My Top 10 Books of 2025

A subjective list of the best stuff I read this year.

As of right now, I’ve officially read 32 books this year, a bit past my original goal of 25. (I do hope to finish a few more over Christmas break, but I also have my doubts). This is huge for me, since the number of books I read in the last several years has been in the single digits.

Plus, this year was especially great for reading. There were really only a small handful of books that I didn’t love this year, which is amazing. I also think all but one of my favorite books came out this year, it was a really great year for new releases!

Without further ado, here are the top ten books I read this year, in no particular order, because ordered ranking gives me stress hives.

Heart the Lover by Lily King

By far one of my favorite books I’ve read all year, and I’m clearly not alone in this interpretation, seeing as it’s on many best of lists this year. King’s prose had me hooked from the get-go, dropping the reader directly into an unfolding scene without any fanfare. I devoured this book in a single evening, even getting back out of bed to finish reading it because I decided I simply couldn’t wait. It was a beautiful, devastating story of young, all-consuming love, a musing on how the choices we make, or don’t make, have reverberating ripple effects across our entire lives. It was utterly crushing, I’m talking full-on ugly sobbing in the wee hours of the morning.

Favorite Quote

“You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.”

Read if you like: Campus novels, love triangles, utter emotional devastation.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

This was a book that I largely paid no attention to, not really thinking it would be for me, and was IMMEDIATELY hooked. It was so good, such a unique take on magic, academia, hell, etc. I was fascinated from page one and blazed through it, despite it being one of the longest books I read this year. Basically, it follows two grad students on a quest to retrieve their advisor from hell. If that doesn’t immediately pique your interest, I don’t know what to tell you. This was the first R.F. Kuang book I’ve read, and it made me immediately grab Babel and Yellowface. I found her prose so intriguing and well-written. Read it!!!

Favorite Quote

“Surely no one else lived like this - burdened by the tiniest details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.”

Read if you like: Magical realism, dark academia, enemies to lovers, feeling smart.

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

I was really craving something lighter after finishing several heavy books, and I’d been seeing this one constantly online, but avoiding it because the name and cover art aren’t what I normally gravitate to. Joke’s on me!!! This book was utterly charming, and had really fascinating worldbuilding for how short and succinct it was. It was sort of like if Nora Ephron wrote Harry Potter, and I immediately wanted 10 more books like it. It follows Sera Swann (I know, I know…) a witch who lost her magical ability as a teenager when she panicked and resurrected her great-aunt from the dead. Frankly, I would have done the same! It’s so heartwarming, without being overly cloying in my opinion (Sera and Clemmie’s snark provide a good counter to anything too sappy). I adored the way Mandanna describes her version of magical powers and ability, I found it so unique and refreshing.

Favorite Quote

“And what she saw, for the first time, was not ugliness at all but pain so enormous and consuming that it had felt like dying. I’m sorry, she said silently to her past self. I’m sorry I hated you. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder. All the shame that had been tangled up in the memory was annihilated, leaving only compassion and regret in its place.”

Read if you like: Cozy fantasy, found family, redemption arcs, satisfying conclusions.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This book was one of those that I was super excited about from the premise, and it overdelivered. I love stories that are told in varying timelines, like this one is. And I loved the tie-in to academia across a couple different generations. I also thought that this book had a really interesting take on witches – like something between a vampire and a demon. I’d be curious to know if there is something like this in actual Mexican folklore. If you do read this book, be aware that there is some rape-y, incest vibes that I wasn’t expecting, though it’s brief and not described graphically. Just heads up, if that’s a dealbreaker for you.

Favorite Quote

“She had a fondness for stray animals and slightly damaged things - the chipped frame of a mirror, the weathered pages of a book that has been kissed by the rain, the sweater that has been nibbled by a troublesome moth - which primed her to look kindly on a man like him. But she ought not to. Strays bit sometimes, and certain old books were suffused with pernicious mold.”

Read if you like: Witchcraft, folklore, dark academia, 90s campus novels.

Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks

I adored this book, first and foremost. It was heartfelt, beautifully written, and completely unexpected – like a mix of Gilmore Girls, Coraline, and The Haunting of Bly Manor. Sparks offered a fresh take on the concept of ghosts and hauntings, which was really intriguing to me. Plus I’m a sucker for a plucky girl detective character.

This book was an intimate portrait of mothers and daughters, of family, both found and born into, and of the lengths people will go to hide their secrets. It really felt like it was written for me specifically, leaning into, and ultimately subverting, all my favorite tropes. Sparks’ writing had a poetic cadence to it but never felt overwrought or overbearing that I found incredibly captivating, as well as the use of multiple points of view.

Read If You Like: Nancy Drew, ghost stories, complex mother-daughter relationships, plucky girl detectives, Shirley Jackson.

Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley

I read this not too long after I read (and was a bit disappointed in) Normal People by Sally Rooney. To me, this was a wayyyyy more compelling story of toxic, star-crossed lovers who can’t just leave each other well enough alone. I liked the music aspect of it, especially because it solved a lot of what I felt was lacking in Normal People – namely, these two characters actually have at least one interest in common outside of each other. (I know that the point of Normal People is it’s a terrible relationship and they’re lowkey not that great of people but I really didn’t love reading it, idk!).

Favorite Quote

“Honestly, how many different ways is it even possible for the same two people to break each other’s hearts?”

Read if you like: Sally Rooney, Daisy Jones and the Six, the early-mid 2000s indie music scene.

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

I’ve talked about this book SO much this year, but I really loved it. It’s a sapphic retelling of Carmilla, which I still have not read (oops) but I know I will also love. Set in the age of the industrial revolution at the turn of the century, it follows Lenore, a woman who finds herself in a loveless marriage of convenience that no longer feels convenient. On the way to their new country house, Lenore and her husband encounter the dazzling and enigmatic Carmilla, stranded following a carriage crash. They take her to their home where she recuperates and begins to really get under everyone’s skin in more ways than one. ;)

This book has such a satisfying ending that had me literally grinning ear to ear in a really unhinged way. You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out!

Favorite Quote

“Before, I stood on the banister of the balcony above the dining hall and thought the solution to the burden of myself was to end it all. How foolish that seems now. How futile. I could go, and no one would care. How much better to make them all regret knowing me.”

Read if you like: Vampires, lesbians, satisfying revenge plots, the industrial revolution.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

I decided to give Ms. Sally Rooney another try after Normal People left me less than impressed, and I’m so glad I did! I really enjoyed this book. The characters were realistically flawed, but overall had likable, relatable qualities that I just felt were missing from Normal People. I almost want to re-read that book, or watch the Hulu series, to see if I was just in a bad mood the week I read it, but idk. Anyways, reading BWWAY during the second Trump administration (gag me) really hit different with the ongoing themes of the past and the future and when history ended, and all that good stuff. I enjoyed it enough as I read it, but this has been one that has grown and stuck with me since. I can’t stop thinking about the below quote:

Favorite Quote

"I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren't we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us. Or maybe it was just the end of one civilisation, ours, and at some time in the future another will take its place. In that case we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something."

Read If You Like: Being sad, thinking philosophically about the modern era and all it’s bullshit and beauty.

The Lamb by Lucy Rose

I actually originally gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads, but I have been thinking about it non-stop since I read it so I went ahead and changed that. I read it right after I finished Nightbitch, so I was clearly in a “raw meat as a euphemism for female rage” phase. This book on the surface is a rather gory tale of cannibalistic women, but underneath is an achingly beautiful meditation on mothers and daughters, and especially what its like to not get the love and care you need from your mother. I finished it, thought “huh, that was weird” and then suddenly I was sobbing in my bathroom so… it’s a slow burn but it’s incredible. (Though if cannibalism specifically freaks you out – I know some people really get the ick reading or thinking about that – maybe skip this one).

Favorite Quote

“Men are forever thought of as boys. But girls? Once we’re mamas or once we’re ripe, we can never be girls again. Not in their eyes. But we are always girls and daughters, underneath. Always.”

Read if you like: Complex mother-daughter relationships,

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez

A beautiful, eerie, haunting look at girlhood and first loves and the devastating unreliability of your own memory and sense of self. The lush, Florida Everglades setting, the vast, mazelike house, and creeping sense of unspecified terror and wrongness had me hooked from the first sentence. This was one of those books that felt like it was tailor-made for me, and it did not disappoint. It was more tender and touching than I expected in parts, and deeply unsettling in others, which are two qualities I really value in horror novels.

Favorite Quote

"The image of us side by side in the mirror before leaving for a night out would be one of the last things to leave my mind, I was sure. In our five-dollar skirts from U.S. Tops, hair set in crunchy waves that reached mid-back, blunt pencil liner smudged on the outer corners of our eyelids, we felt omnipotent. Ten stories tall. When people scoff at groups of girls and say, They all look the same, I want to ask them: Haven't you ever wanted to transcend your flimsy body? Haven't you wished to crack open beside someone and leak into the same pool? Our primping was prayer."

Read if You Like: Shirley Jackson, Southern Gothics, House of Leaves, unreliable narrators, the concept of the past as a haunted house, and endless hallways of doors that may or may not lead to different dimensions.

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