The Best Books I Read in 2025

My top 8, plus a few honorable mentions 📚

Happy New Year to you!

Despite all of the…things *gestures wildly* that were happening last year, one thing I never stopped doing was reading my little books (and big books—the first book I read in 2025 was over 800 pages long). And I could’ve read more if I wasn’t so distracted by *gestures wildly*, but I digress.

I finished the year having read 72 books, just over my reading goal of 70 books. I only mention the number so you’ll know how much these eight books stood out. The ratio feels important in this case. A top eight out of ten wouldn’t make most of them very impressive, right?

Either way, here’s the best of the best! I hope you’ll find something new to add to your TBR list and you’ll love it as much as I did.

1. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

It’s only right for Martyr! to be first on this list. It was the first book to blow me away last year (the first 5-star!), and it was probably my favorite book of the year, if I must pick one.

Martyr! is about a young Iranian-American poet, Cyrus, and his search for meaning and belonging. His family history is full of mysteries, and after his father’s death, he grapples with his new identity as an adult orphan, flailing between addiction and sobriety, and quests for love and attention. His questions ultimately lead him on an art-filled journey to find the meaning of life and death, taking him to places he hadn’t expected and offering answers he didn’t know were possible.

I loved this book for its poetic prose (the author is a poet, after all), deep exploration of multiple themes (meaning, identity, art, addiction, love, sexuality, family), and unique narrative structure, which weaved in Cyrus’ writings and switched back and forth from scenes of Cyrus’ family in Iran decades prior and Cyrus’ present day-to-day life.

2. The Wedding People by Alison Espach

I get warm, fuzzy feelings when I think about The Wedding People, despite some of the darker elements present in this otherwise witty novel.

It’s about love, loss, and giving yourself another chance at life. The main character, Phoebe, has lost her marriage and her career ambitions. She had checked into a luxury hotel with her own plans when she was confronted by a tightly wound bride and her wedding guests. Phoebe has slipped through the cracks and, as the only person at the hotel who isn’t there for the wedding, the bride expects Phoebe to, at the very least, not ruin her wedding.

What unfolds is so much more, and I found these unexpected turns beautiful—for both Phoebe and the wedding party. This story reminded me how life’s unplanned detours can ultimately put you on the right path and why opening yourself up to strangers is a part of the joy of living.

I’d recommend reading this book at any point, but it’d be especially great for your summer reading list.

3. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

This excellent book is a shining example of why you’ll likely never see a “best books of the year” list from me before the end of December. I snuck this short read in at the end of the year, and walked away amazed at how sharp and compelling it is.

The official book synopsis for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This begins this way, providing important context:

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”

The author provides the moral clarity we all need in this moment. Part memoir and part manifesto, he grapples with the lies the West has sold us, from “lesser evil” politicians to “freedom and justice for all,” and still manages to serve up hope and a vision for a better future. This book is incredible, and incredibly necessary.

4. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz

I finished How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water exactly one month after I was laid off. I must’ve been subconsciously drawn to a main character who was also job searching, and I felt a sort of kindredness toward Cara Ramero.

Like Martyr!, I loved this book for its unique narrative structure. The story is told through Cara’s sessions with a job counselor, in which she overshares hilariously and attempts to navigate rising debt, neighborhood gentrification, grief, and estranged family relationships. Despite how not funny those topics are (plus unemployment), this story is full of humor and lightness and rich in wisdom. The writing is vibrant and immersive, and presents a nuanced, relatable depiction of rebuilding your life and identity after job loss.

5. Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker

I included Awake in my recent list of what I read for Nonfiction November, and as predicted, it stood out as one of the most well-written, memorable books I read last year.

I love memoirs (I read 12 in 2025), and this one was raw and sharp-witted in ways I didn’t expect. For one, I was familiar with Hatmaker’s history as a public figure in Christian spaces, but I wasn’t familiar with her writing game. The way she drew insight from some of the most painful moments of her life was masterful, and she revealed the lessons in gut-punching vignettes.

It’s a memoir primarily about her divorce—the title is inspired by hearing her husband whisper-talking to another woman while lying beside her in their bed, thinking she was asleep. The memoir isn’t wholly devoted to the divorce, though, and includes stories about her experiences and moments of enlightenment around growing up in purity culture and experiencing body shame, questioning the gender limitations she was taught in church, the way Christian media outlets treated her family, and coming into her own as someone who never expected to be divorced or find herself outside of the faith circles she once loved.

I loved this book for its candor, sharp writing, and tribute to the power of community.

6. Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck

There’s a small chance I remember this book fondly because of how hard it had me bawling on a plane, but nevertheless, Shark Heart is a stunning portrait of loving someone who is slipping away.

I’ll borrow from my review for the rest:

Shark Heart strikes an impressive balance between beauty and bizarreness. The writing is poetic and stunning, and the premise is weird, but the author somehow conveys the intense emotions one might have if their new husband starts turning into a shark.

…Shark Heart represents a lot of what I love about literary fiction…don't just tell me that this man has a great white shark mutation condition and his wife is sad—show me how the hearts around him break a little more each time his skin changes or he grows a fin. Show me, through the kind of ridiculous assertion that a human could turn into a shark, how it feels to begin to lose someone who is technically still alive. Show me what it's like to no longer recognize yourself, lose control of your life and actions, and watch your unfulfilled dreams slip away.

…I had to "suspend my disbelief" to get the message and metaphor, but when I did, this love story felt as real as any other. It didn't make perfect sense for the world I live in, and it was still a powerful, imaginative picture of grief and loss. I didn't exactly believe it, and I didn't have to. It still made me feel it.

7. Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis

Women, Race, & Class is an incisive, powerful book that examines the history of the women’s liberation movement and how past racial inequalities continue to shape contemporary issues such as sexual violence, reproductive rights, and women's experiences in the workforce (particularly domestic work). I learned so much from this book.

This is the second time a book by Angela Y. Davis has landed on my top books of the year list (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle was on my 2023 list), and I’m continuously thankful for her voice as a scholar and political activist.

8. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Chain-Gang All-Stars is the book I’ve talked about more than any other in the past year. It’s easily one of the most engaging, memorable stories I read in 2025.

This book requires fiction readers (especially those in the United States) to reckon with their own reality, and that’s what I appreciated about it the most. While the story is set in a fictional world where two top female gladiators fight for their freedom in a for-profit, entertainment-based system, it’s impossible to miss the parallels between their world and ours.

It’s an action-packed story full of violence and uncomfortable moral dilemmas. Since it’s a dystopian novel, I wanted their depraved, immoral world to exist only in the land of make-believe, but it’s addressing harsh truths about the real prison system in America. This makes it a brilliant and timely book in my eyes.

As I said about it in a previous post:

[Chain-Gang All-Stars] tells an important story about what can happen when mass incarceration and unchecked capitalism meet, producing a society that’s so corrupt and morally bankrupt, it’s both hard and frighteningly easy to imagine.

Honorable Mentions

• Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong

• Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays by Edgar Gomez

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Novel by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Drop your favorite book(s) of 2025 in the comments—I’d love to hear what you loved reading and get some ideas for my 2026 reads. Happy reading, everyone!