Happy New Year, friends! This was a fantastic reading year, and I can’t wait to dig into my 25 favorites with you today.
Somehow, I couldn’t narrow my list down any further because these books were so darn good. I exceeded my annual goal of 100 books (104 in total and a whopping 36,630 pages- but who is counting?).
What surprised me most about this reading year was the astounding number of stellar debut novels that enriched my reading life. It was a standout year for debuts, and I loved sharing space with 21 debut novelists who discussed their writing process with me. It pains me to omit any of them from today’s list because it was such a gift to spend time with each of them.
This year, I read 53 literary fiction, 33 contemporary fiction, 20 historical fiction, 15 romance, and 14 thrillers, making them my top reading categories.
Today, my incredible co-host Larry Hoffer and I discuss our top books of the year on the Book Gang podcast, including some excellent backlist titles we recently discovered. We read a total of 443 books and are excited to share twenty-five of our favorite titles from each of our 2025 reading lists.
Listen to the Book Gang Podcast:
Listen below or listen on your favorite podcast listening platform!
Also, I announced our 2026 book club books, and I will be sharing space with each of our chosen novelists this year on the Book Gang podcast, along with many other incredible guests. Don’t miss my announcement for our Winter guest line-up, which should keep you busy well into the first half of the reading year as we celebrate loads more debuts.
Now let’s wow you with this year’s stack!
The Best Books I Read in 2025
These are the top 25 books I read in 2025, including new release novels and backlist gems.
A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna
Amna's provocative sophomore novel suffers no slumps, offering readers a riveting story of a poor Pakistani girl whose appetite for wealth knows no bounds.
The narrator, Tara, goes about finding money in ways that are surprising, unsettling, and, at times, shocking as she navigates the elite social world with ruthless focus and an eye always trained on what comes next.
I started and finished this provocative page-turner in a single day because it’s so engrossing, thrilling, and impeccably paced. Amna’s crisp prose keeps melodrama at bay while still delivering delicious twists and an ending so satisfying you may want to turn back to page one and reread it with new eyes.
Related- Dur e Aziz Amna Interview (COMING SOON)
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Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein
Wise, witty, and imaginative, Jean's unresolved feelings about a secret summer affair she had in the 1990s with her professor, as a young woman, coincide with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a discovery embedded and never acknowledged in an old journal.
Praying to Monica, the saint of this very moment, she's greeted by "Saint Monica" herself, who, together, revisit Jean's past with fresh adult eyes.
I delighted in every moment of this wholly original story. Langbein succeeds not only with her unique story concept, embedding the stories of those deemed saints in alternating chapters, but also with the more luscious food writing within these pages, which had me swimming in the dishes Jean created for her characters to share around a communal, candlelit table.
Release Date- 14 April 2026
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When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy
It wasn't only Cassidy's writing that made this my favorite horror book, but the pitch-perfect narration by Helen Laser, with delightful interruptions in Cassidy's own voice, that made it one of the most memorable audiobook experiences of my year.
The evil mother trope is a favorite in fairy tales and horror novels, but Cassidy refreshingly allows us to examine the motives of absent fathers when a struggling actress becomes the unexpected guardian being hunted by a monstrous animal.
The mother, in fact, is a godddamn hero, a riot of a woman named Cookie whom I delighted in at every turn.
It's a reflective writing exercise that Nat details in his own voice at the end of his book as he, too, had a complicated relationship with his father, building a surprisingly beautiful emotional core to this fast-paced story's motives.
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet was a story that required marinating, and one I appreciated more with each passing day after reading it this year.
Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died at age eleven in 1596, with little else recorded about the cause. O’Farrell ties this to the plague and crafts a fascinating chain of transmission, turning this moment into a mounting snowball of dread as it descends into their home.
Given the sparse historical record, the story relies on sensory details that I positively swam in. The tang of leather in the family glove‑shop, the hush of forest leaves under Agnes’s feet, the smell of unwashed bodies in plague‑shuttered villages.
But what came most alive for me was the way she wrote grief and how a marriage endures the loss of a child. Go ahead and be wrecked by this line: “How were they to know that Hamnet was the pin holding them together?” It was a triumph!
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Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
Hochhauser's Cinderella retelling from the viewpoint of the "evil" stepmother astonished me.
Reframing her journey as a woman who lost two husbands with no money to call her own and then must find prospects for her daughters is only the beginning of her long-held rivalry with the Queen, whose approval or disapproval could change the fate of her household.
It is in the motherly moments that this story shines, the ways we catalog every detail of our children's lives, deeply desire more for them, and most importantly, what even is the happily-ever-after we are chasing? I couldn't get enough of this feminist retelling.
Release Date- 3 March 2026
Related- Rachel Hochhauser Interview (COMING SOON)
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Zeal by Morgan Jerkins
Jerkins novel introduced me to the Freedmen's Bureau, which served as a channel for letters and messages to help families separated by slavery reconnect. Unfortunately, these letters often arrived late or not at all for their recipients, and she explores one missed connection in this heart wrenching saga.
There is no leavening in either timeline, from a Black physician navigating the early days of the pandemic to the horrors of slavery, but I am so glad I read this book and what Jerkins taught me this year about this time in history and how these stories all intertwine. I would really love to see more readers pick this one up.
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The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman
As an American, I am embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with much of Ukraine's rich history until I encountered Wachman's book.
This story of two brothers fleeing war in 2022 offered an engrossing narrative that truly opened my eyes to the struggles of its citizens in a way that headline news has failed to capture.
Following these earnest boys as they seek safety and a reunion with their father humanized the modern refugee experience, told through a unique structure of 100 chapters.
Some books imprint on your heart forever, and you know you will never forget them. This story, fundamentally, changed me, and I'm grateful for Sam's equally earnest heart.
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
There is life before and after reading Jane Eyre, but I can tell you that I never hope to see my bookshelves without this classic displayed prominently again.
An astonishingly modern tale follows a fiercely intelligent and morally steadfast young woman who refuses to shrink to fit a world that undervalues her. Brontë masterfully blends Gothic tension and social critique into a suspenseful story.
What surprised me most was how often I would laugh at the antics of men and Jane’s interior thoughts. I certainly got my fill of Mr. Rochester’s monologuing, but I loved the inventive twists this story takes and now can see all the ways this storyteller’s decisions have rippled into thrillers, especially those we still love today.
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Tilt by Emma Pattee
I was so grateful to spend an afternoon with Emma this year discussing her story, especially the ending of this one, which has surprised readers. Pattee takes readers on a journey with a pregnant woman who tries to reunite with her partner after a catastrophic earthquake strikes Portland.
Emma's writing is so distinct that you feel every jostling crack of pavement, every flash of memory, and Annie's exhaustion in your bones as she turns down sketchy rides and finds allies in unexpected places. Sharp, funny, relentless, and achingly human prose came vividly to life in Ariel Blake's audiobook performance, leaving me breathless. It was an unforgettable reading journey.
Related- Emma Pattee Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Lucy was stricken with a rare form of bone cancer at the tender age of nine, and the poet offers a moving memoir experience navigating life before and after her childhood diagnosis, where doctors removed half her jaw to save her life.
While chronic pain and challenges plagued her life, it was the disfigurement and bullying from her peers that challenged her the most.
Sharing in one line, "I had the capacity of imagination to momentarily escape my own pain, and I had the elegance of imagination to teach myself something true regarding the world around me, but I didn't yet have the clarity of imagination to grant myself the complicated and necessary right to suffer."
Recounting her thirty procedures to reconstruct her face over eighteen years, she recounts the complicated feelings of what it is like when no surgery looms upon the horizon.
After reading this, I dug into Truth & Beauty, which recounts Lucy's friendship with Anne Patchett through her tumultuous college years. Do read these books in this order, as it brings a portrait of a life lived into fuller clarity and how she endured for so long in spite of it all.
Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle
An hour was not enough time to spend with Daria Lavelle this year, but I will count her time on Book Gang as one of my favorite moments of the year.
Lavelle's prose is exquisite, and her extensive culinary research is on full display as she imagines a chef whose patrons request dishes from across cuisines and nationalities in a pop-up kitchen where ghosts can come to life over the flavors created. What a concept: bringing loved ones back to share a final meal together.
Flavor profiles develop a bit differently in this world, where bitter can be the taste of coffee but also the taste of the last conversation shared with a dad who never understood you. As the ghosts come to life, Lavelle imagines a world of merging that I reveled in. I have never enjoyed a fictional book about food more than this one.
Related- Daria Lavelle Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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The Lilac People by Milo Todd
Sharing space with Milo Todd this year was such a gift, and I'm so grateful for his research, which brought this beautiful book to my stack.
This illuminating historical fiction experience explores the 1920s and Dr. Hirschfeld's groundbreaking work in the trans community, which made the dreams of many of his patients a reality, only to have progress later rolled back by Hitler.
Todd's novel is not just an evocative piece of historical fiction—it's an urgent and vital reclamation of LGBTQ+ history that puts our modern headline realities into the context of its real history, drawing eerily familiar parallels to the rollbacks of progress right now.
Even if you don't read the story, I hope you'll listen to Milo on Book Gang to learn more about what the world looked like in this community.
Related- Milo Todd Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff
This tender family saga brought to life characters that were so richly drawn and achingly human that it was a family you couldn't help but root for as they navigate a father's battles with alcohol addiction.
Damoff’s exquisite, luminous prose created a linear story of a family's journey that still offered readers fresh angles on memories through new viewpoints and retellings. Once you meet the Bright family, you never forget them thanks to the author's rich character work and unique lens on addiction through her role as a social worker. I felt incredibly blessed this year to be in her orbit.
Related- Sarah Damoff Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin
This love letter to Larkin's hometown is a magical story of the reinvention required when one returns home, growing pains and all. The mysterious reasons why Freya left are revealed in this slow unspooling, but it's also a bighearted story on the beauty and constraints of small-town lives. As Freya finds new purpose in her niece's life and gets to know the locals in her job at a cozy restaurant, we recognize that we can find family anywhere, even when the real family in our lives lets us down.
I will never get over being thanked in the back of this beautiful book, and sharing space with Allison to celebrate each of her books has been such a gift. Described as her most personal work, I delighted in every page of this tender, moving story of coming-of-age as an adult, exquisitely narrated by Julia Whelan.
Related- Allison Larkin Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
Annie Hartnett is a National Treasure, a writer who easily blends the light with the dark, and this road trip story brings together a hodgepodge crew who go off on an adventure of a lifetime to reunite an aging, struggling alcoholic named PJ with his first love.
Adding two kids and a death-predicting cat into the mix yields road trip adventures that had me belly-laughing through much of this whacky adventure story.
There is no one who does dark comedy quite like Annie Hartnett, and I am thrilled to see her success with this quirky novel and to see readers discovering her other books this year. Talking through the plot of this book yielded as many laughs as the novel.
Related- Annie Hartnett Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Eckstine’s skilled pen showcases that being an English teacher with a rich reading life and an ability to understand story beats yielded a confident, moving debut.
16-year-old Junie, an enslaved Black teen, awakens her sister's ghost and undertakes a dangerous journey to freedom in this stunning page-turner. Heavily influenced by the author’s favorite classics, this haunting Southern Gothic novel wowed me in every way, made all the more rich by Eckstine’s family history.
To share space with Erin twice this year has solidified me as her forever fangirl.
Related- Erin Crosby Eckstine Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
When a single mother falls in love with a reclusive stranger, they are pulled to his home in the woods, where they discover that Arthur isn't who he appeared to be. Disappearing for days at a time, the dreams unravel when Birdie's daughter discovers him roaming the woods in only a bear skin.
Ivey's extensive research on this Beauty & the Beast retelling included two weeks spent in a remote hunting camp on Kodiak Island, which infused this story with rich, sensory details. I count our conversation as one of the most memorable of my career, hearing the stories that would not have been possible if they had not intertwined with her lived journey.
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Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier
DeLozier's ambitious debut brings to life a gifted teen healer in the 14th century as the plague descends and she finds herself at the center of its early research alongside her role as a midwife to Queen Joanna of Naples.
The reason this story sings is that the author's medical background yields fascinating, page-turning moments with early days of carving cadavers, but what really sold me on this book were the elements of familial sacrifice and sisterhood that will stun you.
I have no doubt that we are getting in on the ground floor of a very special writing career, and it has been a joy to connect with the author this year as we celebrate her debut for our January book club.
Related- Elizabeth DeLozier Interview (Book Gang Podcast)- COMING SOON
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Sister, Sinner by Claire Hoffman
The first leader of a mega-church was Aimee Semple McPherson, and Claire Hoffman will make sure you never forget her name. A riveting biography that opens with the astonishing true story of Aimee, who shaped modern evangelicalism, vanished into the ocean for 35 days, and returned with a kidnapping tale so wild it led to two sensational trials, yielded a story that I could not put down.
Hoffman’s approach is both deeply researched and refreshingly secular, embracing Aimee’s contradictions as a faith healer and showman, sinner and saint, feminist and fundamentalist. Excavating her process was among my favorite moments on our show this year. As we once again feel preoccupied with how celebrity and religion can interplay, it’s a story that is especially timely right now.
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Vuong's autofiction story offers a sensory feast through poetic prose detailing the stark realities of the American dream in 2010. Hai and Grazina become unlikely friends who live together in a house nestled on a toxic river stream where all the residents have left, and this friendship endures in spite of it all
As memories of war haunt Grazina, Hai becomes "Sergeant Pepper" to comfort her through the battlefields until her mind quiets. Sergeant Pepper is only a name on a pizza sign to him, but it sounds official, and it is that dose of naivety that illuminates so many scenes in this coming-of-age story that wowed me from page one, where Veong unapologetically laces his heart into every page, piercing my soul in the process.
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The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
I loathe epistolary novels, which is why I went into Evan's heartwarming novel with much trepidation. My crazy love for this novel became my biggest surprise, and I've gifted this book to more people than I can count.
This novel reveals the life of seventy-three-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp through letters, emails, and fragments of correspondence — some sent, some never meant to leave her desk. And it is through this journey that we uncover her secrets and a rich, uniquely told interior life that you will marvel at. The audiobook production was such a treat, and it was no surprise to see it finally earn its spot as a #1 NYT bestseller. You must read this book!
Related- Virginia Evans Interview (Book Gang Podcast)- COMING SOON
Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson
Thompson’s coming-of-age debut captured my heart, exploring an incandescent New Hampshire summer where a relationship blooms between two boys who meet at their jobs in a local hardware store. Following a New York reunion six years later, their youthful desires collide with their adult reality, bringing us to its promised conclusion that August gave away in its first devastating storyline, “It took three car crashes to kill Jake.”
Writing a magnetic pull is harder than it may seem, and I loved this story for the way it challenged my perception of queer identity and masculinity.
Related- August Thompson Interview (Book Gang Podcast)
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The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy (Kindle Unlimited)
Holly Kennedy has emerged as one of my new favorite writers, and Denny Vos has emerged as one of my new favorite literary heroes.
A gentle story with a few explosive f-bombs for good measure explores the collision of good intentions when Denny, a neurodivergent adult, finds himself embroiled in a murder mystery in which he is the only suspect. What I loved is Kennedy's earnest balance of never making the story saccharine while acknowledging each character's flaws, especially his complicated relationship with his absentee mother, who abandoned him as a child, adding nuance.
Messy goodness can be the most beautiful kind of story of all, and I think Holly achieved that with every word of this heartwarming novel.
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The Mad Wife by Meagan Church
Meagan Church is doing important work right now to really dig into women’s health histories, and this story, especially, has a bend to it that felt personal and important for book clubs to discuss.
Lulu’s challenges with motherhood lead her into dark thoughts on the consequences of women like her who struggle to get their act together, and one thread of her worries is the controversial history of housewives receiving lobotomies to help them reset their brains into more pleasant territories for the people around them.
I am so glad we have storytellers like Meagan who help modern readers understand how women have been controlled in the past, and how the consequences of these actions still ripple today. On a personal note, I am so proud of my friend on her success with this novel.
Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje
Hilje’s breathtaking debut seamlessly blended an intimate love story with a sweeping meditation on identity in your thirties. As a reader, it was my first dip into the mesmerizing backdrop of the Croatian coastline. I would say that this novel is as much about its characters as it is about the country they call home—one still finding its footing after emerging from the shadow of conflict.
This unique love triangle delivered surprises, but the biggest surprise was the quiet revelations about aging, both in her own body and in the ailing father she cares for. From a craft standpoint, this was one of the most well-edited novels I’ve read this year, and written in the author’s second language, which made it all the more of a marvel.
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