DrWebPublic libraries’ top check-outs in 2025 include ‘The Women’ – NPR
Searching the stacks at a Miami-Dade Public Library on July 19, 2023, in Miami.Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Genre fiction and female authors top U.S. libraries’ most-borrowed lists in 2025
December 29, 20256:00 AM ET, Heard on All Things Considered
By Neda Ulaby 3-Minute Listen Transcript
Searching the stacks at a Miami-Dade Public Library on July 19, 2023, in Miami. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Women was among the most checked-out books in U.S. public libraries this year, making top 10 lists in library systems as far-flung as those in Clawson, Mich., Lawrence, Kan., Flathead County, Mont., and the entire state public library system of Hawaii. It was also the year’s most-borrowed ebook on the public library app, Libby.
The bestselling novel by Kristin Hannah follows a U.S. Army nurse from the front lines of the Vietnam War to a family deeply divided about the war and her service. The Women, which came out in 2024, was also extremely popular among public library patrons last year, topping numerous most-borrowed lists, and included in NPR’s “Books We Love.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised, but I kind of was, that The Women was No. 1 yet again,” says Harold Escalante, the assistant director of collections and access for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in North Carolina. “[Hannah] is a powerful storyteller. She’s really good. She’s engaging, she sucks you in with her story, and they’re big books.”
As it happens, books by women dominated most-borrowed library lists in 2025. All of the top 10 books on Libby were by women. Three of the top 10 titles for the country’s biggest public library system, in New York City, were part of a bestselling romantasy series by Rebecca Yarros: Fourth Wing, Iron Flame and Onyx Storm. Yarros’ books also showed up on most-borrowed lists from the Boston Public Library, and public libraries in Boone County, Ky. and Kern County, Calif. Other female authors with multiple titles on most-borrowed lists across the country included Freida McFadden, Holly Jackson and Emily Henry.
Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, a 2024 thriller about the disappearance of a teenager from an Adirondack summer camp showed up on numerous most-borrowed lists, including those in Island Park, N.Y., at the Timberland Regional Library in Washington state, and in Lombard, Ill. Other popular novels this year included The Wedding People by Alison Espach, Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez and Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins
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