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 spring 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. We looked at the loans from all titles from their publication dates up until July 25, 2021.

These are the results:

Collage of covers of Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (June 2021 list)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (May 2021 list)
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (May 2021 list)
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (June 2021 list)
Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian (May 2021 list)
China by Edward Rutherfurd (May 2021 list)
Call Me Indian by Fred Sasakamoose 🍁 (May 2021 list)
The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel (July 2021 list)
The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (June 2021 list)
The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba by Chanel Cleeton (May 2021 list)

Subject popularity

Continuing the trend we saw in our Winter 2021 and Fall 2020 roundups, Fiction has the biggest presence in these lists — 27 out of 30. The remaining books fall under three other categories only: Biography and Autobiography (1), Comics & Graphic Novels (1), and Literary Collections (1).

Bar graph showing the number of Loan Stars picks and their subject categories.

Given its popularity, we were also interested in breaking down the Fiction category by subject. We found that seven of the 27 titles are Thrillers, Historical Fiction and Romance were tied — four titles for each category — Literary Fiction had three titles, Fantasy had two titles, and all the remaining categories, African American, Biographical, Hispanic & Latino, Humorous, Occult & Supernatural, Political, Science Fiction, and Women had one title present across all three lists.

Repeat authors

Of the 30 authors whose titles were Loan Stars picks this season, a whopping 10 had been featured on a previous Loan Stars list!

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

Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient was on the January & February 2019 list)
Andy Weir (Artemis was on the November 2017 list)
Anuk Arudpragasam (The Story of A Brief Marriage was on the September 2016 list)
Emily Henry (Beach Read was on the May 2020 list)
Jasmine Guillory (The Proposal was on the October 2018 list)
Marie Benedict (The Other Einstein was on the October 2016 list)
P. Djeli Clark (The Black God's Drums was on the August 2018 list)
Riley Sager has had four titles make the Loan Stars list! (Home Before Dark in Summer 2020, Lock Every Door in July 2019, The Last Time I Lied in July 2018, and Final Girls in July 2017)
Samantha Downing (My Lovely Wife was on the March 2019 list)
Shari Lapena 🍁 (The Couple Next Door was on the August 2016 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 May, June, and July Adult lists, 23% were by Canadian contributors.