One thing a lot of book lovers have in common is the irrepressible urge to share what we’ve been reading, to swap lists with other readers. (It is, of course, one of the driving factors of this regular column!) Looking back at the past year gives us the opportunity to revisit some of those experiences and remind ourselves of the emotions we felt, places we went, thoughts we pondered. So, without further ado, here are some of our favorite reads of 2025!
(Note that not everything here was necessarily published in 2025, it was just something we read during the past calendar year.)
Mariana Ruiz
I wrote a long take in Spanish about Stephen King’s The Long Walk, if you’re curious. Richard Bachman is such an angry part of King, the young, energetic, furious part. Bad things happen to good people, or naïve people with good intentions, in all of Bachman’s books. I would say that is the main difference between the author’s two voices. I love that King still writes. I have a couple of novels left before tackling the short story collections. I am happy to read King religiously. I love the club; whoever reads him has different reasons, but we ultimately regard him as a sure-fire source of entertainment value, which is important in an age of so many stupid distractions. Nothing tops a good book for me.
In French, I came across a translation from the Estonian: The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Estonian author Andrus Kivirähk, first published in 2007. It is set in an imaginary Estonia during the Middle Ages. The novel was awarded the Stalker Award of Estonian science fiction in 2008. I loved deeply and felt that everything could happen, a made-up world where druids, magic, knights, and the absurd come together as an elaborate take on religion and fanaticism. It is as weird and interesting as the original Witcher stories. It also reminded me of another odd book about a made-up world that could have been: The Inheritors by William Golding.
In the Newbery Medals I always strive to pick up, I loved Shiloh. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor won the Newbery Medal in 1991 with this novel about a boy and his dog. 11-year-old boy Marty Preston rescues a beagle who is suffering at the hands of his owner, Judd Travers, and hides him. By doing so, he is lying to his parents and defying an unspoken law: a man can do anything to a dog he has paid for. The bond between this boy and Shiloh is so genuine that it pierces your heart, and how he frees him teaches us a lesson or two about human decency and the value of your word.
In silly children’s books, The Mushroom of Doom, Bob the Vampire Snail, and Pencil and Eraser were the highlights of the year for me. We need humor, silly voices, and absurd situations in our lives; they make reading entertaining!
Jenny Bristol
I read some incredible books this year! I’ve had so many satisfying reads in different genres that it’s hard to pick a short list of favorites. So here is a slightly longer list:
Romance: A couple of standard romcom stand-outs that I read this year include Earls Trip by Jenny Holiday and The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter, the latter of which is probably my favorite stand-alone book from the year, being fun, funny, and well written.
YA/Queer: My favorite discovery of 2024—author Lex Croucher—inspired me to read more of their books in 2025, including two queer YA books, Not for the Faint of Heart and Gwen & Art Are Not in Love. These were wonderful and I highly recommend them. The audiobooks are really well done. Lex has more books coming out this year, including another YA like these, and I look forward to checking them out.
Time Travel: I thoroughly enjoyed the trilogy of books from Kerstin Gier entitled Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue, and Emerald Green. I love a good time travel book, not to mention three, and these were fun and compelling, and kept you guessing at a few plot points until near the end.
Other: I’m not sure how to categorize The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods, but it was a lovely and slightly weird book that’s a little romance and a lot mystery, and it rotated among different character perspectives. Listening to it as an audiobook, it was helpful that they had different people voicing the different roles.
Robin Brooks
As I usually do, I’ll split my favourite books of the year into 3 sections: Fiction, children’s, and non-fiction.
Non-Fiction
This one is easy.
By far, my favourite non-fiction book was Exploring the Universe by Isabel Thomas and Sarah Gillingham. The book felt like it had been created with me in mind. A wonderful meld of word and image to create an informative and arresting catalog of the solar system and beyond.
This book was so good, I immediately put Thomas and Gillingham’s previous book, Exploring the Periodic Table, on my Christmas list. I am pleased to confirm that it is every bit as good.
If you have any interest (or have children who have an interest) in space and what it is made of, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It’s the best reference book of its type that I have seen in years.
Children’s Books
Some honorable mentions include Katherine Rundell’s second Impossible Creatures novel, The Poisoned King. I enjoyed this one significantly more than book 1. Perhaps my expectations were too high for the very hyped first volume, and damped down for this second instalment, meaning I enjoyed it more. The Poisoned King was a thrilling read, and I’m now fully on board for this series.
The Disappearance of Imogen Good was extremely close to being my best Children’s book of 2025, beaten only by one of the finest children’s books I’ve ever read. Imogen Good is a children’s noir centered around a creepy fairy tale and an even creepier house and garden. Some enticing and mysterious goings-on, and great character growth and interactions, make this a first-class novel.
Beating Imogen Good into a narrow second place was Under a Fire-Red Sky by Geraldine McCaughrean, a novel set in the Blitz. It has a wonderful cast of characters who, for a variety of reasons, don’t evacuate London when the rest of the children leave. A tale of heroism and lost innocence, this one had me enthralled throughout. It’s hard to predict what will become a classic, but Under a Fire-Red Sky deserves to be read for generations to come.
Best Fiction Books of 2025
Two of my standout reads of the year feature old folklore and the stories upon which Great Britain is built. The Great When by Alan Moore is a superlative journey into London’s legends, taking place just after the Second World War.
I was worried I might become lost in the depth of Moore’s world-building or that perhaps his prose would be too esoteric for my reading tastes. (I had a similar experience with Jacek Dukaj’s Ice, a book I wanted to enjoy but found impenetrable.) I need not have worried. The Great When is weird but wonderful to immerse yourself in. I can’t wait for book 2, I Hear a New World, which is out next year.
The last book I finished in 2025 was probably my favorite read of the entire year.
Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee brings Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table back to life in a near-future Britain. This novel was published a couple of years ago, but it feels even more relevant now. It’s essentially a story of how the rich manipulate the poor and repeatedly escape the consequences of their actions. Perilous Times is funny, poignant, and bang on the money on just about every page. I loved it.
My final choice is a book that had been languishing on my to-be-read pile for quite some time, Boris Gospidonov’s Time Shelter. It’s a meandering tale that bears repeat reading (though I have yet to do so). I almost certainly missed its subtleties, but this is a book suffused with humor. It is also a warning, a parable about the perils of looking backwards, of believing that the past is brighter than the future. In that it has a lot in common with Perilous Times.
Considering my favorite series at the moment, Justin Lee Anderson’s Eidyn Saga also explores similar themes. Perhaps I want to read books that tell me that things can get better if we start looking forward, if we try to shape our own destiny, without hankering for a time that didn’t exist.
Will James
Despite 2025 being a terrible year on so many fronts, its also the year I read (technically listened) to more books than I’ve ever covered in a single year (not counting comic books).
The biggest reason for that is because my wife convinced me to give Terry Prachett’s Discworld series a try (after a certain ex-favorite author of mine turned out to be a terrible person). She was amazed I’d never read any Pratchett, and she was absolutely right that I would love it. I devoured the entire 49-book Discworld series one after another. I did want to narrow down my favorite part of the series for this write up, though – which was extremely difficult to do!
But at the end of the day (or year as the case may be), while Tiffany Aching, Granny Weatherwax, and the Nac Mac Feegle will always hold a special place in my heart, I have to say that my favorite storyline of all is the City Watch (which is comprised of Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, and Snuff). They are my favorite, especially Commander Vimes, because they detail some of the best and most important character development, and especially growth, that I can remember reading.
The City Watch comprises the most stereotypically bigoted coppers you could ever hope not to read, and yet, despite their flaws and -isms, they manage to become more accepting, inclusive, and decent folks. They truly encapsulate my favorite thing about all of Pratchett’s work, which is that even when everything is terrible, there is hope that even the worst of us or the worst situations, can get and be better. And that’s a hope we can all use nowadays.
Next up on my list is James by Percival Everett. I’ve said this more times than I can count, but I believe Everett is one of the greatest American writers of our time and his awards and prizes seem to indicate I’m not wrong. (Side note, I may be slightly biased because he was one of my college professors MANY years ago). That being said, I read several of his books I’d not yet got to this year, but of them, James was the standout. James is somewhat of a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim (James), who is not at all who he was perceived to be in Huckleberry Finn. James is (self-)educated and well read, and the stereotypical slave talk you’d expect is all a facade he and other slaves use around slavers to keep them comfortable. James is a biting yet hilarious critique of slavery and the depiction and perception of Black Americans pre-Civil War that is also just as, if not more, relevant to our current world.
Speaking of series with a lot of books, The Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore has grown to 39 books since the story of Drizz Do’Urden began in 1988. I have read them all as they came out, and this year, the latest book in the continuation of that saga is actually a new beginning: The Finest Edge of Twilight. While Drizzt and his companions do appear in this book, it is the story of Drizzt’s daughter, Breezy, and it quickly became one of my favorites in the 40-book saga! The reason for that is twofold, the first of which requires a bit of personal backstory.
Back in 1993, I joined my first real Dungeons & Dragons group (2nd Edition) and spent hours creating my first character, an elven Bladesinger. Bladesinging had just been introduced as a Fighter/Mage character kit in The Complete Book of Elves, and I fell in love with the concept. Unfortunately, my character died less than an hour into our first game, and I had to create a new character (something I as a DM now would never allow to happen because it SUCKS and ruins the fun for everyone). Then Bladesinging disappeared from D&D post 2nd Edition. Fast forward to two months ago and the release of Heroes of Faerun, a new expansion for D&D 5e which brought back the Bladesinger as a Wizard subclass. Needless to say, my next character is going to be a Bladesinger! A mere few days later, I saw that R.A. Salvatore’s latest book, The Finest Edge of Twilight, was available and began reading it. To my utter amazement and joy, Breezy discovers the ancient practice of Bladesinging and becomes a Bladesinger. I never imagined I’d see a Bladesinger on the page.
The second reason I love this book is because, like me, Breezy is clearly neurodivergent, clearly having ADHD. Seeing a character literally born of some of my favorite characters I’ve grown up with representing me and my own ADHD while being a Bladesinger was just mind-blowing.
And of course, if you are already an R.A. Salvatore and Drizzt fan, this book has everything you expect – fighting, love, intrigue, magic, monsters, and mayhem – written only the way R.A. Salvatore can.
Lastly, I wanted to mention something completely different – two Regency era romance novels by Madeleine Roux – Much Ado About Margaret and These Violet Delights. I have to admit that I do not have a good frame of reference as I’ve never read any romance novels before this year, but I’m a huge fan of Madeleine Roux’s other work, and my wife and I love watching Bridgerton, so these seemed like a no-brainer to pick up and add to my reading for the year. Both books are great fun and full of characters with agency and growth in a world dead set on dictating and stagnating their lives. The main characters in both books are sisters (Margaret and Violet) and they do make appearances in each other’s books, so I would definitely consider this a mini-series and highly recommend reading them both in order. The intrigue and twists in both books kept me guessing, and I would love to see another book set in Roux’s Regency world.
Jonathan H. Liu
I’ve continued to use Storygraph to track my reading habits (at least the date I finished reading a book and a star rating), so at the end of the year I can look back and see which ones I gave 5 stars, and also think about whether those are still the most memorable titles from the year. As always, I have way too many favorites, but here are some of the highlights.
What these first four titles have in common is that they’re all revisiting familiar territory. Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman is the latest entry in the Seraphina universe, and in fact when I first wrote about it, it was in a stack of other sequels and series. This is a young adult fantasy series that still just sticks with me—I love both the world that Hartman created and the people she has put in it; although the books have dragon and magic, the emotional journeys of the characters have a lot of depth and ring true. The later books branched out and followed other characters, and Among Ghosts introduces us to yet another memorable one.
Also covered in the same column was the conclusion of Phenomena, a comic book trilogy by Brian Michael Bendis and André Lima Araújo. This one is set in a far-future Earth where a weird unexplained phenomenon has changed and mutated both the landscape and the people, leaving behind half-recognizable cityscapes. It’s a little weird, but the payoff in the finale was worth it.
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal is the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, this time taking place primarily on Mars. The future of the colony is uncertain, and there’s some history from the first expedition that has been covered up and Elma is trying to get to the bottom of it. I love this series for the way that it explores a lot of issues that we are still wrestling with in the present day, but paints a picture of some people trying to address them decades earlier than we actually have. It’s also just an intriguing “what if” about the possibilities of space exploration that seem harder to reach these days. I wrote about The Martian Contingency back in August along with two other fantastic books of fiction.
My last visit down memory lane was a longer one: I re-read the entire Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke in preparation for the fourth title, Inkworld. I’d read the original trilogy a long time ago with my wife, and we had also read some portions of them to our older kids, but it had been a while and I needed to refresh my memory. I was reminded again of how much I enjoyed this story about books coming to life (and people entering the world of books).
The next grouping is comics. I read a lot of comics every year, so narrowing down to a few favorites is always, hard, but here are three that I’ve found myself telling people about.
Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer is about a young woman who becomes possessed by a demon the one time she finally skips mass. Although she doesn’t really hold to her Catholic upbringing, she still attended mass every week because of a feeling that something would go wrong otherwise—and then it does. She wrestles with guilt, trying to figure out how to be a good person, while also trying to figure out how to exorcise the demon that won’t leave her alone—even as she wonders if the demon is even real. More about Saint Catherine (and lots of other monsters and witches) here.
Young Hag and the Witch’s Quest by Isabel Greenberg is a retelling of Arthurian legends, told by a character who goes by Old Crone. She shares her stories with Young Hag, who has started to doubt these tales that she’s grown up hearing. Isabel Greenberg is always a wonder to read, often shining a spotlight on the women who get short shrift in traditional folklore and mythology.
Finally, there’s Drome by Jesse Lonergan, covered in this column about hefty comics. The plot of the book is a sort of origin story: chaos and order, personified as gods, create the world and populate it with creatures and people. There’s a struggle between those who only want to conquer and dominate and those who want to advance knowledge and develop culture. What appealed to me the most about Drome, though, was the way it told the story. The way Lonergan uses the comics medium is innovative: the gutters and negative space between panels become part of the illustration. I just discovered that he’s also illustrated the Miss Truesdale series written by Mike Mignola (the Rise of Man storyline has just started up recently and also includes some more creative uses of the medium), so I’m going to be digging into that soon.
My last grouping is of fiction that I enjoyed, and I had to work hard to pare this part down, because there were so many excellent options. Probably my favorite novel of the year was There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM, included in this stack of unsettling fiction. It’s about a secret organization that deals with strange phenomena (if you’re familiar with the SCP Foundation, this fits into that universe), and in particular the division that handles things that resist, destroy, or otherwise mess with memory. How do you research and categorize things that you can’t remember? How do you explore things that your brain avoids thinking about? I found the book utterly fascinating; if only I could wipe my memory of the book so I could start it anew.
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is probably not my usual fare: it’s a fantasy romance novel, and the main reason I gave it a try was because the description mentioned something that sounded like time travel. As it turned out, there’s a sort of time loop involved, but I found myself invested in the characters and the love story, too. The story plays with the idea of myth and legend, and the way that an empire defines itself through the stories that it tells about itself. Here are my thoughts on it.
Okay, one last one: the Semiosis trilogy by Sue Burke. It’s a sci-fi book that spans hundreds of years, and it’s about intelligent plants. A small group of humans, dissatisfied with Earth’s culture, lands on what appears to be an unsettled planet—but it turns out that the plants are the dominant lifeforms, with the ability to think and communicate. The three books are a bit different from each other both in the stories they tell and how they go about it, but I think my favorite was the second book, Interference: a few hundred years after the initial colony, some more humans arrive from Earth to check in, and the plot is about the culture clash between the Earthlings and the Pacifists (as the colonists are known).
Hope you had a rich year of reading in 2025, and that you find some new favorites to read this coming year!
