The best books I read in 2025

As of right now I’ve read 50 books in 2025, which is less than half of how many I’ve read in years past.

This number does not include the books I’ve written (5) or the books I’ve edited (6? Maybe 7?).

I’ve always considered myself a reader first and foremost out of all of the things I choose to do with my time, but it sure didn’t feel that way over the last 12 months. I’m sure part of that is the orange menace and part of that is making books also my job and that job getting more difficult. 2025 was a wild and difficult year and I kind of feel like I didn’t read at all. (To be honest, I am low-key looking for a full-time day job and if that happens I’m looking forward to reading more for fun again).

When I started preparing to write this essay, I wasn’t sure I had any memorable books this year until I went back and looked at my spreadsheet. Even looking at this list of 5-star reads I almost cannot believe this was all still in the last 12 months.

My primary criterion for giving a book 5 stars is if I know I want to re-read it, and that’s the case for all of these books, even if I forgot I read them in the intervening months. I hope your reading year was more memorable than mine, but even if it wasn’t here’s to a stellar 2026. Maybe one or more of my new favorites should be added to your TBR.

(As a reminder, this list is put together from books I read in 2025, not necessarily that were released in 2025. I present them to you in order of when I read them and all links are affiliate)

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler : All-time favorite author, and this might be her last book. And yes, I am gutted by that fact. All of her books are quiet stories about nuances of relationships (family, friends, strangers) and this book is no exception. Our main character Gail loses her job the day before her daughter’s wedding—and the day before her ex-husband shows up on her doorstep with a cat and no place to stay. I would like to write a book like this, please and thank you. I read the whole thing in a day.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang : Part horror, part sci-fi, I think this might be a new go-to author and I’m looking forward to reading her more recent book. This is a “sinister and entertaining exploration of toxic beauty culture and capitalism” (according to the Guardian). The book follows an unnamed narrator as she enters the elite beauty industry that pursues perfection at all costs. If you have other recommendations like this book, I’m all ears. It was so disturbing and so smart at the same time.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix : Always Hendrix. This is his most recent, and I read the entire thing in about two days on a stay-cation in a hotel. Centered on a home for pregnant teenagers, Witchcraft follows fifteen-year-old Fern who turns to the literal supernatural for some sense of power over her life. Because Hendrix is a man who writes primarily about female main characters, he gets a lot of flack for it; don’t believe those jokers. Hendrix writes women better than some women do, and I feel like an almost completely female cast like this book was him doubling down on his choices.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano : I started reading this on a plane and then immediately changed my mind (IYKYK), but I had to go back to it. This is my second Napolitano read and I am sure she’s an all-time favorite. This book follows a little boy who is the only survivor of a plane crash, and asks the question what does it truly mean to live—not just survive. I would love to write a book like this.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith : Her debut and very deserving of all the hype. I don’t just want to reread it, I feel like I need to. Like there is so much going on and so many layers that I must have missed half of them. It’s omniscient and compared to Dickens and about race and class and faith and politics and it’s smarter than I will ever be. Highly recommend.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach : This is the kind of book I want to write. I had zero idea what to expect before I read it; I only knew that it was hyped everywhere. Unexpected wedding guest at a small boutique hotel. Funny, heart-breaking, this book is “an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.”

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid : I think this is my favorite of her books I’ve read so far. I bawled. I loved the characters. I cannot wait to see how it’s adapted. I’m already looking forward to rereading it. 1980s lesbian astronauts. What more could you want?

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman : A novel of King Arthur with the humor and sensibility of the 21^st century. I took a semester-long King Arthur class in grad school, and even though that was 20 years ago, I found that grounding added a lot to my reading of this novel. The King Arthur mythology is vast and it’s clear Grossman dove deep into all of it to pull this book together. I love his writing voice, and having it applied to this old legend was a treat.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang : Magic. Love. Academia. Hell (literally). I’ve already talked about how this author can do no wrong in my eyes and this book is no exception. “With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, Alice and Peter set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.”

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor : My favorite of all his books (so far), and like all the others it feels … indescribable. This book is about… people. And thoughts. And art. And thoughts about art. And much smarter than I will ever be. The main character is Wyeth, a gay Black painter in New York City over a slow summer, during which he meets and falls in love with a (lapsed?) Jesuit priest. This book is a “vividly etched portrait, both sweeping and tender, of friendship, creativity, belief, and the deep connections among them.”

Next year:

Only one of my go-to favorite authors has a book announced for 2026, and that one doesn’t even have an Amazon listing yet, so I’m hesitant to get my hopes up. Nevertheless, there are always far more books I want to read than I have time for; I’ll be happy if I read more books next year, whatever they are.

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December 20, 2024

I need you to know that I am never in my life going to catch-up on all the movies and television shows you think I should watch because my to-be-read book list is infinitely longer. And it gets longer every single week.

The Best Books I Read in 2023

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December 22, 2023

Even though I consider myself a capital-R Reader above really any other identity, this year I have only read just under 70 books (we’ll see what all I’m able to read between now and the end of the year). That is … low for me, to be honest. And don’t ask me what I spent my time on instead. I don’t know. Barre, maybe? Painting bedrooms? Sleep? Watching