Your Favorite Books of the 2026 Read Harder Challenge So Far

To celebrate being halfway through 2026, I sent out a survey to see how you’re all doing in the Read Harder Challenge so far. I already shared some of the results about how many books you’ve all read on average, how many tasks you’ve finished, and which tasks you found the most difficult and the easiest. Now, I’m here to let you know about the new favorite books you’ve all read so far this year that check off tasks! Almost all the titles you shared were unique, but there were five books mentioned by multiple people. Here are the most popular responses, organized by most mentioned to least. I also added a couple of honorable mentions for books that were only named once, but I think would be particularly useful for you to know about. Interestingly, when I did this survey last year, True Biz by Sara Nović appeared on that list as well, for another task! It’s a Read Harder Challenger favorite. I also wanted to mention that Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree is on this list because it was mentioned several times for task #9: Read a romantasy book with a queer and/or BIPOC main character. Personally, I wouldn’t categorize it as romantasy: the romance is very much a subplot and not a ...