Reviewing GoodReads Choice Awards Winners

 

Remember that time that I decided that my book challenge for 2017 was to read and review all finalists in a Goodreads category and see if I agreed with the line-up and winner?  If you forgot, you can catch up here!

I chose the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award Category of YA Sci-fi/Fantasy.  And I did it.
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Man oh man was that a bigger undertaking that I imagined.  In order to review the finalists, I had to read all prior books in series so that I knew what was going on.  49 BOOKS!! In one category. Whew!!  But I want to let you guys know how it turned out.

My original theory was that the popular books were those books with bigger budgets, which leads to bigger marketing campaigns.  Bigger marketing campaigns lead to more readers reading those books.  With more readers, some books were more likely to win a popularity contest whether or not it was actually a good/better read. 

Here are my thoughts in a nutshell:
1.  I'm never doing this again.
2.  YA fantasy/sci-fi has gotten even darker.
3.  YA books have TONS of great writers as authors.  So much has changed since the Twilight Saga.
4.  Some of these books are separated by the smallest of margins.
5.  I'm not telling my favorite.  YET.

I'm going to do a coundown putting the books in the order that I think they should be.  And I will finish with my favorite. Stay tuned!

The finished voting order by Goodreads readers is below (and my order is definitely not the same):