The Best Books of 2025…So Far: Live!
- Greg Barlin
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
Technically, it’s all the books, including the best, the worst, and everything in between. Below you’ll find a running tally of the books that I have reviewed this year, updated and reranked after each book I finish throughout the year.
#1 - Throwback
by Jakob Kerr ★★★★★
Goo's sweet time travel tale sees a 17-year-old from 2025 transported back to 1995 to try to help her own mother win homecoming queen.
#2 - Dead Money
by Jakob Kerr ★★★★★
Kerr's mature and tightly-plotted debut follows the murder investigation of the founder of a fictitious tech company in San Francisco.
#3 - Dirtbag Queen
by Andy Corren ★★★★★
Sparked by a viral obituary, this unlikeliest of memoirs introduces us to the crazy Corren family and their larger-than-life mother.
#4 - Onyx Storm
by Rebecca Yarros ★★★★★
The most anticipated book of 2025 mostly delivers, as author Yarros continues the Empyrean series and Violet Sorrengail's evolution.
#5 - Wild Dark Shore
by Charlotte McConaghy ★★★★★
When a woman washes ashore on a remote island, the lone family living there nurses her back to health. But both parties have secrets...
#6 - The Wishing Game
by Meg Shaffer ★★★★★
A teacher's aide who dreams of adopting a young boy from her school competes in a contest for the sole copy of a reclusive author's new book.
#7 - Sunrise on the Reaping
by Suzanne Collins ★★★★★
Collins returns to give us the origin story of Haymitch Abernathy in a way that might make this the best Hunger Games novel to-date.
#8 - Foster
by Claire Keegan ★★★★★
A quick 50-page read, the story of a young girl who is delivered by her father to stay with a family in a neighboring town in Ireland.
#9 - Kills Well With Others
by Deanna Raybourn ★★★★☆
Author Raybourn runs it back with everyone's favorite female assassins in their 60s, in a sequel that's just as good as the original.
#10 - Among the Bros
by Max Marshall ★★★★☆
An exposé on a fraternity-led Xanax trafficking ring, focused on Greek life and the pervasiveness of benzodiazepine use at colleges.
#11 - Summer Romance
by Annabel Monaghan ★★★★☆
A 38-year-old nearly-divorced mother of three starts a summer fling with a dashing, slightly younger man. Can it last?
#12 - Famous Last Words
by Gillian McAllister ★★★★☆
When her husband goes off the rails, taking three people hostage, his wife tries to save him while unraveling the why behind his act.
#13 - Departure 37
by Scott Carson ★★★★☆
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.
#14 - Memorial Days
by Geraldine Brooks ★★★★☆
Brooks recounts the ongoing impact of the unexpected death of her husband of 35 years and her process years later to properly grieve.
#15 - Society of Lies
by Lauren Ling Brown ★★★☆☆
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.
#16 - The Warbler
by Sarah Beth Durst ★★★★☆
A woman tries to break a curse which causes the women in her family to transform into a tree forever if they stay in a place too long.
#17 - Black Woods, Blue Sky
by Eowyn Ivey ★★★★☆
A young mother falls for a strange, disfigured man and chooses to live with him and her six-year-old daughter in a remote Alaskan cabin.
#18 - This Book Will Bury Me
by Ashley Winstead ★★★☆☆
A novel about true-crime aficionados that uses the recent University of Idaho murders as its source material, an ill-conceived choice.
#19 - Deadly Animals
by Marie Tierney ★★★☆☆
Set in 1981, a 14-year-old girl—whose hobbies happen to include studying roadkill—helps police investigate several murders in England.
#20 - The River Is Waiting
by Wally Lamb ★★★☆☆
Exploring addiction, incarceration, and the impact of tragedy on a family, the story follows a father serving a 3-year sentence.
#21 - The Fourth Consort
by Edward Ashton ★★★☆☆
A colonizer from Earth is stuck on an alien planet and must unravel the internal politics of the local species while trying to survive.
#22 - Frankie
by Graham Norton ★★★☆☆
The novel follows the fictional life and friends of Frankie Howe, from Ireland to London to America and back, from the 1950s to today.
#23 - The Oligarch's Daughter
by Joseph Finder ★★☆☆☆
Part international espionage, part man on the run, a novel that suffers from plot holes big enough to drive a Russian tank through.
#24 - Sandwich
by Catherine Newman ★★☆☆☆
A menopausal mother narrates her family's week at the beach on Cape Cod—their 20th in a row—while musing on the changes life brings.
#25 - A Psalm for the Wild-Built
by Becky Chambers ★★☆☆☆
A non-binary monk leaves on a journey to find themself and in the process encounters a robot who is seeking to learn what humans need.
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