Some years are easy to summarize. 2025 wasn’t one of them, and these books show why. Across fiction and nonfiction, this year’s most defining reads felt restless, intimate, and sharply tuned into the moment. They wrestled with identity, memory, desire, power, grief, ambition… sometimes quietly, sometimes head-on.
Heart the Lover
Lily King · 2025
The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club A Novel
Ocean Vuong · 2025
The Bright Years
Sarah Damoff · 2025
Isola: Reese's Book Club A Novel
Allegra Goodman · 2025
One Golden Summer
Carley Fortune · 2025
Shield of Sparrows
Devney Perry · 2025
Hungerstone
Kat Dunn · 2025
When the Wolf Comes Home
Nat Cassidy · 2025
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
V. E. Schwab · 2025
Alchemised
SenLin Yu · 2025
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy · 2025
Not Quite Dead Yet
Holly Jackson · 2025
Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor · 2025
The Book of Lost Hours
Hayley Gelfuso · 2025
No More Tears The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Gardiner Harris · 2025
Are You Mad at Me?
Meg Josephson · 2025
Fearless
Lauren Roberts · 2025
Fake Skating
Lynn Painter · 2025
Awake A brutally honest memoir from New York Times bestselling author, Jen Hatmaker
