Goodreads Choice Awards – Horror · 2025 · Winner
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
Grady HendrixWitchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix won the Goodreads Choice Award for Horror in 2025.
Goodreads Choice Awards – Horror
2025 Winner
Complete History
2020s
About the Goodreads Choice Awards – Horror
The Goodreads Choice Awards – Horror is an annual reader-voted prize that recognizes the best horror book of the year as determined by the millions of members on the Goodreads platform. Launched in 2009 as part of the broader Goodreads Choice Awards program, the Horror category has become one of the most widely participated genre prizes in publishing, drawing tens of millions of votes across all categories each year. Unlike jury-selected prizes, the Goodreads Choice Awards are entirely democratic: any book published during the calendar year is eligible, and readers nominate and then vote in multiple rounds to determine winners. The Horror category celebrates novels and story collections that generate genuine dread, psychological unease, or supernatural terror, encompassing everything from quiet gothic fiction to splatterpunk and supernatural thrillers. Past winners include Stephen King, Joe Hill, Grady Hendrix, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and other leading voices in contemporary horror. The award carries significant commercial weight—being named a Goodreads Choice winner reliably boosts sales and introduces titles to new audiences across the globe. Authors and publishers actively campaign for nominations, and the announcement of finalists each fall has become a major event in the genre publishing calendar. Because the award reflects actual reader enthusiasm rather than critical consensus, it often highlights populist favorites that may be overlooked by more selective literary juries, making it a valuable barometer of what horror readers are most passionate about in any given year.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Winners are chosen entirely by popular vote among Goodreads members. The process begins with an open write-in nomination round, followed by a semifinal round and a final round of voting, all conducted on the Goodreads website.
- Nominations open in November, with semifinal and final voting rounds completed by early December. Winners are announced before the end of December each year.
- There is no monetary prize. Winners receive a badge and promotional recognition on the Goodreads platform, which translates into significant visibility among the site's large readership.
- Any book published during the calendar year that fits the horror genre—including supernatural horror, psychological horror, gothic fiction, and dark fantasy with horror elements—is eligible for nomination.
- Total votes across all categories typically reach tens of millions. Individual category totals vary but the Horror category regularly receives hundreds of thousands of votes.
- Stephen King has won the Horror category the most times, claiming the prize in 2013, 2017 (with Owen King), 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024, among other years.
- Yes. The award is open to any book that receives sufficient nominations from Goodreads members, regardless of the publishing route.