The 10 Most Popular Books of March, According to Libby

Our friends over at Libby have shared with us the top 10 most popular ebooks that were rented out through their app by US library patrons. For the uninitiated, Libby is a free app that allows users to read ebooks and magazines and listen to audiobooks from their libraries. All that’s required is an active library card. In 2023, the app reached the milestone of 1 billion digital books borrowed across 22,000 public libraries.

In other words, Libby is pretty cool and a pretty big deal. It’s also a great source of interesting reader data, and for March, we got a peek into what ebook-reading library patrons were really into.

The following are Libby’s 10 most popular books of March.

10. None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

9. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

8. The Wedding People by Alison Espach

7. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

6. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

5. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, Sawyer Robbins

4. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

3. Funny Story by Emily Henry

2. The Women by Kristin Hannah

1. The Queen of Sugar Hill by ReShonda Tate

If you’ve been following any bestseller lists—like our own, for example—you’ll notice most of the books on here. This, of course, is not surprising. Making it onto bestseller lists piques people’s interest, leading to more people wanting to read the same books to see what all the fuss is about. This whole thing creates a kind of feedback loop that maintains the popularity of a certain subset of books.

Now, of course, these books are all good, but it’s nice to see a little variety. That’s why we love that Libby’s Together We Read digital book club pick was The Queen of Sugar Hill, ReShonda Tate’s fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Hattie McDaniel. The book was the #1 most checked-out book on the Libby app this month, most likely because of this selection.

If you’re looking for more popular BIPOC books, this past week, there was James by Percival Everett from Goodreads, and Yellowface R.F. Kuang and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar from Storygraph.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.