Top Rated Books of the 21st Century
Goodreads Published List of Consistently > 4 ⭐️(by year published)
2000: Plain Truth - House of Leaves ‘01: Other Boleyn Girl - Secret Life of Bees ‘02: Fingersmith - Lamb ‘03: Shutter Island - Time Traveler’s Wife ‘04: Shadow of the Wind - Cloud Atlas ‘05: No Country for Old Men - Book Thief ‘06: Sharp Objects - Road ‘07: Terror - Thousand Splendid Suns ‘08: City of Thieves - Hunger Games ‘09: Maze Runner - Cutting for Stone
Ran out of room.. See Comments for full list!
created by GingerHaleZeroSugar
last updated August, 2026
Comments
hi!!!!! just wanted to let you know that pagebound rules state that lists are meant to be recommendations for the community. personal book lists are meant to be what the custom shelves are for.
I made this specifically for the community. That’s why I made a list. I did not know it would bother people since I frequently search for lists like this.
Full List 2000 - 2025
2000
- Plain Truth - House of Leaves
‘01
- Other Boleyn Girl - Secret Life of Bees
‘02
- Fingersmith - Lamb
‘03
- Shutter Island - Time Traveler’s Wife
‘04
- Shadow of the Wind - Cloud Atlas
‘05
- No Country for Old Men - Book Thief
‘06
- Sharp Objects - The Road
‘07
- Terror - Thousand Splendid Suns
‘08
- City of Thieves - Hunger Games
‘09
- Maze Runner - Cutting for Stone
‘10
- Winter Garden - Way of Kings
‘11
- Ready Player 1 - Song of Achilles
‘12
- And the Mountain Echoed - Gone Girl
‘13
- Ordinary Grace - Americanah
‘14
- All the Light We Cannot See - Station 11
‘15
- Uprooted - Fifth Season
‘16
- Homegoing - Gentleman in Moscow
‘17
- Eleanor Oliphant - Little Fires Everywhere
‘18
- The Overstory - Where the Crawdads Sing
‘19
- The Dutch House - Daisy Jones
‘20
- Piranesi - Invisible Life of Addie Larue
‘21
- Lincoln Highway - Four Winds
‘22
- Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow - Remarkably Bright Creatures
‘23
- Frozen River - Berry Pickers
‘24
- Briar Club - James
2025
- King of Ashes - Wild Dark Shore
Creating this as a list and not a shelf is why you’re getting so many downvotes.
I made it a list specifically for the community because I thought people would want to see a list of some of top reads of this century. These are not my personal top reads. It’s especially helpful for new readers that don’t know where to start. I have other shelves just for me.

Maybe change the title and description to make it more clear? Like "Top Rated Novels of the 2000s" or something like that. The confusion is that people think these are rated 4-stars according to you (which would be a shelf) and not just objectively top rated books.
Ahh that makes sense. I just started getting back into reading a few years ago so there’s no way it’s mine 😂. Thank you! I thought I cleared that up in the description by putting “goodreads” but it could be interpreted as my goodreads 4 star reads. I’ll fix the title and if people really don’t want it then I’ll just delete it.
And you’ll be able to add a lot more books that way!
