Need a book recommendation? This is what Lake Travis readers checked out in 2021.

Last year brought a deadly February winter freeze, the arrival of widely available COVID-19 vaccines, a hot and humid Austin summer and several surges of coronavirus cases. Through it all, Lake Travis readers made time to go to their local library. In a world of titles, several books rose to the top of the checkout list for readers.

Librarians said ebooks continued to be a popular option among patrons with genres like thrillers and romance attracting a lot of readers. Bee Cave Technical Services Librarian Megan Fischer said digital checkouts have been on the rise for romance books, possibly because there is still a bit of a stigma associated with the genre.

Books that are popular with book influencers, who post content and reviews on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, also get checked out a lot, Fischer said.

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Lake Travis Collection Development Librarian Rajashree Kamat said she was surprised to see how much more popular thrillers were compared to other genres on the library’s ebook platform Overdrive.

“We always knew that our community liked thrillers, but the margin was surprising to us," she said, noting that thrillers had almost doubled the number of checkouts as romance, the next most popular genre.

Bee Cave Public Services Librarian Melissa Slaughter said she is interested to watch how the pandemic continues to affect people’s reading habits, including her own.

“I would consider myself a very avid reader, but in the deep, deep state of the pandemic, I could not gather the attention span or the motivation to finish a book,” she said. “Whereas I know some people who are opposite, who just really were never really interested in reading and all of a sudden have this super voracious appetite for books.”

By far the most checked out book, in both hardcover and ebook form, at both the Lake Travis Community Library and in Bee Cave last year was “The Four Winds” by Kristin Hannah. The novel is set in Texas in 1934 and follows the story of Elsa Martinelli, who must make an agonizing choice about whether to fight for the land she loves or go west in search of a better life.

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Slaughter said the book likely took off with local readers for a number of reasons, including the consistent popularity of Hannah’s other novels, including “The Great Alone” and “The Nightingale.” Historical fiction is a well-loved genre, she said, and the book’s Texas setting certainly didn’t hurt.

Fischer said that when authors like Hannah have upcoming releases that are sure to be in demand, the library will often order extra copies, which also helps boost checkout numbers.

In Lake Travis, the most checked out books in hardcover and the most checked out ebooks didn’t overlap much. Popular hardcover books included titles by several big name mystery and thriller authors. The five most checked out hardcover books at the library were “A Gambling Man” and “Daylight” by David Baldacci, “A Time for Mercy” and “Sooley” by John Grisham, and “The Law of Innocence” by Michael Connelly.

Kamat said that popular and prolific authors like Baldacci, Grisham and Connelly have devoted fans who sign up with the library to automatically get put on hold for copies of new books, which contributes to a high number of checkouts for those titles.

The most checked out ebooks list from the Lake Travis library skewed more toward new fiction that is popular on social media and with book clubs, Kamat said. Topped by "The Four Winds," this list also includes acclaimed releases from the past few years such as “The Giver of Stars” by Jojo Moyes, “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett and “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig.

In Bee Cave, there was much more similarity between online and hardcover checkouts, and the list included titles like “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab, “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman and “The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave.

Fischer said she hopes people continue to use the library by checking out books in all kinds of formats, including audiobooks, ebooks and hardcovers.

“The best thing you can do to help a library is to get a library card and use it,” she said. “We can help you get the books you want. If we don't have it, we can put it on our suggestion list or help you find a place that does. ... Come check out our books. There’s something for everyone. And if you don't like it, we'll take it back for free.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Library roundup: This is what Lake Travis readers checked out in 2021.