Victoria Hislops The figure (Headline) has held on to number one in the official UK Top 50 for the second year in a row, but the combination boosted combined sales of two versions of Colleen Hoover’s It ends with us (Simon & Schuster) would have easily given the American author pole position.
The figure sold 17,421 copies last week via Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, an impressive 25% increase on its paperback release in the previous seven-day period. This makes Hislop’s book the 18th number one overall in the UK and her 23rd time at the top of the Mass Market Fiction charts.
But when It Ends with Us hit theaters—complete with a ton of press coverage due to the red carpet feud between star Blake Lively and co-star/director James Baldoni—the original paperback and companion edition of Hoover’s book landed at number two and three, respectively, with a combined total of nearly 31,000 copies sold via BookScan. Overall, though, it was a banner week for Hoover, as It starts with us (Simon & Schuster, 13,875 copies) came in fourth place, while she had three other titles in the top 100.
Another week, another success for the subscription box model, as Fairyloot’s August young adult selection, Keshe Chow’s The girl without a reflectionwas the top newcomer, selling just over 10,000 copies, coming in seventh overall and easily taking first place in the children’s book category. This ended a three-week winning streak for Katie Kirby’s The extremely embarrassing BFF dramas of Lottie Brooks (Puffin). Chow’s triumph marks the seventh time in the past year that publisher Hodderscape has landed a number one hit in the children’s or original literature (OF) category thanks to a subscription box.
In a week with few releases, Chow was one of only three newcomers in the top 50. Aided by a vigorous promotional tour, Elif Shafak achieved by far her personal record for a hardcover release: There Are Rivers in the Sky (Viking) sold 4,971 copies, up 51% from the first week of her last book, 2021’s The Island of Missing Trees (Bloomsbury).
After Miye Lee topped the Heatseekers Fiction charts at the start, The dream department store DallerGut (Wildfire, translated by Sandy Joosun Lee) stormed into the top 50 in its second week. A huge bestseller in Lee’s homeland of Korea, DallerGut… leads another strong seven days for the East Asian cosy fantasy trend with Michiko Aoyama’s What you are looking for, you will find in the library (Transworld, translated by Alison Watts), Hwang Bo-reum’s Shanna Tan-translated Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookstore (Bloomsbury) and Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Evergreen Before the coffee gets cold (Picador, translation by Geoffrey Trousselot) In total, more than 1,300 units were moved.
Rising fantasy star Sarah A Parker When the moon hatched (HarperVoyager, 8,481 units) returned to the top of the OF for the third time after being knocked out by Barbara Erskine’s The Story Spinner (HarperCollins) last week. Five of the top 10 titles in OF are Science Fiction & Fantasy; recently, a rare one comes for the “SF” end in the form of James SA Corey’s latest Space Opera, The Mercy of the Gods (Orbit).
Kay and Kate Allinson’s Prise Nom Air Fryer returned to the top spot in hardback nonfiction for the seventh time in the last two months, after being overtaken last week by Jane Dunn’s Jane’s Patisserie Simple Favorites (Ebury Press). Rory Stewart’s Politics on the brink reached its ninth non-consecutive number one spot in the nonfiction category.
After two weeks of contraction, the overall market recovered somewhat, with just over £30 million sold through the TCM, up 2.1% from the previous week and 4.3% from the same period in 2023.
