Best Books of 2025

[tabacoychanel]

Not the most quality books I read but the ones that hit me hardest:

1. M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven —Highly cathartic! Really earned that ending.


2. Kelly Braffet, The Unwilling—I love when unpleasant characters make terrible decisions; bonus if it includes magic. A meditation on agency, and what it means to not have any, and what choices are left to us. Not for everyone but 100% for me.


3. Layne Fargo, The Favorites—Equal parts dishy and wrenching


4. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth — Honestly there is nothing as riveting as rich girl problems. Put my name down for the Edith Wharton Completionist Club.


5. Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age —Ada makes history sexy using her secret weapon: historiography! Ada’s brain is so weird and so brilliant it should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


6. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race—From now on Tchaikovsky is only allowed to write novellas. He gets rambly in his novels but this was a perfect chef’s kiss of a genre-straddler.


7. Kate Elliott, The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land—The duology that converted me to Elliott and her brand of sprawling worldbuilding

Good news: I reviewed almost everything I read in 2025, which was my goal! I didn’t DNF as much as I much as I ought; will work on that in 2026. Every year I bemoan how few older books I’ve read and every year I keep reading frontlist. Not new-release frontlist, but published in the last five years. I certainly don’t think I had a bad reading year. It was, for lack of a better word, mid. 2025 was the year I read the first volume of Middlemarch and just did not have the stamina to continue….maybe I would have if I’d shifted other stuff around and made room for it? In 2025 I joined two in-person book clubs and two online ones, which is 3.5 book clubs too many. Sometimes the discussions were great and sometimes they were fine, but the main selling point was I was unlikely to have picked the books on my own so it broadened my reading horizons.

2025 SUPERLATIVES

MOST AMBITIOUS: Daryl Gregory, When We Were Real and Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games and Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword
MOST OUTSIDE MY COMFORT ZONE Agustina Bazterrica, The Unworthy
MOST FUN: David Weber, On Basilisk Station and Layne Fargo, The Favorites and Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
MOST REGRET READING: Jennifer Armintrout, From Blood & Ash
MOST LIKELY TO ASCEND TO COMFORT READ STATUS: Meg Shaffer, The Lost Story
MOST RELATABLE: Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Invented the Internet as We Know It
MOSTLY HAVE A CRUSH ON THE AUTHOR’S BRAIN: Susanna Clarke, Piranesi and Ann Leckie, The Raven Tower and Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance

1. Kelly Braffet, The Unwilling (2019)


2. Anne Bishop, Written in Red (2013)


3. Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici (2011)


4. Elizabeth Knox, The Absolute Book (2019)


5. Kelly Braffet, The Broken Tower (2022)


6. Layne Fargo, The Favorites (2025)


7. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814) ((reread))


8. Rosemary Simpson, Lies That Comfort and Deceive (2018)


9. Naomi Novik, Buried Deep and Other Stories (2024)


10. Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird (2017)


11. Hernan Diaz, Trust (2022)


12. David Weber, On Basilisk Station (1993)


13. Jennifer Armintrout, From Blood and Ash (2020)


14. T. Kingfisher, Nettle and Bone (2022)


15. Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword (2024)


16. M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven (2023)


17. Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Invented the Internet as We Know It (2022)


18. Abby Jimenez, The Friend Zone (2019)


19. Meg Shaffer, The Lost Story (2024)
    


20. C.J. Cherryh, The Dreamstone (1983)


21. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)


22. Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009)


23. Linda Holmes, Back After This (2025)


24. T. Kingfisher, Swordheart (2018)


25. Timothy Zahn, The Icarus Job (2024)


26. Jane Harper, The Survivors (2020)


27. Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018)


28. Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures (2023)


29. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race (2021)


30. Stephanie Burgis, Wooing the Witch Queen (2024)


31. Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age (2025)


32. T Kingfisher, A Sorceress Comes to Call (2024)


33. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model (2024)


34. Kailene Bradley, The Ministry of Time (2024)


35. Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup (2024)


36. Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte (2019)


37. Ann Leckie, The Raven Tower (2019)


38. Rainbow Rowell, Slow Dance (2024)


39. Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption (2025)


40. Barry Eisler, All the Devils (2019)


41. Robinne Lee, The Idea of You (2017)


42. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands (2017)


43. Jhumpa Lahiri, Roman Stories (2022)


44. Paul J. McAuley, Pasquale’s Angel (1994)


45. Agustina Bazterrica, The Unworthy (2023)


46. Yasuhiko Nishizawa, The Man Who Died Seven Times (1998)


47. Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip (2023)


48. Daryl Gregory, When We Were Real (2025)


49. R.F. Kuang, Katabasis (2025)


50. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (2020)


51. Marie-Helen Bertino, Beautyland (2024)


52. Carys Davies, Clear (2024)


53. Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (2021)


54. Kate Elliott, The Witch Roads (2025)


55. Kate Elliot, The Unnamed Lands (2025)


56. Iain Banks, The Player of Games (1989)


57. Rebecca Fraimow, The Iron Children (2023)


58. Florence Knapp, The Names (2025)


59. Erin Langdon, The Finest Print (2024)


60. Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz (2024)


61. Corinne Low, Having It All: What data tells us about women’s lives and getting the most out of yours (2025)


62. Megan Abbott, You Will Know Me (2016)

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race—From now on Tchaikovsky is only allowed to write novellas. He gets rambly in his novels but this was a perfect chef’s kiss of a genre-straddler.

LOL, this is basically also my conclusion. I have yet to finish any novel of Tchaikovky's despite liking what he is doing in most of them. He just... needs to do it more concisely. Meanwhile Elder Race is a little gem. It is apparently getting a sequel this year, which I just learned when reccing Elder Race to someone.

You have excellent taste in brain crushes, which is of course not a surprise :)

I keep looking at your book lists and reminding myself that I need to read the Daryl Gregory book and make an attempt at The Culture books. One of these days!

[tabacoychanel]

yes, wait till you're on vacation to assay The Culture and start with either book 2 or 3

wait does Elder Race need a sequel though??? i just went on his website and the man has like 8 things coming out in 2026, jeesh

[hamsterwoman]

wait till you're on vacation to assay The Culture and start with either book 2 or 3

Excellent, thank you for the advice!

I don't think Elder Race needs a sequel... but I am curious to read more stuff set in this world, so I'm not going to complain :)