Why is Picking Favorites Even a Thing?

Why do I have to pick a favorite? Whether it's a favorite food, pair of jeans, book, author, kid.... is it really necessary to pick just one to place at the top of the list? Picking my favorite anything really depends on the day, my mood, who helped unload the dishwasher.... I see posts like this on social media all the time: “Who’s your favorite author?” Or “What’s your favorite book of all time?” The pressure to give the correct answer is incredible. And half the time I scroll by rather than respond with something that I might second guess later. It’s not that I don’t love the author or book I’ll name, it’s that I feel like it’s an incomplete answer. Sometimes I respond with a list of authors or books. Because I’m a rebel like that. And I don’t want to leave anyone off the list. I have a go-to list of one-click authors that I am constantly recommending. Sometimes it’s based on a specifically requested criteria such as a particular genre, but often it’s just all of them. (Don’t worry, I’ll include the list at the end of this post). Because it’s really hard to pick a favorite! And that list keeps growing as I read more books by more new-to-me authors.

During the first year of reading romance novels my list was pretty short. I’m a serial reader, so if an author has a long backlist I’ll binge that sucker in its entirety before moving on to another author. This can take a while as many established authors have dozens of books available. Having Kindle Unlimited also makes it incredibly easy to download several books and just keep reading them until I run out of titles by that author. I’ll join an author’s Facebook group, and then FB will start recommending books “similar to other authors you’ve like.” Kindle will pick up on books I download from Amazon based on FB’s recommendations, and the next time I sit down, that pretty Kindle splash screen will lead me to yet another new author. (Message to authors: keep buying those ads, they’re working). And bam! My favorite author list exploded in the past 6 months.

And what about favorite books? That’s even more difficult to pare down. I would place multiple books by my favorite authors in my faves list. I often get around this by recommending a series rather than a book. Yeah, technically it’s cheating, I guess… but if you read them one after the other you can justify them as a single read, right? Sure there are certain books within a series or author’s backlist I’ll read multiple times, but when and how often I read them also depends on my mood. And I keep adding to that list, too. More new authors, more new favorite books.

I guess it’s really a beautiful problem to have, not being able to pick a favorite. It just means I’ve been lucky to find and read so many incredible authors’ books. And I’m going to continue to spread that joy to others. Consider yourself warned: if you ask me for my favorite author or book, you’re going to get a list, not a single answer. And you’re likely to get a brief run-down of why you should read them all. Because there is no simple answer to the question: who/what’s your favorite. At least not in my world. And definitely not when it comes to anything bookish.

So here’s my current one-click list. I can’t rank them in any kind of order, because they’re all awesome, so I’m putting them in alpha order by the author’s first name. They are all indie authors and have Facebook groups or pages where they routinely interact with their readers. Check them out, add them to your TBR, follow them on FB, IG, TikTok, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon, BookBub, and BingeBooks:

A.M. Johnson https://www.facebook.com/AMJOHNSONBOOKS

Amy Daws https://www.facebook.com/amydawsauthor

April Wilson https://www.facebook.com/AprilWilsonWrites

Avery Maxwell https://www.facebook.com/AveryMaxwellBooks

Brittney Sahin https://www.facebook.com/authorbrittneysahin

Claire Kingsley https://www.facebook.com/clairekingsleybooks

Janice Whiteaker/ Jemma Westbrook/ Josie Watts https://www.facebook.com/janicewhiteakerauthor

Kathryn Nolan https://www.facebook.com/KatNolanRomance

Lucy Score https://www.facebook.com/lucyscorewrites

Melanie Harlow https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMelanieHarlow

Pearl Foxx https://www.facebook.com/PearlFoxx

Pippa Grant https://www.facebook.com/PippaGrantRomance