Amazon's Best Books of 2026 So Far
- Greg Barlin
- Jun 11
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 30
As we hit the midyear mark, bookworms everywhere are rushing to see what made the Amazon Editors' Best Books of 2026 So Far list. Every June, I look forward to analyzing these official top 20 books of 2026, but most of all, I love comparing Amazon's rankings to my own personal reading list here at Barlin's Books. There is nothing quite like nodding approvingly when our literary tastes align...or shaking my fist at my screen when they place a book I absolutely detested in their top five.
Looking at this year's list, there is a fascinating mix of total alignment and complete disagreement. Having read nearly half of Amazon's top selections, I was thrilled to see my own top three favorite books of the year land safely within their Top 20. At the same time, their editors included my single least favorite read of 2026, perfectly proving how subjective the world of books truly is.
Let’s dive into the official Amazon Best Books of 2026 rankings and see how they stack up against Barlin's Books running ranking of the Best Books of 2026!
#1 - Kin by Tayari Jones
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
Set in the Jim Crow Era south, Kin follows two childhood friends who embark on very different life journeys before their worlds blend back together years later.
#2 - London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
A gripping and fascinating piece of investigative journalism that seeks to uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of a young London man in 2019.
This was a borderline 5-star read for me, and as non-fiction goes there's little additional that I wanted from the book. There are, perhaps, a few unnecessary areas of exposition that could have been edited down. As someone who primarily reads fiction, I'm also pre-programmed to expect a tidy conclusion, and while Radden Keefe leaves little doubt as to what likely took place, we as readers are not rewarded with indisputable and definitive answers. Those small nits bumped it to something closer to a 4.5, but it's a book I'd strongly recommend for fans of non-fiction that reads like a crime novel.
#3 - Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
A "tradwife" and Instagram influencer has cultivated a seemingly idyllic life for herself and family, but it's all upended when she wakes up one day in 1855.
Readers will be invested one way or another, either rooting for Natalie to overcome her situation, or cheering for her to get what's coming to her. It's thought-provoking, entertaining, and will likely be a book club stalwart in 2026. It lived up to the hype for me, and it's one that I expect will be a part of the zeitgeist this year. It's well worth reading.
#4 - Strangers by Belle Burden
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
A woman's memoir about the abrupt dissolution of her marriage near the start of the pandemic, this sounds extremely reminiscent of 2025's Awake by Jen Hatmaker. Interestingly, the Amazon editors rated Awake their #7 book of 2025, so they must truly be drawn to this type of story. I didn't care for Awake, and so I can't imagine that I'll be picking up this similar story.
#5 - Night Objects by Eli Raphael
Night Objects focuses on 15-year-old Lenny Winter who unexpectedly ends up attending an elite boarding school, Blanchard. Before long, Lenny finds herself the middle of a murder investigation, and all signs start to point to a secret society that lurks at the heart of Blanchard and whose influence extends far beyond the school's walls.
While the mystery in the novel isn't elite, the surrounding components—the setting at Blanchard, Lenny's relationship with her stepdad, and the underlying racial and socioeconomic commentary—help to buoy the novel beyond its plot. The framing for the story is informed by Raphael's own life; like Lenny, she moved from Miami to Port Angeles as a teen, and while Blanchard and the Pascalianum Club are made up, the feelings of being an outsider in an elite world were directly drawn from Raphael's time attending Dartmouth as a work-study student. It's perhaps why that portion feels most authentic amidst a school full of false fronts, and it helped nudge this story just over the line into 5-star territory. Worth a read.
#6 - Land by Maggie O'Farrell
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
The author of Hamnet this time sets her tale in Ireland during the years before and after the Great Hunger, Land focuses on a father and his ten-year-old son who are working to map the land under Ordnance Survey project, only to be sent off course by an unsettling discovery.
#7 - American Men by Jordan Ritter Conn
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
A nonfiction account of four men struggling for various reasons, including coming to terms with sexuality, dealing with childhood trauma, and living as a Black trans man in a rural red state.
I'm not terribly excited by that description, and when the promotional blurb says, "They are half the population. And yet when mentioned as a bloc, it’s often to ask the question: What’s wrong with them?", I'm not inclined to pick up something that pushes that narrative. This will likely be a pass for Barlin's Books.
#8 - Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell
BarlinsBooks Rating: ★★★★☆ | Review
A 36-year-old woman navigates weight issues and divorce as she reclaims her identity from a comic character based on her in this latest adult novel from Rainbow Rowell. It's an unflinching look at a character you can't help but root for.
#9 - Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
Back-to-back novels with main characters that deal with weight issues! In Nothing Tastes as Good, Emmett Truesdale enrolls in a clinical trial for a new drug, Obexity, to try to help him shed his over 300 pounds. The drug works miraculously, but when Emmett starts to lose large swaths of time, people who were cruel to Emmett start disappearing, and police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, Emmett fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster.
#10 - Crux by Gabriel Tallent
Two high school friends use rock climbing to try to escape a seemingly predetermined future in this emotionally heavy character study from Gabriel Tallent.
It's engaging, and sad, and interesting, but I didn't love it. It's hovering somewhere in the 3.5-star realm for me: a better-than-average character study, but with gaps that prevented me from fully connecting to the characters and the novel as a whole.
#11 - Transcription by Ben Lerner
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
At just 145 pages, this short novel centers around the narrator's interview of his dynamic ninety-year-old mentor in a conversation that explores everything from fathers and sons, technology's impact on our lives, and the early days of Covid.
#12 - Famesick by Lena Dunham
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
In this memoir, Lena Dunham chronicles rise to fame, from selling the Girls pilot to the present, tackling the glow of the spotlight and the dark shadows that come with it.
#13 - A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman
A tragic accident on a remote sheep station eventually leads to a dark family secret in this character-driven exploration of duty and psyche in the Australian Outback. This was a high 4-star read for me that fell just short of my group of top-tier books so far.
#14 - Five by Ilona Bannister
No borderline rating for me on this one! Jaw-dropping dialogue and moral judgement set the tone for this dark exploration of five neurodiverse characters, one of which we're told will die by the end of the book.
Because I'm an asshole (and because all of the characters have said truly horrible things, oftentimes to family and loved ones), I found myself stack ranking whose death would be most justified (including a child's! 🤣), rather than ardently wishing for any of them to survive. That lack of attachment to the characters' survival might make you think I didn't care for the book, but it's quite the opposite: this was brilliantly done, deliciously dark, and I loved it.
#15 - Into the Blue by Emma Brodie
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
The story of a small-town girl, AJ, (living in a lonely world?) and a famous actor, Noah, who form a deep bond, first as friends and then as acting partners, until one day Noah disappears from AJ's life. When they're reunited on set seven years later, they're forced to finally confront the past.
#16 - John of John by Douglas Stuart
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
A young man returns to his home on an island off the western coast of Scotland in this novel about identity and secrets within the characters and their community.
#17 - Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth
BarlinsBooks Rating: Not Yet Reviewed
Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old, minding her own business, until one of her neighbors turns up dead. No one would expect an eighty-one-year-old woman to be a suspect, expect Elsie wasn't always Elsie. She's also "Mad Mabel Waller", the youngest convicted murder in Australia's history.
#18 - The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
In her first book since The Help, Kathryn Stockett transports us to Oxford, Mississippi in 1933, where a loyal sister and a sassy orphan girl headline a female-driven cast that Stockett uses to expose a number of customs, beliefs, and laws of the time that, by today's standards, seem unthinkable.
The novel is long, clocking in at 640 pages, and it is deliberately paced. Stockett heavily foreshadows the majority of the events in the novel so there are few surprises. Despite the length, the end of the novel came fairly abruptly, but Stockett ties up loose ends effectively in a story that will leave most readers satisfied and left with happy memories of a cast a characters who were eminently easy to cheer for.
#19 - Homebound by Portia Elan
BarlinsBooks Rating: ★★☆☆☆ | 2026 Rank: Last | Review
A multi-timeline story that had me hopeful for something akin to Cloud Cuckoo Land. I should have tempered my expectations. I wanted a grand reveal that pulled it all together in an a-ha moment, but when I finished, I literally said out loud, "That's it?". From such a promising start, it sputtered to a wholly unsatisfying conclusion.
The novels flails about, never entirely sure what it wants to be. My best guess is that first-time author Portia Elan wanted to write a story about discovering one's identity and the components that influence that journey, but the grand canvas she chose to convey that ended up muddying the message rather than enhancing it. It's almost as if she had two completely independent ideas for stories, and she thought maybe she could somehow combine them into a single novel. Quite simply, it didn't work. This is one to skip.
#20 - Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
A brilliant retelling of Cinderella from the "wicked" stepmother's perspective, this witty, inventive historical drama completely reimagines a classic villain.
It's an artfully told tale, recasting a story you think you know as a historical drama and imbuing it with clever dialogue, an inventive plot, and a fiercely determined main character. It had me chuckling frequently at the banter; the characters conduct themselves with the propriety of the times, but underneath the surface lies a delicious layer of a razor-sharp wit.
When I started Lady Tremaine, I had no expectations that this would be a book that would land near the top of my favorites, much less at the top. There's a lot of year left to go, but as we approach the midpoint, this inventive expansion of a fairy tale we know had just the right amount of everything to be my favorite book of the first half of 2026. Highly recommended.
