It’s the last day of 2025, and I can hardly believe how productive my reading year has been. I’ve been blogging since 2012, and over the years, I’ve had varying levels of success with my Book a Week goal. But for the first time ever, I doubled it—finishing the year having read a total of 104 books! While I’m not quite ready to rebrand as Two Books a Week, I’m incredibly proud of this milestone.
Before I dive into the exciting titles already waiting for me in 2026, I wanted to take a moment to highlight ten of my favorite reads from 2025. Reading this many books exposed me to a wide range of authors, genres, and perspectives. While no single title stood head and shoulders above the rest, each of these books left a lasting impression and stayed with me long after I turned the final page. Below are my top ten favorites of the year, listed alphabetically by title.
Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivy
Eowyn Ivey’s Black Woods, Blue Sky is a quietly powerful, genre-blurring novel set against the stark beauty of Alaska. It follows Birdie, a young single mother doing her best to raise her daughter on her own, whose life is altered when a reclusive outsider enters their world and offers both connection and the possibility of escape.
Written with Ivey’s signature lyrical prose, the novel unfolds like a modern fable—tender, haunting, and emotionally rich. Black Woods, Blue Sky is a moving meditation on love, survival, and the pull of freedom, and a deeply memorable read.
Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell is a razor-sharp psychological thriller about deception, charm, and the danger hiding behind a familiar face. The novel centers on a magnetic man who appears in multiple women’s lives under different names—offering comfort, love, and stability while quietly unraveling everything around him.
Told through shifting perspectives, Jewell expertly tightens the tension as the connections come into focus and the truth turns dark. Don’t Let Him In is twisty, compulsive, and deeply unsettling, delivering the kind of page-turning suspense that defines the thriller genre.
Ghosts of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino
Few moments in history carry the weight and devastation of August 6, 1945. Ghosts of Hiroshima revisits that day through the voices of those who survived the atomic bombing, offering an intimate, deeply human account of a tragedy too often reduced to dates and numbers.
Centered on memory and survival, Ghosts of Hiroshima examines how trauma endures across generations—through illness, guilt, fractured families, and an unresolved moral reckoning with nuclear warfare. Unflinching yet compassionate, it is a sobering, essential work that honors the people behind the history and insists their stories be remembered.
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a bold, inventive novel that imagines a world where historical figures return to life and confront the modern age. When Harriet Tubman reappears and decides the best way to continue her fight for freedom is through a hip-hop album, she teams up with a washed-up record producer whose life—and purpose—may be changed forever.
Sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving, the novel blends speculative history with pointed social commentary. Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert sees Bob the Drag Queen use humor and imagination to explore freedom, legacy, and the ongoing struggle for equality, marking a confident and thought-provoking literary debut.
The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter
The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter is a quietly devastating novel about fathers and sons, memory, and the uneasy space between who we believe our parents are and who they truly were. The story follows Steven Mills, who idolized his charismatic father as a boy—until ambition, secrecy, and eventual disappearance fractured his family and left lasting wounds.
Years later, as an adult grappling with his own failing marriage and strained relationship with his child, Steven sets out to uncover what became of his father. Porter’s restrained, elegant prose turns this search into a profound meditation on nostalgia, identity, and inheritance. The Imagined Life is intimate, searching, and deeply human—a novel that lingers with quiet emotional force.
King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes is a blistering Southern noir epic about family, loyalty, and the violence woven into legacy. When Roman Carruthers returns to his hometown after his father is left comatose in a suspicious crash, he’s pulled back into a web of buried secrets, criminal debts, and long-simmering trauma alongside his brother and sister.
With razor-sharp prose and relentless momentum, Cosby delivers a crime novel that’s as emotionally charged as it is brutal. King of Ashes is gritty, ambitious, and morally complex—a modern American crime saga that confirms Cosby as one of the genre’s most powerful voices.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Returning to Panem with Sunrise on the Reaping proves far more necessary—and powerful—than expected. Set during the 50th Hunger Games, the novel follows a teenage Haymitch Abernathy as the Capitol marks the Quarter Quell by doubling the number of tributes, turning the Reaping into an even crueler spectacle of control and punishment.
Freed from the question of who survives, Suzanne Collins delivers a sharper, more politically charged story that digs deep into propaganda, resistance, and the cost of defiance. Sunrise on the Reaping is darker, more emotionally devastating, and strikingly relevant—a prequel that not only enriches the series’ mythology but stands as its most urgent and accomplished entry.
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June is a sharp, tender novel set over the emotionally charged days surrounding a wedding—where joy, resentment, and unresolved history collide. Gail Baines, recently pushed out of her long-held job and on the brink of unwanted change, must navigate her daughter’s impending marriage, the return of her ex-husband, and a family secret that threatens to upend everything.
With wit, warmth, and remarkable emotional precision, Tyler explores aging, independence, and the fragile negotiations of family life. Three Days in June is deceptively light yet richly layered, balancing humor and heartbreak in a way that feels both honest and quietly profound.
Whistle by Linwood Barclay
Linwood Barclay’s Whistle is a chilling supernatural thriller about grief, guilt, and the horrors that refuse to stay buried. After losing her husband and watching her career unravel following a devastating tragedy tied to her children’s books, Annie Blunt retreats with her young son to a quiet town upstate—hoping distance will bring healing. Instead, a mysterious model train set and increasingly unsettling events suggest something far darker has followed them.
Blending emotional realism with creeping dread, Barclay delivers a story that feels both classic and sharply modern. Whistle is eerie, fast-paced, and deeply unsettling, anchored by rich characters and an atmosphere of mounting unease. This compulsively readable novel proves that even the smallest things can carry immense terror.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore is an atmospheric, emotionally rich novel set on a remote island near Antarctica, where a grieving father and his three children safeguard the world’s largest seed bank. Their isolated existence is upended when a mysterious woman washes ashore during a violent storm, bringing connection—and secrets—into their fragile world.
With lyrical prose and a deep reverence for nature, McConaghy crafts a haunting story of family, trust, and survival. Wild Dark Shore is quietly powerful, deeply moving, and lingers long after the final page.
Have you read any of these books? What was your favorite read of 2025? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. This year has been a huge reading year for me, and I can’t wait to see what 2026 has in store. Whatever the future holds, you can count on me to share all my bookish thoughts right here on A Book A Week!
I still need to read something by Lisa Jewell! I've only heard good things. I hope you have a wonderful New Year, Ethan!
ReplyDelete104 Books is awesome! I read 100 books this year.
ReplyDeleteHappy New year, Let's hope 2026 is a good one.