The Books of 2025

This was a pretty darn good year for reading. I chalk some of that up to recovery time from my knee replacement, although the month I had the surgery my reading was down (because I was loopy from all the medications and had Goldfish Brain). 

I read 102 books this year with a total of 31,501 pages. Bryce looked up how thick a printed stack of those pages would be (book paper, not thick paper). I guessed 2 feet. 

I was wrong. 

It's 8.5 feet tall! That's a lot of words, a lot of stories, a lot of knowledge. Here's my Storygraph cover collage that is way smaller than I thought it was (I'll include my notebook pages with the list per month at the end that will be infinitely more readable): 

In figuring out my breakdowns for genres, I always struggle a little. There are so many books that cross genres, so some are in multiple categories. Also, I looked at Storygraph to see how my books were classified by genre, and discovered that I do not agree with all their assessments. So, I did the best I could. 

First, the split between fiction and nonfiction was 85 fiction, 17 nonfiction (a mix of essays, memoir, natural history, poetic essays), 

I read 15 books this year that were given to me by Bryce. That's way up! More than one per month, which was my goal for this year. 

My most voluminous genre was horror, at 24, followed by thriller/mystery at 20. (So if you lump those together into mysteriously thrilling horror, as it was kind of a squishy category to differentiate between, it's 44.)

Next was contemporary/literary fiction at 13, followed by fantasy/sci fi with 12 books, historical fiction at 10, and speculative fiction at 5. 

I read 14 young adult/middle grade books. 

Diverse books challenges my categorization skills, but I landed on windows into different experiences, spanning race, ethnic background, disability, LGBTQIA+. I counted 28, with 12 specifically LGBTQIA+. 

Now, for the bests! It was a very wide-ranging year of reading, and so there wasn't an automatic standout for Book of the Year. After reviewing them all, I did come up with 10, and a Book of the Year. Oddly, this was the Year of the Witch (I read four books about witches and they were all quite different.)

My Best Books of 2025: 

10) Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. 
This is an expansive vampire story that tracks multiple women through their transformations, loves, and time periods. It is so, so good and the ending is worth discussing with people! This was not a predictable book in the least. 

9) ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (mostly) Thriving with ADHD by Penn Holderness. 
I wrote lots about this book here, but a quick sum up: the format/design is ADHD-friendly, and it had practical strategies and aha moments galore. I also loved that it was by someone with ADHD, and included sidebars that were from his wife's point of view, which was great for the perspective of someone who lives with someone with ADHD. 

8) Tilt by Emma Pattee.
This book snuck into my subconsciousness and lived there, rent-free, for a long time. It's a bit of an odd duck, imagining a world where a major fault in Oregon produces a catastrophic earthquake. The character at the center is a hugely pregnant woman who was in an IKEA to finally buy her crib when the earthquake hits, and follows her through her journey to reach her husband, who was across town at the time of the quake. It is such an interesting string of what-ifs to sift through. Very well-written, and I loved that it was absolutely never cheesy. And the hugely pregnant lady didn't bother me as it may have years ago... her pregnancy is central to the book (wow does it complicate travel) and so if that is a trigger, maybe skip this one. 

7) The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman.
What a completely delightful book. I picked it up at my favorite independent bookstore because the cover nabbed me, and how could I resist a book about a bookseller who loves books way more than than people? It's a love letter to books and readers, it's a story of found family and finding the courage to be vulnerable. It was funny, it was sweet, it wasn't cheesy...I loved it. 

6) I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
This book was darkly hilarious. It was heartbreaking. The title seems to be the literary equivalent of clickbait -- it's a shocking, harsh statement but not really true. This memoir is an eye-opening look at the horrors of child stardom, an overbearing and narcissistic Show Mom, dysfunctional family in general, surviving substance abuse, and disordered eating. Which does not sound funny at all, but Jennette approaches the insane challenges in her life with such a sense of humor that you can't help but laugh. You also feel a bit like you're watching someone circle down the drain, but it is somehow not a depressing book. It just has a number of very dark moments, but ultimately, it's uplifting. 

5) Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie.
This is Salman Rushdie writing about what happened when he was savagely attacked by a man with a knife at a speaking engagement at Chautauqua in Western NY, his physical and mental recovery, and his thoughts on his assailant. He is such an incredible writer, and really approaches this difficult event and how it changed everything moving forward with such honesty and rawness. 

4) Compound Fracture by Joseph Andrew White. 
This was an eye-opening, gripping, and vengeful story. A trans teen in Appalachia looks to put to rest a family blood feud, faces people who are hateful, violent monsters, and he seeks revenge and justice. Technically horror, and there's some graphic violence, but it is such a satisfying story and you just love Miles. I love this in the author's bio: "Andrew writes about trans folks with claws and fangs, and what happens when they bite back." I look forward to reading more by this author!

3) The Witches of New York by Ami McKay.
Oh, was this a rich and lush world to submerge into! Turn of the century, three women's lives intersect in NY where they run a tea and spell shop. There are dark forces afoot, an Egyptian obelisk, and magical powers, but it is never cheesy and it had me gripped all the way through. It's in Storygraph as "Witches of New York #1" which made me think maybe it's a series, but then there wasn't a #2 that I'm aware of. Sigh.

2) Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. 
This is another witch story, but holy wow, it is so original. A small Hudson Valley town has a resident witch who is kind of like a ghost, because she roams the town and shows up randomly in your house, but has her eyes and mouth sewn shut and NOTHING SHOULD EVER CHANGE THAT. The town has to try to keep outsiders away, because if people wander into town, they can't leave. They become a part of this odd curse. Obviously things go awry, and it was terrifying and just so well done. Also, the author is Dutch and originally wrote the book in Dutch, set in a small Dutch town in the woods, and when he rewrote it in English, he set it in the Hudson Valley (feels like actual Sleepy Hollow), and decided he wanted to make the ending scarier. I wish I could read Dutch! 

1) Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian.
Yep, another witch book, but like NOTHING I've ever read before. This book is an adventure! The town has a resident witch and people (mostly men) want to hunt her down because of an altercation with some folks that ended poorly (for them). She is super un-huntable, but a small party ends up picking up ghosts, and animals, and mysterious children... and there's a seriously evil force who would love nothing more than to destroy the witch and the witch hunters, and is just deliciously vile. It's so good. Like, I would re-read it good. 

Honorable Mentions: 

Definitely Better Now by Ava Robinson
A funny and heartbreaking novel about the after-one-year sobriety experience, dating while sober, and grief. It was so good at bouncing between hilarity and literally making me sob. 

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
I love this book, but it's not for everyone. It is funny and also shines a light on how easy it is to fall on desperate times as a young, single mother, and how society judges efforts to climb back up out of that hole. I learned a LOT about professional wrestling AND OnlyFans. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Awesome historical fiction that is sometimes called "historical fiction biography" -- the story of a real midwife in post-Revolutionary War Massachusetts (the part that's now Maine), a murdered body found in the frozen Kennebec River, how male doctors tried to delegitimize midwives (often with disastrous results), and how the justice system at that time dealt with sexual assault. Fiercely feminist and fascinating. 

Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
This is the second book about Aven Green and her friends and family, and if you haven't read these, even if you're an adult and not a middle-schooler, please go do it. Aven was born without arms, and in the first book her family moves to a dusty theme park in Arizona, far away from the school and people who have known Aven forever and don't think twice about how she does so much with her feet. Aven is also adopted, and I felt the books did a great job of the need to find origins and birth family, and a family supportive of that quest. In this one Aven has survived 8th grade in the new space with her amazing friend group, but now she faces the frontier of high school, and her best friend Connor has moved away. It's hilarious, and touching, and... like so many books this year...made me laugh and cry.

The Worsts, Disappointing, Boooo: 

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden: Yes, I know this is insanely popular and there's a new movie coming out. I hated it. If you want to read something similar that's way better written, read The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine. 

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell: I read this right after my second knee replacement, and I can't remember exactly why I hated it so much but I really, really did. 

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino: I wanted to like this, the premise sounded interesting (woman becomes increasingly unhinged in her pursuit of a house in the DC area in a difficult market), but it had a subplot that had me almost abandon it early on and then towards the end it completely jumps the shark. 

Books that are Hard to Classify/Weird as Hell

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. A delightfully strange and thinky book I reviewed here. 

Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky. On my special shelf, amazing but deeply, deeply weird.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar. An odd futuristic rivalry/love story with jumping times and Red vs Blue (and sometimes I had a hard time telling them apart). Good, but strange. 

The Last Word by Taylor Adams. A totally bonkers, completely unhinged thriller/horror book about a woman who is housesitting in a remote beach location when she gives a one star review to a horror writer... who then utterly terrorizes her. Several mysteries within, but also one of those amazing Final Girl type stories. But utterly bonkers and when you lend it to people they may think slightly less of you, haha. 

Bunny by Mona Awad. This kept coming up in lists and I read it in October, but holy wow is it strange. It's a fever dream, has some similarities to Black Swan,  and leaves you completely confuzzled as to what the hell you just read. I lent it to my best friend, who was like "WHAT IS THIS BOOK????" There's a follow-up, We Love You, Bunny, which I will probably read out of sheer curiosity and my best friend informed me I can tell her about but she won't read. SO WEIRD. 

The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett. Middle-grade YA, a girl who loves math and the sense of control figuring out probabilities gives her decides to make a time capsule of family memories as an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. It's beautiful, heartbreaking, and you have to read it to see why it's hard to classify. Beautiful portrayal of grief, and if you wish to read it, DO NOT GOOGLE IT. There are secrets that will ruin it if you know ahead of time. Our school librarian did this for Young Adult Book Club last year, and it blew everyone's mind. Highly recommend.

That's it! Here are my notebook pages with all the titles and authors by month. What did you read in 2025?