dark thrillers books | 210,936 | 0 | Five dark thrillers, ranked from tense to brutal |
Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights, 5 October 2026. "Videos" is the count TikTok matches to the search; zero is what TikTok flags as a content gap. Snapshot.
TikTok's topic groups, kept apart from the searches above. TikTok also returned its own topic groups for dark romance books and characters, and for crime thriller plots and spoilers. Each is a figure that pools many related searches, not a count for one phrase: the dark romance group read 3,518,639 and the thriller group read 4,666,299, exactly the same as a week earlier.
Read them as a sign the whole category is busy, never as demand for one book. TikTok files "alchemised edit" under its Featured Content category, which our rule treats as a label rather than a typed search, so we left it out of the tables. Our content gap guide explains how to read these, 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.
How we got these numbers
On 5 October 2026 we ran nine searches through TikTok's Creator Search Insights data with TokConnect's topic search ("booktok", "book recommendations", "romantasy", "books to read", "sarah j maas", "alchemised", "kristin hannah", "dark romance books", "thriller books"), the same nine as on 27 September, so the week-on-week changes are like for like. "Searches" is TikTok's search popularity: searches in the last 7 days, worldwide. "Day 1 to day 7" compares the last day of the 7-day daily series with the first. More on the metric in TikTok search volume.
TikTok returns two kinds of record. Typed searches are phrases people actually enter, and only those appear in the tables, charts and key figures. TikTok's generated topic groups (a figure over one million that starts the week near zero, over five million, filed under TikTok's Featured Content, or worded like a description) are kept to the separate paragraph above. We also dropped topics that were not about books, such as other people named Sarah or Hannah and alchemy in games; the excluded list is in the snapshot.
A book is on this page only if it came up in those pulls, as its own search or named in the caption of a top video from a video search ("booktok recommendations" and "romantasy books", relevance sort). 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. Limits: counts are global, so a search can be big in one country and small in yours, and the nine seeds decide which books can appear. Data files: topics and week-on-week, videos, search suggestions.
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.
Key statistics
"dark romances book recs" was searched 452,773 times on TikTok in the 7 days to 5 October 2026, worldwide, and TikTok matched 0 videos to it.
"the women by kristin hannah" had 280,884 TikTok searches in the 7 days to 5 October 2026, down from 411,323 in the 7 days to 27 September 2026.
"kristin hannah new book" had 248,525 TikTok searches in the 7 days to 5 October 2026, up from 73,178 in the 7 days to 27 September 2026.
All 5 statistics
"2026 thriller books" had 272,963 TikTok searches in the 7 days to 5 October 2026 and 0 matched videos, after staying under 2,100 a day for six of those days.
"how to read sarah j maas books" had 272,927 TikTok searches in the 7 days to 5 October 2026, ahead of the 27 October 2026 date its author site listed for the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book.
Frequently asked questions
What books are trending on BookTok in early October?
In TikTok's search data for the week to 5 October 2026, the biggest book search was for dark romance recommendations (452,773 searches), and the most searched single book was Kristin Hannah's The Women (280,884). Readers also searched how to read Sarah J. Maas's books in order and what SenLinYu's Alchemised is about. The top recommendation videos 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 getting back into reading search "books to get into reading" (296,029 searches in the week to 5 October). For historical fiction, The Women is the most searched title. Thriller readers are searching "2026 thriller books".
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 in that week include "best romantasy" (275,762) and "dark romantasy recs" (179,210).
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. Adding "ya" to a TikTok search, as in "ya thriller books", brings up picks aimed at younger readers.
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 by SenLinYu (Penguin Random House)
- Latest news (Sarah J. Maas official site)
- News (Kristin Hannah official site)
- Print book sales saw a small sales increase in 2024 (Publishers Weekly)
