The Chosen and the Beautiful
#8313.54 adjusted 3.56 for sample size in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 2021 Reading commitment Low Nghi Vo Last reviewed 2026-08-13
Overview
The Chosen and the Beautiful is a 2021 novel by Nghi Vo, a queer, fantastical retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby narrated by Jordan Baker, reimagined here as a Vietnamese-American adoptee raised among the Midwestern elite. Set in a 1920s New York where demonic bargains, paper magic, and blood-based sorcery are ordinary if unequally accessible facts of life, the novel follows the familiar arc of Fitzgerald's plot, Gatsby's parties, Daisy's marriage to Tom, the fatal drive back from the city, while foregrounding Jordan's own outsider vantage on wealth, whiteness, and desire that the original novel left unexamined. Vo reworks period-accurate details of Prohibition-era excess and xenophobia into a story where magic is bound up with class and racial privilege as much as glamour. The novel was a finalist for the 2022 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Historical fantasy · For Adult
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
The Chosen and the Beautiful (novel) Nghi Vo
| Work | Year | Canon | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | The Chosen and the Beautiful | 2021 | core | 3.54 (19,648 ratings) |
Single continuous novel, registered per the single-work-by-LOTR-analogy convention -- a queer, Vietnamese-American-narrated fantastical retelling of The Great Gatsby (Jordan Baker as narrator), with magic (demonic bargains, paper magic, blood magic) woven into 1920s New York. No sequel or further work set in this world.
Quick answers
- How many books are in The Chosen and the Beautiful? The Chosen and the Beautiful's Core Canon is 1 book.
- Is The Chosen and the Beautiful finished? Complete (2021).
- How much reading does The Chosen and the Beautiful take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book · ~260 pages).
- How is The Chosen and the Beautiful ranked? #831 in this site's official ranking, based on 19,648 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #831?
Ranked #831 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 3.54 across 1 core book.
- A smaller readership (19,648 ratings), so the score carries less weight of numbers.
- 0.02 behind #830, The Dark Star Trilogy.
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Modestly rated · 1 book · Complete · 20k ratings · Ranks #831 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment historical fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- Locus Award (Best First Novel), 2022: finalist: The Chosen and the Beautiful; Per the no-cutoff Locus-poll convention; winner was A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark. Confirmed directly via sfadb.com's own 2022 Locus Awards page (the accepted primary source for Locus lineage claims), not from Wikipedia's infobox alone.
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Suggestions computed from what The Chosen and the Beautiful and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
- Armed in Her Fashion Historical fantasy / Dark fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.67
- Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen Historical fantasy / Mythic fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.64
- The Melancholy of Untold History Mythic fantasy / Historical fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.59
- A Scattering of Jades Historical fantasy / Dark fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.58
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.54 across 19,648 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: The Chosen and the Beautiful admitted as a single-work universe accepted 2026-08-13
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
Last reviewed: 2026-08-13
Rule: single-work: a genuinely one-off novel with no sequel or companion work set in this world, registered per this canon's Once and Future King/LOTR-analogy precedent.