My 2025 in Books!

A few years ago, I began reading again, more than I ever had as an adult. It's been both liberating and comforting to escape into these literary worlds created by imaginative writers of all genres. I read most anything: rom coms, fantasy, mystery/thriller, memoirs, historical fiction, how-tos, and more.

This year, I hit a PR, reading 41 (over 15K pages!) from January through December! I'm not going to profile all 41 here, but you can see the complete list in these screenshots from my Goodreads Year in Books. These images are listed backwards, from December 30 to January 12, 2025, when I finished my first book of the year.

This was my first year in a long time that was rather weak on memoirs. I usually seek out many different types of them, but I guess fiction just spoke to me this year. Here is my Top Ten for 2025, again, counting backwards for a little suspense!

10) The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. No year is complete for me without a Hannah book. She is who helped kick off my interest in reading again, summer of 2022, when I plowed through The Four Winds on a 14-hour drive from the Midwest to the South. No one tells a story quite like Hannah. The depth she goes to share the history of the US or whatever country or time/place she takes us to is unsurpassed. This was no exception, taking on a troubled pioneering family in post-Vietnam War wild, remote Alaska. Everything that could happen to them (inside their four walls and out) happened, and at times, you did begin to wonder when this family would catch a break. But Hannah is known for describing to a T historical times as they were, and I believe her when she shows us the mess that wartime makes on families trying to rehabilitate back into society--of any kind--whether populated or not.

9) We All Live Here, by Jo Jo Moyes. Every now and then, you need to read a good chick lit about a family crazier than you're own, and this was the one for me this year. Both LOL funny in many moments and spot-on accurate about raising kids and having older parents. I really enjoy Moyes's versatility--that she can produce historical fiction as eye-opening about American history as Giver of Stars (I knew nothing about the pack horse librarians until I read that one) and contemporarily enjoyable as Someone Else's Shoes is proof that she can tackle just about any time and place and tell an engaging story about it.

8) Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I had to get this one in before the movie premieres this year. I thoroughly enjoyed The Martian and the movie as well several years ago, so I know his books are top-notch sci fi. This one gets a lot more technical than Martian, and in my constant state of older parent distraction/exhaustion, I did find it overwhelming at times. But I can't see the story being told any other way. You do need to understand how things get to the crisis humankind finds itself in (the sun is dying, and world leaders need to find out why). Full of comic relief and suspense, along with the science-y stuff, Project Hail Mary's ending is so perfect, that I actually see Hollywood screwing it up because it can never leave well enough alone. But I still have high hopes for it because RYAN GOSLING!!

7) 107 Days, by Kamala Harris. If you don't want to read what I have to say about this one, scroll on past this entry. VP Harris is half my heritage, and many of us see ourselves in her. That is the main reason I wanted to read this book, but I also really wanted to know what she thought about last year. Say what you will about how the Democrats should have handled things, but what I gained from reading this was how a person in a very, very difficult spot attempted to do a shit-ton in just over 3 months--and no one gave her credit for that. And well, they still don't. Not many folks were on her side, including my beloved Anderson Cooper (as well as most of the media). (Jake Tapper's shit on a shingle isn't accurate, folks. It's maddening how much press that got, given that there was a whole other side to the story.) I was moved to tears in many spots, and if you fancy yourself an "all sides of the issue" thinker, you should take a moment to read this one. You don't know, unless you know.

6) Broken Country, by Claire Leslie Hall. What a beautiful, sweeping, absolutely stunning story of love, loss, classism, family drama, and so much more. I read a few too many "English countryside" books this year, to the point where I grew bored by year end. But thankfully, I got to this one first, and it has definitely moved me to read more of Hall's books in the near future. The tale of these two lovers is told so beautifully, you forgive their mistakes and end up wishing only the best for them. Now, that's some great storytelling!

5) American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. I stupidly fell for the drama surrounding this book in 2020 when it was published, when the author was getting cancelled for daring to be white and write about non-white people. I was too much of an "ally" to give her the credit she deserved. Oh PUH-leeze. Is this not what EM Forster and Rudyard Kipling did about India in A Passage to India and The Jungle Book, respectively, and have since enjoyed decades of critical acclaim? And they are WHITE GUYS. <eye roll> But when a white woman dares to travel to another country and walk the walk of the people she's writing about, and then, well, WRITE ABOUT IT, the Oppression Olympians have to come for her. Sigh... This book needs to be required reading now, more than ever, amid these times of ethnic cleansing during this pathetic administration. I think it is the best fictional and likely accurate account of what migrants go through to get here, what they're trying to get away from, and what drives them to endure what they do. This quote by author Sandra Cisneros sums it up best, in my opinion: “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas. It’s the great world novel! This is the international story of our times… a masterful work of great spiritual power.”

A Latina praising the work of a white woman telling the story of her people! Thankfully, Cummins has come back from that COVID-year shunning, as the book has mostly 4-5-star reviews everywhere.

4) The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. This one needs to be required reading at the high school level, if it isn't already. This is a story about black teens living in gang-infested city boroughs, navigating the pressures of parental expectations and peer influence, and of course, police brutality. It's told from the perspective of one of the teens in a palatable way for young adults. I plan to have my middle schooler read it in a year or two. (The gang violence will affect my already poor sleeper, so I'm waiting a bit for that reason.) So many important dichotomies were posed in this one: The black kid of lesser means attending the rich, white private. A father with a criminal record remaking his way as a responsible small business owner. A strong black mother figure tolerating her man's allegiance to his community while wanting better and more for her kids. Both American Dirt and The Hate U Give are important much-needed testimonies of the highly charged racial divides in our country right now.

3) Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I am a huge fan of Reid, and this one did NOT disappoint. No pun intended, but it literally took my breath away. In tears by the end because the love story here is so damn moving, I longed for it to just not be over. I loved the characters, their trajectory, the story, the time period, and how very much I learned about the human capacity for love, at a time in our history when two people loving each other as these two did was not publicly acceptable. I hope this becomes a movie and that Hollywood doesn't mess it up because I'm an '80s kid, and I need to see the NASA shuttle program on screen in this fictional perspective.

2) The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. OK, let me start of by saying that I read this long before The Eras Tour Docu-Series came out and we got a glimpse of Taylor Swift listening to it! Recommended to me by a book club friend, I was skeptical, mainly because I had, for some reason, never heard of LIz Moore or come across any of her books. This story about a remote summer camp for teens and the sordid family history surrounding its founders that comes to light when one of the teens goes missing one summer is so well told, I had goosebumps throughout the whole thing. Told in multiple time periods from multiple perspectives, including, surprisingly, the detective assigned to the investigation, it's so engaging, I blew through it in less than a week. I never read books in less than a week, which is probably why I will NOT get to 48 or more books next year!

1) The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by VE Schwab. I am not sure I can put into words how much I adored every word of this book. I am a sucker for anything narrated by Julia Whelan, and when I learned she did this rather atypical one for her (it's very dark at times, and is not the type of story she's known for, as Emily Henry's, Hannah's, and Reid's narrator of choice), I had to investigate. But she is so perfect to tell this part-historical fiction/part-modern romance story about a girl who makes a deal with the devil and ends up walking the Earth for centuries, taking readers through a tumult of time periods. Suspenseful, intriguing, engaging, and sweeping--through epic historical times with eloquent and ethereal prose. It was gorgeous, start to finish, and I hope, out of any of these, this is the one you pick up and read, so we can discuss it!

Photo from Savannah Gilbo.

Honorable mentions include Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarity (was actually a tough call deciding between this and The Great Alone as my Number 10); These Summer Storms, by Sarah MacLean; Hello Stranger, by Katherine Center (whom I met at a book signing over the summer for her latest release); and Sourdough: A Novel, by Robin Sloan. All of these were light-hearted reads with some good comic relief against the heavier ones.

I also "read" more on audio than I ever had before, and really only a handful in print. I would like to switch that up this year, but all the time walking dogs and driving around town taking kids to and fro lends itself well to audio, so I doubt that will change much in 2026. I don't think I'll read more than an average of 3-4 books a month, mainly because I can't remember storylines and often forget endings if I cram too much more into a month. Kudos to the friends posting 3-digit book counts for the year! That will never be me, and I am OK with that! Lastly, I want to get better at DNF-ing a book. Just because it's the book club pick doesn't mean I have to read it, especially if I cannot stand it within the first 50 pages. It's a waste of the too little time I do not have to read EVERYTHING ELSE that's out there! What were your favorite reads of the year? Please share in the comments!