Best Books of 2025

In the near future in Kolkata, India, a family prepares to immigrate to the United States as climate refugees. When a thief breaks into their home in search of food, his life becomes inextricably entwined with theirs as, over the course of one week, they all struggle to survive with their hope and humanity intact. It’s a powerful story made all the more urgent by Majumdar’s use of subtle, specific details and masterfully restrained writing. Nominated for the Kirkus Prize and National Book Award for Fiction, this is a story about a specific moment in history that will resonate for years to come.

When you promise to love your partner “in good times and in bad,” you’re probably not imagining that the bad times will include 117 days lost at sea in a tiny lifeboat with a dwindling food supply and no way to call for help. In 1973, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey accidentally put their vows to the test when a whale rammed a hole into the yacht they were sailing from England to New Zealand. This is the gripping and unforgettable tale of how they endured illness, dehydration, near-starvation, and every emotion on the spectrum and managed to stay married for decades after. It’s an unbelievable story masterfully told.

Mack Morris lives for basketball, but after their father’s death, the game can’t fill the void. Despite being recruited to a top college, Mack feels lost. Then, Liv Cooper transfers to their team. Before long, their chemistry burns on and off the court. Mack hides their feelings, but desire keeps resurfacing. Crane captures longing and tension with poetic precision, turning basketball into a dance of longing. Mack’s doubts about college, the pros, and their own identity drive them toward self-destruction through substance abuse. Even for non-sports fan readers, Crane’s prose makes the rhythm and beauty of the game pulse on every page.

Sangu Mandanna’s first adult romance, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, was acclaimed for its warm, immersive style, and Mandanna – facing all the challenges of delivering a follow-up – could have decided to go a completely different direction with her next book. Instead, she doubled down and provided another cozy novel about found family, this time centered on a witch who’s lost her magic and an inn that calls to those who need it most. Mandanna realizes that “cozy” doesn’t mean a lack of pain or emotion but rather ensuring that a character dealing with those things is offered love and support. And sometimes an undead rooster.

Ava is a divorced middle school teacher. Roman is a self-made and, somehow, ethical billionaire hotel owner. A chance meeting leads to a one night stand. But then Ava finds out that Roman is the best man in her cousin’s wedding, and she is the maid of honor. Roman is delighted and clears his schedule to accompany Ava to Puerto Rico to help organize the wedding. But Ava isn’t so sure. She’s feeling wounded from her divorce, pressure from her family, and unable to trust anything—even her own feelings. I am a former teacher and people pleaser, so I loved seeing Ava work through her complex emotions to get the fantasy romance she deserved!

If Daisy Jones brought you to Taylor Jenkins Reid and Evelyn Hugo made you love her, then Atmosphere can only be described as Taylor Jenkins Reid at her very best. It’s a romance and a character study, exploring what life was like during a particular moment for a very particular set of people: queer women working on the space shuttle program at NASA in the 1970s and 80s. It’s beautiful, moving, and, at times, heart-stopping. Whether describing moments of Joan's life in triumph or disaster, Reid will have you wrapped around her finger. You won't be able to look away—and you’d never want to.

Kitamura starts us out with a tight and masterful portrayal of people playing roles, and thinking about playing roles. Then, at about the halfway point, the stakes are changed, not in terms of register but in terms of what stories are and can do. 

Like many novels that contest and break expectations, Audition is not a general-purpose recommendation. (I would expect it to have the lowest Goodreads star rating of any book on this list, for example). But for readers who are interested in what else is possible in a book, or hell, what else is possible in a life, Audition is something other than satisfying—it is confounding, provocative, and new. 

This brilliant literary romance is a powerful reminder that Black country artists have always been here. One-hit-wonder Luke is honored to open for his idol, 90s superstar JoJo Lane, at her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But he’ll have to confront his complicated past, because the concert is being held in his and JoJo’s small hometown in Arkansas. Luke was close to JoJo’s daughter, August, until a shocking betrayal ripped them apart and jump-started his career. As Luke, August, and JoJo grapple with their complicated relationships to the music industry, a new love song takes shape. It’s fantastic in any format, but I recommend the full-cast audiobook.

All the coziness and character of a Becky Chambers novel with the wit and charm of Martha Wells. I never knew I needed a book about robots running a restaurant in a near-future San Francisco, but Automatic Noodle proved I did. I would die for these robots—or at least leave them lots of really, really good reviews.

When I heard that Awakened was about a coven of trans witches that fight an evil AI, it immediately rose to the top of my most-anticipated list. I'm happy to say it lived up to those expectations, from its dedication—"For everyone who feels betrayed by J.K. Rowling"—to its final page. The whimsical narrator makes for a fun contrast to the cynical main character, reluctantly adjusting to their new powers. Each of the members of this coven is complex and multifaceted, making their slow progression into a chosen family feel satisfying and realistic. Yes, this is a fantastic read for ex-Harry Potter fans, but it's so much more than that.

This is the book I cannot stop recommending or talking about. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cora’s sister was pushed in front of a train. Cora continues to clean up gruesome murders in Chinatown while Delilah’s assailant’s last words, “Bat Eater,” ring in her ears. The mutilated bats at every scene only heighten Cora’s suspicions that the attack on Delilah wasn’t random.  Cora struggles with compulsions and her grief only grows as she begins to notice signs of Delilah everywhere. She turns to her remaining family and her coworkers for help to free Delilah from becoming a hungry ghost forever. Somewhere between horror and murder mystery, Bat Eater is a ghost story for 2025.   

Family weddings are never easy, but Julia’s brother’s is a particular kind of minefield. Since leaving Florida, she’s transitioned and is living her best, queerest life in New York. The references to iconic rom-coms are threaded throughout, but this still feels fresh and original. While Julia’s navigating the minefield of best woman duties for her brother, she encounters a former crush, Kim. Julia re-connects with Kim over a lie, but the genuine spark between them is impossible to deny. Dommu also retains her extremely pithy, irreverent Internet voice, expertly translated into long-form prose. Whatever rom-com she tackles next, I’m there.

You don't have to like Vi to empathize with her experiences as a college dropout living in a Midwest town where she sees herself having no future. But you will certainly be unable to stop reading this book after she discovers a blob on the street and brings it home. This is no ordinary blob, though. It's sentient, and over the course of the story, it begins to grow limbs and a whole personality. Vi realizes she has an opportunity here: make this blob her ideal partner and finally find true, meaningful love. Blob is a weird, funny, and moving read about identity, family, and, err, street blobs.

Maria, in 1532 Spain, latches on to a rebellious marriage to try and get her freedom from all the restrictions placed on her; Alice, in 2019, hopes college will be a fresh start, and is thrilled to meet the mysterious Lottie. The three women unspool into a centuries-long story about how far these women will go in the name of their rage and their desire for freedom. Playing on the same fears and dramas of Interview With the Vampire with a brush of her hit The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, Schwab's newest gives readers richly painted, queer vampires caught in a multi-century web of obsession, immortality, and longing.

After Stone Fruit, I longed for Lai’s second graphic novel about Cannon, a cook, and Trish, a writer, from Lennoxville. Every week, the best friends—“on the uncool side of [their] twenties”—watch a scary film until distance threatens their bond of 14 years. Opening in a trashed Montreal restaurant with a regretful Cannon, the story returns to three months prior. Featuring mostly black-and-white art, I devoured this, obsessed with the use of color, horror influences, and complex relationships. As I reread this stunning meditation on breath, intimacy, and care, I observed what appears in red, which frames birds populate, and how they converge.

Is America a cult? Borden explores this question by diving into the morals and beliefs that shaped Puritanical colonization. The book surveys a cult's characteristics, tracing how groups, laws, and policies throughout American history have led to conspiratorial thinking among its people. This includes why Americans are so susceptible to pyramid schemes; why most American cults have been white and politically right-leaning; and when such thinking has surged in this country's timeline. Engaging and enraging, this is the history and contemporary exploration of America we need right now.

Jim Jones, leader of one of the most notorious cults in history, The People’s Temple, managed to convince 900 people to drink cyanide to their ultimate deaths. But how did he do it? This book traces Jones’s story from his youth growing up during the Great Depression to where and how he convinced people to follow him and his beliefs. You’ll follow Jones and his devotees from California to their off-grid Jonestown compound in the depths of Guyana. Fleming's research is deep, and the story is situated in the experiences of young people growing up within this cult. An example of knockout nonfiction for young adult readers (and beyond!).

I’m still surprised that the BookTok and Bookstagram girlies didn’t become obsessed with this book and hold onto it for dear life. Set in the 2000s, Deep Cuts follows Percy and Joe, two college students who meet at a bar one fall night and instantly bond over their love of music. What follows is a years-long, on-again-off-again relationship (or toxic situationship, if you will) and a creative partnership that always brings them together as passionately as it tears them apart. Full of all the awkward twentysomething behavior most of us would like to forget, Deep Cuts is an ode to the miracle of music and the art of getting by.

What starts as a nonfiction animal classification book takes a wild and hilarious turn when the narrator begins describing why readers should not trust fish. First off, there are massive variations between all the species who fall under this category (some fish are tiny while others are big as a bus … and that’s NOT okay). But more importantly, they might be plotting dastardly plans, such as shipwrecks or even world domination! The comedic timing and hyperbole in the text make this book incredibly fun to read out loud. And the illustrations, by the legendary Dan Santat, are equally important to the hilarity of this picture book.

This blending of science fiction and fantasy takes place in San Francisco along three timelines—two in the past and one in the not-too-distant future. The oldest timeline is in 1906 with Li Nuan, a teen who was sold to a San Francisco Chinatown mob boss to settle her father’s debts. Then in 2006 is a queer, Chinese American named Nathan, who works in tech and is a Burning Man devotee. Finally, the year 2106 is woven in with Maida Sun, a woman with psionic abilities. It’s a beautifully written and thought-provoking examination of our connections and obligations to each other through time.

Susan Choi's sixth novel is a masterpiece, a family saga wrapped in a mystery that haunts its characters. Young Louisa and her father are walking along a beach at night, carrying flashlights. Hours later, Louisa is found alone, barely alive, and her father is never seen again. As Louisa grows up with her mother, the loss of her father hovering over their lives, parts of their pasts are revealed, including a long-held secret. Flashlight is a sharp examination of not only the physical loss of someone, but loss of place, estrangement, and loss of self, as Louisa and her mother carry around a grief with no end. It's a stunning heart-puncher.

This Harlem-set, Jazz Age historical novel tells the story of the nearly forgotten Jessie Redmon Fauset, who changed the course of Black American literature and American literature as a whole. She made history as the first Black woman Editor of The Crisis, the oldest Black magazine in the world, and became known as "The Midwife of the Harlem Renaissance" because of her discovery and mentoring of writers like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen. She wasn't without her drama, though—it was well-known that she and her very married boss, W.E.B. Du Bois, were carrying on in the Biblical sense. And this book dives headfirst into the mess.

Denali Sai Nalamalapu, a climate activist, brings the story of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the people who resisted it to vivid life. Spanning 300 miles through West Virginia and Virginia, the pipeline cut through farms and forests, devastating land. Nalamalapu spent hours with activists, organizing their experiences into six illustrated chapters. Each one depicts small but powerful acts of defiance, like Becky Crabtree chaining herself to her Bronco or Monacan seedkeeper Desirée Shelley preserving her community’s future. With its intimate storytelling, Holler shows how collective, everyday resistance can protect both land and hope.

When it comes to whimsy, irreverence, and outright silliness, Kimberly Lemming is That Girl. In her first sci-fi romance that takes the teeniest amount of inspiration from The Wizard of Oz, a grad student who just wants to complete her research and write her dissertation gets kidnapped by aliens alongside the lion that’s about to eat her, and it just gets more wild from there. Whether it’s about proper academic research, the lines of consent with regard to genetic programming, or trying to make Only One Bed happen when there are plenty to choose from, this book talks about both the serious and the silly in the most hilarious way.

While this book is more divisive than I predicted, I remain a fan and see it as yet more evidence of Kuang's versatility and willingness to take risks as a writer. This is dark academia with an emphasis on the academic, pulling concepts from linguistics, math, and religion to explore the afterlife as only Kuang can. I might be biased as fiction about this realm of the unknown is deep in my wheelhouse, but it's also pretty hard to make a dark academia fantasy stand out from the swiftly-growing category. Katabasis does. It was also compelling enough to attract Hollywood's attention with an adaptation already in the works.

Nobody is writing crime novels like S.A. Cosby is writing crime novels. In King of Ashes, Roman Carruthers has "made good" and left his Virginia hometown for Atlanta. He comes home following an accident that left his father in a coma to find his brother is in deep debt to dangerous people. How far will Roman go to protect his family? The backdrop of the family crematory business provides an atmosphere of omnipresent death and suffocating heat. Meditating on systemic racism and generational trauma, this unflinching book has complex characters that don't easily fit into archetypes and prose so sharp it could draw blood.

This book was such a balm this year with themes of family, community, and love, but mostly Anders’s remarkable ability to make readers believe that magic and healing are within reach for all of us. Jamie is a grad student in New England who is incredibly stressed as she tries to nail down a dissertation that continues to slip through her fingers. Adding to her stress is her relationship with her mother Serena, who has been grieving the loss of her wife and living as a hermit in an old schoolhouse for years. Jamie is also a witch and decides that teaching her mother magic is a great idea to reconnect, yet this goes sideways quickly.

One of my favourite books of all time is The Tea Dragon Society by K. O'Neill. I've been searching for a book that is as comforting and beautiful as that one, and I've finally found it. When Lu stops getting letters from her ah-ma, the famous geozoologist, she and her best friend set out on a trip to find her, learning more about geofauna along the way. This queernorm middle grade fantasy graphic novel is a cozy story that also deals with grief and cultural divides between generations. The illustrations are so stunning that I finished the book and immediately ordered several art prints, which are now proudly displayed on my wall.

This is a deeply researched, definitive biography of transgender activist and artist Marsha P. Johnson. Written by the brilliant multi-hyphenate Tourmaline, this beautifully written book shows Marsha as a whole person, both before and after the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. Many people have heard that Marsha threw the first brick during the Stonewall Uprising, but few people know much beyond that. She was an artist and performer who toured outside of the U.S. She was a poet and muse and a fierce friend bursting with love. This book also includes some gorgeous photographs and is told with the care and reverence that Marsha’s story deserves.

By the time she won the Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy had already lived several lives. Here, she recounts experiences as a poet, activist, architecture student, and award-winning novelist, but the real magic is in Roy's reflections on the complex and ever-changing dynamics of family, relationships, and ambition. You needn't know a thing about her career to find inspiration and intellectual delight in these pages.

Book three in The Legendborn Cycle may be Deonn’s best book yet. Bree Matthews will need her perseverance as she learns to wield her powers away from her friends, the Legendborn Order, and her Root magic ancestral elders. Instead, she must trust a dangerous bargain with the Shadow King—a being that would do anything to claim her power. Meanwhile, Selwyn is fighting his Demonia with the only person alive who can help, and Nick is doing everything he can to find Sel and Bree. Oathbound tests the strength of friendships, institutions, and magic as our heroes confront the true cost of power.

This outstanding, genre-defying novel will ruin your life but in the best way! Two strangers stuck at an airport in Japan start talking, and eventually discover they have both had someone close to them die who had a connection to the same mysterious woman. One of the strangers, Jake, decides he needs to find everything out that he can about this woman, a journey that takes him all over the globe. But each bit of information he gathers only makes her story more mystifying and alarming. Who is this enigma? Part horror, mystery, and 'OMFG', this upsetting, brilliant novel has an ending that will haunt your days, and you'll thank it for it.

Geek out with this younger YA book, which follows two high school freshmen learning how to navigate school, friendship, family drama, and falling in love for the very first time. Pacy and Cecil meet on their first day of school, but neither has it together enough to fess up to their feelings. Both are forced into helping plan the freshman dance, and no matter how much they try to deny what's going on, the sparks only get brighter. The dynamic writing duo behind this book has created two memorable characters who will have you weighing in on their ongoing battle: Star Wars or Star Trek?

This is more than a book; this is a time capsule recording the visceral horror many of us in the U.S. and Western world at large felt as we bore witness to and were complicit in genocide. Omar El Akkad applied his first-hand experience, historical precedent, and journalistic reporting skills to the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians, stepping away from fiction to write his first nonfiction book from a response that rang out across the digital world: "One day, everyone will have always been against this." This powerful reckoning has become a bestseller and is a finalist for a National Book Award.

Reading this history of queer and gender nonconforming people in the 18th and 19th centuries was at times maddening in how familiar it felt: the moral panic, the cruelty, the self-righteous persecution of people just trying to live their lives. But it was also invigorating to spend time with the 11 fascinating subjects of the book, from more familiar figures like Anne Lister and the Chevalier d’Eon to Mary Jones and Mother Clap. These people were asking themselves a lot of the same questions queer folks are asking today about sex and gender expression, and Dr. Anthony Delaney dives into each of their stories with nuance, tenderness, and care.

Sometimes, you've got to let your ears down and let your paws get dirty to have a little fun. This sweet picture book follows weiner dog Rosemary and her best human friend through a day of fun around the neighborhood. It's full of puddles, leaf piles, and all kinds of young people taking delight in a day outside. At the end of the day, we see Rosemary and her friend delight in a luscious bubble bath. The art is as bright and lively as the text, making this a surefire hit for young readers–especially those who love a good animal story. This has been a go-to gifting title this year.

A perfectly blended family drama with a past and present missing person’s mystery that sinks readers into a small town by the Salton Sea. I was equally invested in Mal and her family—from her mother blaming her for her sister’s disappearance when they were in high school to Mal keeping the father of her teen daughter’s identity a secret—and finding out what happened to the missing women, then and now. Throw in nightmares about a horse-headed woman, a politician brother aligned with the rich, and a race to find another missing person, and this atmospheric mystery is all-absorbing. Bonus: Victoria Villarreal is an excellent audiobook narrator.

What does it mean to be a person in a moment when technology is increasingly good at performing humanity? What does it mean to create art and seek connection when algorithms purport to replace both? Vara's attempt to co-write a book with AI ventures to surprising places and achieves a level of nuance that is all too uncommon in today's discourse. Part performance art, part social commentary, this is the book about AI and creativity I’ve been waiting for.

Yes, it's a book about a woman who gets off on planes. Literally. It's one of the ways she divorces herself from her job as a social media content moderator. By all means, Linda tries to appear as normal as possible, but as she grows closer to another person (quite accidentally, in fact!), the cracks in her facade grow bigger and bigger. Can she balance a human relationship with her sexual relationship with airplanes? This book is fresh, it's funny, and it's going to absolutely change how you see airports and airplanes for the rest of your life. 2025 has been flush with excellent weird lit, and this title is among the top.

I named this a Best Book of 2025 So Far and had to bring it back for the finale, a collection of beautiful stories of self-discovery, activism, resistance, and survival from queer elders of color. These testimonies are a necessary record of lived experience and hard-won progress, a love letter to queer history, and a reminder of the gift it is to have living elders among us. The joy in each of these stories is what has stayed with me, a joy that persisted even in periods of profound struggle and loss. We hear all the time that joy is resistance; this is the kind of work that really drives that point home and gives me hope for a better future.

Pulling from Limón’s six published collections, these gorgeous poems unfold in chronological order from Lucky Wreck to The Hurting Kind. Having read every in-print title by the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate, I found myself electric with excitement to behold some of the prolific author’s new and new-to-me work. Revisiting familiar poems fed my bookish heart in myriad ways, and reading pieces from This Big Fake World and the final section for the first time is precisely why I open books—to connect, to learn, to feel awe. If you need a gift for yourself and for others, look into this exploration of dreams, grief, love, the ordinary, and the extraordinary.

This meditative novel from Australia quietly landed in the U.S. this year, but it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize when it first published across the pond. I read it not knowing it was exactly the kind of book I needed, one that made room for rumination in the face of great loss. Following a woman who takes refuge in a religious community, this is a novel about grief and the unexpected ways we process trauma and forgive each other. I had no idea what to expect going into this book but looked forward to picking it up in a way I haven't experienced in a long time. In a loud and frightening world, it became my quiet place to think.

This collection of stories about queer Black women is going to live in my head for a long time. If you love Carmen Maria Machado's work, you need to pick up Sympathy for Wild Girls. They both excel at writing feminist, fabulist/magical realist stories that get under your skin. These stories explore intense, undefined relationships between women; the horror at having a body (especially a racialized, sexualized body); and the strange paths grief can lead you down. Visceral, evocative, and thought-provoking, these are stories that benefit from discussion and deep reading. This collection deserves to be recognized as a new classic.

In 1990s Massachusetts, Mexican grad student Minerva is researching an obscure horror writer who attended the same university decades prior, and the unexplained disappearance of that writer's roommate. The more she learns about both, the more parallels she sees with the unsettling stories her great-grandmother Alba told her about her life in 1900s Mexico, stories of witchcraft and an insidious evil that might now be lurking in the halls of this New England college. SMG stays spinning the genre roulette and going, “Yeah, I can do that.” And y’all, she did that, in deliciously creepy form.

On the third day of reading Jones' latest horror novel, I had a nightmare, but it might not be why you think. The monsters here are supernatural and all-consuming, but the true horror is the very real story that's told of the Marias Massacre, where around 200 Blackfeet were murdered in the dead of winter. The story is told through a journal found in 2012, which was written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor. The pastor records his time with a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, a man with peculiar eating habits and seemingly superhuman abilities... and revenge on his mind.

Since the beginning of the United States, Black conjure women, who combine traditional West African spiritual beliefs with herbal remedies and local resources, have been a balm to their communities. The legacy of these Mammies, Voodoo Queens, and Reconstruction-era Blues Women began, like so much of American history, in the South during slavery. Here, Feminist philosopher Lindsey Stewart traces their influence and legacy, which includes everything from blue jeans to Vicks VapoRub, to 2023's The Little Mermaid.

A memoir about celibacy from a writer whose debut recounted her time working as a dominatrix could seem like a gimmick. In Melissa Febos's hands, it is anything but. Yes, this is a book about a year without sex, but it is really a book about all of the other ways to develop relationships, engage with the world, and find pleasure. In solitude, Febos discovers freedom, time to engage in intellectual and creative pursuits, and needed perspective. In her thoughtful and often surprising reflection, she offers us space to consider our own distractions of choice and what we might find on the other side of them.

The Entanglement of Rival Wizards is a stunningly effervescent D&D-inspired queer romantasy. When rival graduate researchers, Sebastian Walsh and Elethior Tourael, collaborate on a prestigious research grant, reluctant respect morphs into passionate love. Sebastian is a human Evocation Magus who thinks he can prank his way out of PTSD, and Elethior is a half-elven Conjuration Magus who hates the family legacy he has to perpetuate to pay for his mother’s long-term care facility. Somehow, Raasch delivers impeccable chemistry, impressive magical research, and a biting critique of the military-industrial complex under capitalism.

Here's the premise: "Wuthering Heights retelling set in the world of ice dancing." That was all I needed to go all in on this book, but maybe you need more. This tale of Kat and Heath, whose ambitions and obsessions draw them together and push them apart, is as absorbing and toxic as its inspiration. The story is told in a documentary format, which lends itself to a fantastic audiobook. Actual Olympian Johnny Weir narrates the part of a catty gossip blogger, and it's pure magic. If you like your books soapy, gossipy, and delicious, don't miss this one.

In Nazi-occupied Rome, the Choir works to smuggle POWs, Jewish people, and other allies out of Nazi hands. But tensions are rising as known members of the Choir are cooped up in the Vatican and under surveillance by the SS, and a man's unexpected arrival threatens the entire operation. But one woman is committed to the Choir’s cause at any cost. Contessa Giovanna Landini goes head-to-head with the number one enemy of the Choir, the SS commander charged with taking the operation down. It's a book made all the more timely as masked men grab people off the streets of my beloved Chicago. Doing the right thing is hard and often full of sacrifice, but it's the only way forward.

This book skyrocketed to the top of my personal best-of list as not only one of my favorite books of the year but one of my favorite books of all time. It explores the very heart of what it means to tell—and retell—stories. Simran and Vina know that meaning all too well as characters in a world where stories play out over and over again, reincarnated to live out the same tale across the centuries. But, much like in real life, the stories affect far more than just the characters within them. Five stars? I would give this book every star in the sky and then some. Simran and Vina have my heart.

This novel in verse offered such a thoughtful and unique take on the afterlife. It reminded me of how I felt reading Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere as a teenager but for today's generation. It stars Gospel, a Keeper who guides recently deceased souls from life to what comes next. But when she meets another Keeper named Melody, they work together to find a way out of the Leaving Room.

Lewis is a struggling Baltimore artist grieving the loss of his mother, and he's in London for a curated art exhibit at the British Museum—or so he thinks. The exhibit is a ruse; he’s really there for a test to see if the fugue-like state he enters while painting is actually magic that can be used to enter nine paintings scattered across the globe, sinister paintings that are the work of Lewis’s great-grandfather and must be recovered at all costs. So begins this time-hopping, globe-trotting horror fantasy adventure into art history, Gothic magic, and cursed objects. It’s a gorey romp, a history lesson, a queer romance, and a damn good time.

This gorgeous, expansive middle grade historical fiction delves into Chinese history through two alternating timelines. As Han Yu traverses ancient China with a poet to sell goods for his ill family, Luli launches a museum to aid her family during the Great Depression in Chinatown, New York City. These two tweens use courage and creativity to support their families, their two storylines becoming increasingly interconnected as the novel progresses. It’s an action-packed and heartwarming read, steeped in richly imagined worlds that are as well-researched as they are fascinating.

This book became an instant favorite for me as soon as I read it, and it’s still my favorite read of 2025. It’s the story of two sisters living near a river, a boundary between our world and another, more magical one. When a terrible tragedy befalls one sister, the other is determined to find justice. To get it, she’ll need to traverse liminal worlds, face down magical threats, and try to retain some semblance of who she is.

I was still preaching the gospel of The Weight of Blood when I got around to reading The Scammer, and let me tell you, Tiffany D. Jackson does not, cannot miss. I was engrossed from the moment I saw where this story was headed (it's inspired by the events surrounding the Sarah Lawrence cult, but set on an HBCU campus), and the ending left me in open-mouthed appreciation of a well-executed twist. If you like suspenseful books set on college campuses, explorations of cult dynamics and manipulation, and stories ripped from the headlines, you're going to want to read this one now.

Angela Flournoy's first book, The Turner House, is a fantastic novel about a family, and this follow-up is a masterful work about 20 years of friendship between Black women, who are every bit a family as well. Over two decades, January, Monique, Nakia, and Desiree traverse school, love, loss, career changes, location changes, and all the in-jokes, silliness, disagreements, and fierce loyalty that come with long friendships. Each of their paths is filled with hurt and happiness, and the novel shares their lives in dazzling sections that speed toward an ending that will break your heart. (I highly recommend the audiobook version.)

With a focus on mother-daughter relationships, this is a deeply felt, layered generational drama and coming-of-age novel. Maricarmen’s life changes as a teen in Puerto Rico when her mom throws her out after overhearing her confess her love for a boy she was forbidden to date. Decades later, her daughter Nena finds herself in Miami trying to understand generational trauma. This was one of the very few 2025 releases that I was highly anticipating that actually delivered, and just like Díaz’s memoir, I felt this book inside my bones. Almarie Guerra does a fantastic job narrating the audiobook.

This sapphic YA graphic novel takes place in the '80s, but its story of teenage alienation is timeless. Wilberton Academy's resident It Girl, Elizabeth Woodward, is found dead the morning after she starred in the school's rendition of Romeo and Juliet. She's said to have died by suicide, but something about that doesn't feel right. Outcast Abby Kita is determined to find out what really happened to one of the few girls at Wilberton who was ever nice to her. Turns out, Elizabeth had secrets—secrets that might have gotten her killed.

Debut author Eliana Ramage shows as much ambition as her starry-eyed protagonist in what I’m already sure will be my favorite book of the decade. Steph knew from the first moment she looked through a telescope that she wanted to become the first Cherokee astronaut. But reaching her goal means making sacrifices, ones that seem to get bigger with each step she takes toward her objective. We follow Steph across decades as she shoots for the moon, with forays into the perspectives of her mother, sister, and other women who shape her journey. It’s an astonishing book about Indigenous communities and what it really takes to achieve big dreams.

Truth is entering her senior year without a clear idea of what she wants for her future. She loves poetry, and while she doesn't love having to tiptoe around her mother, sneaking to weekly poetry classes has given Truth an outlet she so desperately needs. Her life becomes more complicated when she finds herself pregnant and must navigate the ever-changing landscape of abortion services. But this isn't just a story about Truth's challenges. It's a story about her finding her voice, sharing her voice, and owning what her own future looks like. This verse novel is moving and heartfelt, and Truth is an unforgettable character.

Looks like I'm on board the romantasy train! I'm a big fan of Critical Role, so I had to try this novel that started as an in-universe romance book in their D&D game. Guinevere is a sheltered merchant's daughter with suppressed magical powers. Oskar is her reluctant half-orc protector on the road. Their undeniable chemistry upends all their plans. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only is Tusk Love great for Critical Role fans, but it also stands alone as a steamy read that is somehow simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and heartfelt. It's delightfully slowburn and spicy: they're quick to sleep together and slow to admit their feelings.

Literary fiction of the highest order from a Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Not much happens in this quiet, dream-like novel that asks rich questions about history, memory, connection, and pain. It's the rare book that can be equally subtle and unsettling, and that's evidence of a masterful writer working at the height of her powers. You always know you're in good hands with Kang, and that makes it a pleasure to follow her wherever she wants to go.

Fantasy! Romance! Historical Fiction! Found family! Gorgeous art! Venessa Vida Kelley’s dreamy debut When the Tides Held the Moon has something for everyone. Puerto Rican blacksmith Benny is tasked with building a giant glass tank. When he delivers it to the 1910s Coney Island carnival sideshow that commissioned it, he realizes it was constructed for a real merman captured from the East River. And when he falls in love with that merman, Benny realizes he’s constructed his prison and now must find a way to help him escape. The ensemble cast of “human curiosities” and Vida Kelley’s vivid illustrations make this story truly shine.

Dominic Salt and his three children are in charge of Shearwater island, an arctic, isolated place that harbors the world's biggest seed bank. As climate change takes its toll, fewer scientists visit. When a woman named Rowan washes ashore, the mystery of her appearance and her own mission to unpack the family's secrets both draw out over the strange, remote locale. McConaghy, author of 2020's Migrations, has become a singular author of our moment, writing climate fiction that is packed with rich humanity, at its best and worst. Her newest will break your heart into little pebbly pieces, and I mean that as the highest of compliments.