There were a lot of great books that came out last year, but perhaps the biggest standout on the Amazon best sellers list for 2024 was one that didn’t even release until this week. I’m talking of course, about the latest title in the Empyrean series: Onyx Storm.
If you aren’t familiar with those names, you may have still heard of the first book in the series called Fourth Wing. The popularity of these novels by Rebecca Yarros is largely thanks to them going viral on BookTok, which is where other romance books have gone viral in the past. Perhaps the most famous book to get picked up on that corner of TikTok was It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, which skyrocketed the series to the top of the best selling list in 2022 and eventually got turned into a movie.
Why Is The Empyrean Series So Popular?
It’s easy to point toward TikTok as the main driver of the virality of this series, but the plot and genre of the books were set up for success from the very beginning. I have read both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and can honestly say they are hard to put down. There are elements familiar to the Harry Potter books, romance similar to the Twilight series, and dragons similar to the Inheritance Cycle. Reading these books feels familiar, and yet somehow very new.
The other, perhaps more obvious reason for the popularity of this series is the very graphic descriptions of the main character’s sexual encounters. What initially feels like your standard young adult novel suddenly gets really steamy really fast and never really slows down after that. It’s an epic fantasy romance with dragons and sex, what more could anyone really want from a book?
What Were the Other Amazon Best-Selling Books of 2024?
Onyx Storm was only the second best-selling book on the 2024 list. The overall top novel on the list was The Women by Kristin Hannah which came out in February 2024 and topped The New York Time’s best seller list at time as well. Here is a quick look at the top ten books that made Amazon’s list in 2024.
- The Women – Kristin Hannah
- Onyx Storm – Rebecca Yarros
- Atomic Habits – James Clear
- Hillbilly Elegy – J.D. Vance
- The Housemaid – Freida McFadden
- Mom, I want to Hear Your Story – Jeffrey Mason
- Dad, I want to Hear Your Story – Jeffrey Mason
- The Anxious Generation – Jonathan Haidt
- It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover
- Good Energy – Casey Means M.D
Looking for more top books? Check out our guide to the best-selling books of all time for popular picks over a longer period of time. If you’re looking for more fantasy, we recommend our guide to the Lord of the Rings books and Game of Thrones books as a starting point.
