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In January, my colleague Kelly Jensen wrote about the Unbearable Whiteness of the Goodreads Choice Awards: only 11% of winners were written by authors of color, and that was even worse in the first five years of the award. Queer books haven’t fared much better, though that had been shifting in the last handful of years. In 2025, though, it feels like we’re going backwards.
The first thing I noticed is that, as far as I can tell, there are no queer romances in the Romance or Romantasy categories. Let me know if I missed any, but they appear to all be M/F romances about cis straight people. Last year, we had The Pairing by Casey McQuiston in Romance and Faebound by Saara El-Arifi along with two other queer books in Romantasy.
The next thing I was was that self-described TERF JK Rowling is on the long list this year, in the form of the new Harry Potter audiobook. Rowling now seems to devote more of her time to trying to strip trans people of their rights than she does writing, so I hardly feel the need to explain why it’s disappointing to see her books spotlighted: books she directly makes money from, which she sinks into anti-trans organizations.
It’s not just the Harry Potter audiobook in the running, though. In fact, there’s never been a more prominent celebration of the series and its author in the awards. There are also three different books based on Harry Potter fanfiction on the long list: Alchemised by SenLinYu, Rose in Chains by Julie Soto, and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley. Alchemized is featured in three categories: Romantasy, Audiobooks, and Debut Novels.
There is some debate on the ethics of Harry Potter fanfiction as well as getting it published, but these books have all used references to the source material in their marketing. They are keeping Harry Potter relevant, which boosts the brand and gives the creator more attention and money. By referencing Harry Potter while promoting the book, they also are advertising it and JK Rowling.
The one-two punch of the lack of queer romance books and the celebration of Harry Potter in this year’s awards makes a statement, regardless of the inclusion of some queer and trans books, most of them in the speculative and YA categories. (A few of the books by and about trans and nonbinary people on the long lists include Woodworking by Emily St. James, Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto, and You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White.)
There are plenty of good reasons to ignore the Goodreads Choice Awards, from the homogeneity of the winners to the fact that the site is owned by Goodreads. This year just adds another reason, if you also don’t want to promote JK Rowling’s branding.
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