The 10 Best Books of 2025

This year has been challenging, and books have offered a much-needed escape and source of comfort. Among the many new releases, the most impactful ones stood out with their fresh perspectives and powerful voices. Authors like S.A. Cosby and R.F. Kuang delivered thrilling stories with depth, while Miriam Toews and Yiyun Li explored profound loss with honesty and insight. Katie Kitamura and Lily King thoughtfully examined the complexities of human relationships and how they shape our lives. Overall, these books feature characters—both real and imagined—facing significant difficulties, yet finding a way to endure. It’s a particularly relevant and hopeful message for today’s readers. Here are the ten best books of 2025.

10. A Truce That Is Not Peace, Miriam Toews

I recently read Miriam Toews’ new book, and it really struck me. It starts with this interesting idea – she was asked why she writes before a festival, and she found the question so difficult she almost backed out! That little moment turned into this whole journey for her, and for me as a reader. She wanders through her life, looking at her upbringing as a Mennonite, the people she’s lost, and all the ups and downs of being a child and then a parent. It’s a really honest book – funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful. She really digs into what makes her, her, and how that connects to her writing. It felt like she was holding her life up for examination, and it was incredibly moving.

9. King of Ashes, S.A. Cosby

S.A. Cosby, the acclaimed author of novels like Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, delivers another intense and atmospheric Southern noir thriller. In this new story, financial advisor Roman Carruthers returns to his Virginia hometown to face a series of family emergencies. His father is recovering from a terrible car crash, his sister is overwhelmed by the family business, and his brother is in debt to a dangerous gang—a debt Roman suspects is connected to his father’s accident. Adding to the turmoil is the unresolved mystery of their mother’s disappearance years ago. Roman must use his particular skills—even if it means bending the rules—to protect his family and uncover the truth. Cosby is masterful at building suspense and creating thrilling plots with surprising twists and turns.

8. Katabasis, R.F. Kuang

In R.F. Kuang’s new fantasy novel, two graduate students from Cambridge University embark on a dangerous journey to the afterlife. They’re trying to retrieve the soul of their recently deceased mentor, hoping it will also save their academic futures. Kuang, known for novels like The Poppy War, Babel, and Yellowface, and currently a PhD candidate at Yale, crafts a story that playfully criticizes the often unfair power structures within universities. Imagine a campus novel…but the campus is literally hell. Inspired by works like Dante’s Inferno and complex ideas about logic and perception, Kuang builds a unique and challenging underworld. The story follows these two ambitious, competitive students as they navigate this hellish landscape, not just to escape, but to discover lessons far beyond anything they could learn in a classroom.

7. Baldwin: A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs

“Baldwin: A Love Story” offers a personal glimpse into the life of renowned author James Baldwin, revealing how his relationships – with artists like Beauford Delaney, Lucien Happersberger, and Yoran Cazac – shaped his work. Author Nicholas Boggs spent years researching this insightful biography, uncovering archival materials and even tracking down a key figure from Baldwin’s past. The book explores Baldwin’s identity and how his experiences as a writer, a Black man in America, and a romantic profoundly influenced his most memorable writings.

6. A Marriage at Sea, Sophie Elmhirst

In the early 1970s, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey set out from England on a years-long sailing trip to New Zealand, hoping for an adventure. Their journey took a terrifying turn when a whale sank their boat nine months in, leaving them stranded on a raft in the Pacific Ocean for 118 days. Journalist Sophie Elmhirst shares their incredible true story of survival, focusing not only on the challenges of being lost at sea, but also on the dynamics of their relationship under extreme pressure. Elmhirst vividly portrays Maralyn’s calm demeanor as a counterpoint to Maurice’s tendency toward pessimism, examining how their partnership was tested to its absolute limit.

5. Audition, Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s novel, Audition, is difficult to categorize – it doesn’t follow typical novel conventions – and remains hard to explain, even after multiple attempts. This is fitting, as the book explores the nature of performance and how we struggle to fulfill the roles we’re given – as partners, parents, artists, or simply as individuals. The story opens with a successful actress facing an awkward dinner with a much younger man in New York City. She’s self-conscious about appearances and worried he might see her as a lover or even a mother figure. The situation becomes even more complicated when her husband unexpectedly arrives. The novel delves into the question of who this young man actually is, examining the complex ways people connect. Audition is both captivating and mysterious.

4. A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar

Life in Kolkata is getting harder, with food running low and violence increasing. Ma is determined to leave and start a new life in Michigan with her husband, taking her father, Dadu, and two-year-old daughter, Mishti, with her. She just needs to collect their approved passports and visas and get them on a plane. However, Boomba, a colleague from the shelter where Ma works, is watching her. Driven by envy and a need to provide for his own family, he breaks into Ma’s home, and in the process, unknowingly steals the family’s vital travel documents, jeopardizing their chance to escape. Megha Majumdar, author of the acclaimed novel A Burning, tells the story of these two families colliding, forcing them to confront difficult choices and testing the limits of their love and principles.

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

Omar El Akkad’s book, which started as a popular tweet, quickly became a critically acclaimed and award-winning work of nonfiction, earning the National Book Award. In October 2023, El Akkad publicly criticized those who remained silent about the suffering in Gaza following the attacks by Hamas, stating that many would only condemn the violence once it was safe to do so and accountability was no longer possible. This observation formed the basis of his powerful book, a blend of personal memoir and critical analysis. It connects his childhood experiences in Egypt, Qatar, and Canada, and his life as a parent in the U.S., with a pointed examination of why so many people seem indifferent to the suffering of those they see as different. Accepting the National Book Award in November, El Akkad acknowledged the difficult reality of celebrating a book written in response to what he described as genocide.

2. Things in Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li

Often, the most straightforward language is best for expressing deeply complex emotions. In her memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li uses clear and insightful writing to recount a profoundly tragic personal experience. In 2017, Li lost her older son, Vincent, to suicide at the age of 16. Seven years later, her younger son, James, also died by suicide at the age of 19. A National Book Award finalist, the memoir explores Li’s attempt to find meaning in her grief following James’ death, while simultaneously questioning the very idea of ‘grief’ as a process with an end. She writes that she dislikes the term, believing it implies a need to ‘get over’ loss and make others comfortable. Rather than moving on, Li seeks to understand her pain and continue living with it.

1. Heart the Lover, Lily King

Lily King’s novel, Heart the Lover, starts as a story about young love and desire on a college campus, filled with awkward encounters and the witty conversations of English students. It follows Jordan, a budding writer who becomes involved with two charismatic classmates, Sam and Yash. Though she initially dates Sam, she falls deeply in love with Yash. Years later, Yash unexpectedly returns to Jordan’s life, stirring up old feelings and challenging her carefully built stability. This novel, a follow-up to King’s Writers & Lovers, beautifully explores the complexities of intimacy and how past relationships continue to shape us. Through Jordan’s story, King shows how our youthful confidence often gives way to the realization that we have less control over love and life than we think.

If you’re struggling or know someone who is, please reach out for help. You can call or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or find more resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

2025-12-09 23:07