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 the Winter and Spring seasons of 2022 (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 50 books on the five lists were the most popular among library patrons from their publication dates up until July 14, 2022.

These are the results:

Collage of covers of The Maid by Nita Prose, One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle, and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

The Maid by Nita Prose 🍁 (January & February 2022 list)
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle (March 2022 list)
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (January & February 2022 list)
Bluebird by Genevieve Graham 🍁 (April 2022 list)
Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins (January & February 2022 list)
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (April 2022 list)
Book Lovers by Emily Henry (May 2022 list)
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk 🍁 (January & February 2022 list)
A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham (January & February 2022 list)
Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict (January & February 2022 list)

Subject popularity

The lists during this period were very homogeneous, with 47 Fiction titles, only two Comics & Graphic Novels and one Literary Collections title.

Bar graph showing the distribution of all the 50 titles by subject.

The Fiction categories that were present in the lists were Thrillers (11), Literary (8), Historical (8), Romance (6), Women (3), Mystery & Detective (3), Fantasy (2), Short Stories (1), Magical Realism (1), Humorous (1), Gothic (1), Family Life (1), and Coming of Age (1).

Bar graph breaking down the Fiction titles by categories.

Repeat authors

Of the authors whose titles were Loan Stars picks during these seasons, ten had been featured on a previous Loan Stars list!

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

Ben Aaronovitch’s False Value was on the January & February 2020 list and Lies Sleeping was on the November 2018 list.
Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach was on the October 2017 list.
Nicole Lundrigan's 🍁 Hideaway was on the July 2019 list and The Substitute was on the June 2017 list.
Marie Benedict’s The Personal Librarian was on the June 2021 list and The Other Einstein was on the October 2016 list.
Riley Sager’s Survive the Night was on the June 2021 list, Home Before Dark was on the Summer 2020 list, Lock Every Door was on the July 2019 list, The Last Time I Lied was on the July 2018 list, and Final Girls was on the July 2017 list.
Abbi Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill was on the July 2019 list.
Jennifer Ryan’s The Chilbury Ladies' Choir was on the February 2017 list.
Lisa Moore’s Something for Everyone was on the September 2018 list.
Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation was on the May 2021 and Best of the Brightest 2021 lists, Beach Read was on the May 2020 list.
Iona Whishaw’s 🍁 A Match Made for Murder was on the April 2020 list and Death in a Darkening Mist was on the April 2017 list.

Canadian 🍁 contributors

We also looked at the number of Canadian contributors present in the five 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 50 titles on the January & February, March, April, May, and June Adult lists, 30% were by Canadian contributors.

Pie chart showing the distribution of books featured in the Loan Stars lists between Canadian and non-Canadian authored

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

January & February Loan Stars Adult List

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins (St. Martin's Press)
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk 🍁 (Poisoned Pen Press)
The Maid by Nita Prose 🍁 (Viking)
Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn (Doubleday Canada)
Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier (Berkley)
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (Simon & Schuster)
The Almond in the Apricot by Sara Goudarzi (Deep Vellum Publishing)
Between the Lines by S. J. Butler (Headline Accent)
A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur Books)