A running tally of the books that I have reviewed this year, updated and reranked after each book that I finish. Explore the latest reviews and discover hidden gems with insights from BarlinsBooks, your literary companion for top new releases.

★★★☆☆ A woman returns to her hometown in South Carolina, only to be confronted with clues that help her unravel her sister's disappearance twenty years prior.

Amazon's Top 100 Books of 2025. How do they compare to Barlin's Books rankings for the year? Where did they get things right, and where did they miss the boat?

★★★☆☆ Robert Langdon is back for another romp through an international city—this time, Prague—and a secret about human consciousness that could rock the world.

★★★★★ A woman returns to the elite boarding school she attended after 20+ years to search for answers about the murder of her roommate senior year.

★★★★☆ When a lawyer starts to dig into the murder of his best friend, all signs seem to point to conspiracies involving his own law firm.

★★★★☆ A novel premise gives way to a well-structured mystery in which a young woman must solve her own murder before an aneurysm kills her.

★★★☆☆ A serial killer returns to Portland after almost twenty years to terrorize a local radio host, targeting the one person who saw him and lived.

★★★★☆ A woman returns home to ghostwrite her estranged father's memoir while trying to unravel if he was responsible for the 50-year-old murder of his siblings.

★★★★☆ A local publican is found dead with a crown of antlers on his head in this multi-layered mystery taking place in a small English town.

★★☆☆☆ A serial killer targeting Asian women during the pandemic combines with a ghost story to form one of the more racist books I've read.

★★★★★ Edgy, violent, and dark, Cosby's latest sees a successful money manager sucked into working for a sadistic gang in order to save his brother.

★★★★☆ Our assassins hell-bent on *not* killing return in a sequel to Assassins Anonymous that is satisfying but falls short of the original.

★★☆☆☆ A cyber thief is forced to flee from Homeland Security when her crimes finally come to light in this poorly-plotted mess of a book.

★★★★☆ A girl grows up in a remote cabin with just her father, whose distrust of technology and government snowballs with each passing year.

★★★★★ A small town, a love triangle, a murder, and a trial form the foundation of this twisty, emotional novel set in mid-1900s England.

★★★★☆ A nun leaves her convent to investigate the disappearance of her friend, only to encounter multiple murders at her boarding house.

★★★★☆ A woman who was part of a secret society while at Princeton investigates her sister's death, who was also part of the same society.

★★★☆☆ A B-52 bomber that has been missing for over 60 years suddenly returns to U.S. airspace in 2025...and it's carrying a nuclear bomb.

★★☆☆☆ Part international espionage, part man on the run, a novel that suffers from plot holes big enough to drive a Russian tank through.