Best Books I Read in 2025

2025 was one of the best reading years ever quality-wise. Today's Top Ten Tuesday is listed in the order I read them with my favorite book of the year at the end!

 

Jade City by Fonda Lee (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

 

The Bone Ships by R.J. Barker (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Shroud by M.R. Carey (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

 

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The Will of the Many by James Islington (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

From the bestselling author M. R. Carey comes an utterly unique and enchantingly dark epic fantasy fable like no other.

This is the tale of Once Was Willem, who - eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England - rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham.

Pennick for all its beauty was ever a place with a dark reputation. The forests of the Chase were said to be home to nixies and boggarts, and there was a common belief, passed down through many generations, that the castle housed an unquiet ghost of terrible and malign power. These rumours I can attest were all true; indeed they fell short of the truth by a long way . . .

Let me know if you have read or plan to read any of these!

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | January 4

Hello, long time friends! I hope you remember me! Life got really tough, and I stepped away from blogging. I have been reading, though. In a weird twist of universal balance, I had one of the best reading years ever quality-wise this past year. I also started a YouTube channel so I still had an outlet to share what I was reading.

Read Last Week

One Piece Volume 13 by Eiichiro Oda (⭐⭐⭐★★)

One Piece Volume 14 by Eiichiro Oda (⭐⭐⭐★★)

I'm re-reading the Baroque Works volumes of One Piece because it has been a while since I was reading One Piece, and I'm also getting ready for season 2 of One Piece on Netflix this Spring.

Currently Reading

Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey - Set in the same universe as M.R. Carey's Pandominion duology, Outlaw Planet follows a gunslinger as she saves multiple worlds.

Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky - So far this is a lot of war stuff, but I'm looking forward to discovering the real story of this novella.

BookTube

---

This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 13

Hi, friends! I've been a way for a while. Mostly I was focusing on my career. I finally left my job of 16 years, and I'm in a much better place now! I've also been allowing myself to fall deeply in love with reading again. I can't wait to do some catching up and share my thoughts.

For now... here are some of my favorite 5⭐ books that I've read while I've been away:

Murder Road by Simone St. James

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

Read Last Week

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager ⭐⭐⭐💫★ - This was mostly a great time. I'm going to try to start reviewing again so I can post some full thoughts.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center [dnf] - Oh, no. This was my first Katherine Center and it was not for me. I'm bummed.

Currently Reading

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson - I'm trying to fill in the holes in my cosmere reading before the end of the year so I can read the fifth Stormlight Archive book with the rest of the Brando Sando reading world. Enjoying it so far!

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein - I found an amazing bookstore while I was out of town last week that was filled with works in translation. I was excited to find this, and I've already started it.

--

Much love to you guys. I hope you are reading something special and have an amazing week.

---

This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | February 11

Hello, friends. I'm finally crawling back out of the deep pit of Dungeons & Dragons. I haven't done much reading over the past couple of weeks because I've been consuming so much D&D content. We are still playing and having a great time. I'm finally starting to feel like I have a handle on the rules and being a DM. It's freeing up the small amount of free space that I have in my mind to read again!

My kids were on winter break from school this past week. My husband and I took a few days off from work which was nice. We took a road trip and had some good food and did some shopping. It was fun.

It's super bowl Sunday. Will you be watching? We were planning to put the game on in the background for commercials and the half time show so I may get a lot of reading done tonight.

Posted over the last two weeks

New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

On My Wishlist | Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa

On My Wishlist | In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Finished Reading

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire ⭐⭐⭐💫★ - Book #9 of the Wayward Children series. I'll hopefully have some thoughts posted this week.

The Eleventh Metal by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐★★ - I'm hoping to be a Cosmere completionist by the end of the year. I don't get particularly excited about the shorts and novellas, but I'm trying to read them all.

Currently Reading

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson - I have a weird relationship with this book. This is my fourth time trying to read Elantris. It has been a struggle connecting with this one until now. I have my theories as to why, but I'm finally connecting to and loving Elantris.

Added to the TBR

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - I have such a fun friend group and we are about to do a buddy read of A Court of Thorns and Roses. I can't wait to finally be in the know about ACOTAR and have a great time with friends.

---

This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

On My Wishlist | In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes is a Booker Prize nominee that is being released in the US later this month.

An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life.

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency.

Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how – no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope – we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

In Ascension had me at "deep vent in the ocean floor". I'm here for a science fiction novel that made the long list for the Booker Prize especially if it deals with the ocean. I've seen comparisons to Jeff VandeerMeer which I find very exciting.

Are you interested in reading In Ascension?