Loan Stars is the readers’ advisory tool that allows library staff across Canada to collaboratively select their favourite forthcoming titles. Using CataList, the online catalogue service and order management tool available for free to libraries, library staff can endorse the Fiction, Non-Fiction, Juvenile, and Young Adult titles they want to recommend to their patrons. The titles with the most recommendations become Loan Stars picks!

Join us as we go back in time and recap what happened in the Loan Stars world in winter 2021 (click here to see the full lists by month).

Library circulation

Thanks to LibraryData, BookNet’s national library collection and circulation analysis tool, we were able to determine which of the 30 books on the three lists were the most popular among library patrons from their publication dates up until May 6, 2021.

These are the results:

Book covers of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, The Push by Ashley Audrain, and The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Push by Ashley Audrain 🍁 (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Survivors by Jane Harper (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson 🍁 (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Burning Girls by C. J. Tudor (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous (Jan. & Feb. 2021 list)
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn 🍁 (March 2021 list)
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain (April 2021 list)

Subject popularity

Continuing the trend we saw in our Fall 2020 roundup, Fiction has the biggest presence in these lists — 25 out of 30. But, this time, the remaining books fall under two other categories only; Biography and Autobiography (4) and True Crime (1). In our fall roundup, there was more variety among the subject categories, instead of three, the 30 titles were split among seven subject categories.

Bar graph showing the distribution of the 30 titles among subject categories, Fiction has 25 titles, Biography and Autobiography has four, and True Crime has one.

Given its popularity, we were also interested in breaking down the Fiction category by subject. We found out that eight of the 25 titles are Suspense titles, three are Psychological, Women and Literary were tied — two titles for each category — and all the remaining categories, Jewish, International Crime & Mystery, Contemporary, Coming of Age, Asian American, Action & Adventure, Marriage & Divorce, Small Town & Rural, Women Sleuths, and World War II had one title present across all three lists.

Bar graph breaking down the Fiction category by subject.

Repeat authors

Of the 30 authors whose titles were Loan Stars picks this season, three had been featured on a previous Loan Stars list!

The authors previously included (and the titles that got them on the list):

Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone was on the February 2018 list and Best of the Brightest 2018 list
C. J. Tudor’s The Other People was on the Jan. & Feb. 2020 list
Martha Wells' Network Effect was on the May 2020 list

Canadian 🍁 contributors

We also looked at the number of Canadian contributors present in these three lists. (For reference: A Canadian Contributor is an author, illustrator, translator, or editor who is a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada.) Of all 30 titles on the Jan. & Feb., March, and April Adult lists, only 30% were by Canadian contributors.

Pie chart showing that 30% of titles in the lists are by Canadian authors and 70% by Non-Canadian authors.

ICYMI, these are the titles that made it to the lists

Jan. & Feb. Loan Stars Adult list

The Survivors by Jane Harper (Flatiron Books)
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (Pamela Dorman Books)
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (Simon & Schuster)
A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson 🍁 (Knopf Canada)
Murder in an Irish Bookshop by Carlene O'Connor (Kensington)
Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack by Heidi von Palleske 🍁 (Dundurn Press)
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's Press)
The Push by Ashley Audrain 🍁 (Viking)
The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous (Berkley)
The Burning Girls by C. J. Tudor (Doubleday Canada)