2025 Reading year in review

I’ve been sharing my thoughts on books and my reading round ups on various social media platforms over the years. But those spaces don’t feel quite right these days. We’ll see if this is a better home! 

Snapshot

This year, I’ve read at least 118 books. Of those books, 74 were published in 2024, with a large emphasis on literary fiction that lean into genre elements. My fiction/non-fiction split was 81/19%, with the nonfiction leaning heavily on memoir. Audiobooks made up 17% of my reads. Half of the books I read were by Authors of Color. 

The biggest shift in my reading this year was joining NetGalley and requesting Advanced Reading Copies in exchange for honest reviews. Nearly 40% the books I read this year were galleys. (It still boggles my mind that publishers will give me free books and all they ask for in return is I share what I think of them. What a world.) 

In a year where the dominant bookish story seems to be that there weren’t standouts readers can all agree on, I certainly found lots of books to fall in love with. 

Top 9 books of 2025

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai 
• One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This, Omar El-Akkad
• The Unveiling, Quan Barry 
• The Wilderness, Angela Flournoy 
• Endling, Maria Reva 
• The Salvage, Anbara Salam
• Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy 
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones 
• On the Calculation of Volume, Volume 1, Solvej Balle 

Books I recommended the most this year: 

• Endling, Maria Reva 
• The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar

Climate disaster I would least like to live through: 

• Tilt, Emma Pattee 
• The Antidote, Karen Russell
• Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy 

Books I truly wish had gotten more hype this year: 

• Endling, Maria Reva 
• People Like Us, Jason Mott

Main character I would most like to befriend: 

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai 
• The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, Glenn Dixon (2026 release) 

Book most tailor-made for me: 

• This Year: 365 Days Annotated, John Darnielle 

Favorite use of time travel/alternate realities: 

• On the Calculation of Volume, Volume 1, Solvej Balle 
• Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, Bob the Drag Queen
• Ten Incarnations of Rebellion, Vaishnavi Patel

Best and most problematic sapphic vampires: 

• Hungerstone, Kat Dunn (Sorry, VE Schwab!) 

Most resonant book with the bleakest, most distressing premise: 

• Secondhand Time: An Oral History of the Fall of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Alexiévich

Most interesting literary spin on a classic: 

• Sing to Me, Jesse Brown (the Illiad) 
• Helen of Troy, 1993, Maria Zoccola (also the Illiad)
• Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Dante’s Devine Comedy) 

Best novel told in a single, endless sentence: 

• Angel Down, Daniel Kraus (What a wild format. Loved it.) 

Most expectedly hilarious book about the aftermath of a massacre (really): 

• The Book of I, David Greig

Favorite backlist book of the year: 

• Erasure, Percival Everett

Most divisive reading experience: 

• Hunchback, Saou Ichikawa

Novel with the least clear ending that completely worked for me: 

• The Hounding, Xenobe Purvis

Novel with the least clear ending that did NOT work for me: 

• Audition, Katie Kitimara 

Favorite return to a fictional universe: 

• Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins

Best murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence (or favorite historical fiction, or favorite epistolary novel): 

• Perspective(s), Laurent Binet

Books I read at the exact correct time to understand our current political moment: 

• Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, Paola Ramos
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad
• The People’s Project, Saaed Jones and Maggie Smith
• Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, Peter Beinart

Cozy dystopian novel about sentient robots that was too cozy for me: 

• Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz 

Cozy dystopian novel about sentient robots that successfully moved me to tears:

• The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, Glenn Dixon (2026 release) 

Best use of audiobook format to bring a story to life: 

• The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar 

2025 releases still staring at me from my TBR shelf that I’m most likely to actually read:

• No Friend to this House, Natalie Haynes 
• Heart the Lover, Lily King
• House of Day, House of Night, Olga Tokarczuk 

Most anticipated 2026 releases: 

• Cool Machine, Colston Whitehead
• London Falling, Patrick Radden Keefe 

Approved 2026 ARCs I’m most excited to dig into next: 

• Here Where We Live Is Our Country, Molly Crabapple
• Kin, Tayari Jones
• Burn Down Master’s House, Clay Cane
• Go Gentle, Maria Semple

And now… onto 2026!