Not the Booker prize 2016: Tiffany McDaniel wins with The Summer That Melted Everything – video

Tiffany McDaniel’s The Summer That Melted Everything is the winner of this year’s Not the Booker prize. It was a popular choice not just with the voting public who backed it by a wide margin, but also with our judges.

After the public vote, we had a clear leader: The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel. Thirty or so votes behind that there was Deborah Andrews’ Walking the Lights. And then there was a difference of almost a hundred votes before we got to Jemma Wayne’s Chains of Sand, Louis Armand’s The Combinations, Dan Micklethwaite’s The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote, and Dan Clements’ What Will Remain. Poor old “none of the above”, our extra voting category for this year came in behind them all with just five votes.

Tiffany McDaniel: 167
Deborah Andrews: 137
Jemma Wayne: 25
Louis Armand: 12
Dan Micklethwaite: 8
Dan Clements: 5
None of the above: 5

So, Tiffany McDaniel was ahead. And – appropriately enough – the red hot favourite. The winner of the public vote carries forward two points into the final round, and each judge also has a point to allot. As the video shows, all of our judges had Tiffany McDaniel’s novel in their top three. And one marked it first, meaning The Summer That Melted Everything scored a comfortable three, and there can be no doubts.

It wasn’t my personal favourite on the shortlist, but the fact that I was so easily and comprehensively overruled demonstrates the democratic nature of our prize. It’s the readers who decide and Tiffany McDaniel has done an excellent job of winning them over. Kudos to her.

All that remains for me to do here is to thank everyone who took part. It’s been another fantastic year for robust comment and discussion, and I’m grateful to the many people who read the books so well and made it all so interesting. I’m looking forward to next year already ...