It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, a novel about a love triangle first published in 2016, is Ireland’s bestselling book of 2022 by a margin of more than 35,000 copies. It had sold 75,518 copies by Christmas Eve, according to Nielsen BookScan, which compiles the publishing industry’s official charts. Its sequel, It Starts With Us, is one of three other Hoover titles in the top 10, along with Verity and Ugly Love.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, a coming-of-age murder mystery, sold almost 40,000 copies to take second place. First published in 2019, it was adapted for a film this year starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, a Hollywood star’s life story told to a young reporter, came third, selling 37,820 copies.
Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes, her sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, is this year’s most popular book by an Irish author, selling 35,811 copies, just ahead of Forever Home by Graham Norton in sixth place with 33,944 sales, and the Booker Prize-shortlisted Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan in seventh with 32,415 sales. Rachel’s Holiday sold 16,044 sales to take 28th place.
Surrender, Bono’s autobiography (11th; 25,950) was the bestselling Irish nonfiction book, pipping John Creedon’s An Irish Folklore Treasury (14th; 22,537), the bestselling book by an Irish publisher, Gill, and Manchán Magan’s Listen to the Land Speak (22nd; 17,733), also from Gill. Other notable nonfiction successes were The Irish Civil War in Colour by Michael B Barry & John O’Byrne (Gill, 16,176); Time and Tide by Charlie Bird & Ray Burke (HarperCollins Ireland, 15,853); We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (14,717); All the Things Left Unsaid by Michael Harding (Hachette Ireland, 12,493); and Quinn by Trevor Birney (Merrion, 12,412), which was only published on December 1st; Mary Lou McDonald: A Republican Riddle by Shane Ross (11,940); Never Better: My Life in Our Times by Tommie Gorman (11,797); and The Rodfather by Roddy Collins & Paul Howard (9,211). My Fourth Times We Drowned by Sally Hayden, the Irish Book of the Year, sold 3,431 copies.
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Other noteworthy Irish fiction bestsellers included The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (17,733); Once Upon a Time in . . . Donnybrook by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (16,406); Idol by Louise O’Neill (14,619); All the Broken Places by John Boyne (14,494); Breaking Point by Edel Coffey (11,863); The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (10,804); and Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (10,589). Sally Rooney’s three novels all made the top 50, selling almost 40,000 copies.
Diper Överlöde, the 17th book in Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, was Ireland’s bestselling children’s book with 31,396 sales. Amy Huberman is the bestselling Irish children’s author with The Day I Got Trapped in my Brain (12,102).
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover was also Britain’s bestselling title, with 682,743 sales. Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club titles occupied the next three slots, however, selling more than 1.5 million titles in total. Sally Rooney was the only Irish author to make Britain’s top 100. Beautiful World Where Are You, Normal People and Conversations with Friends sold 360,000 copies in total. Three Marian Keyes titles sold 235,000. Other Irish bestsellers included Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (75,487); Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (68,958) and The Marriage Portrait (56,543); Bono’s Surrender (64,753); Guess How Much I Love You by the late Sam McBratney (55,269); Three Weddings and a Proposal by Sheila O’Flanagan (49,834); Beyond Supervet by Noel Fitzpatrick (49,283); and The Magician by Colm Tóibín (42,411).
