My Top Five Books of 2025

It’s that time of year again! Time to look back on 2025 and see what were the most entertaining, the most tear-jerking, the most squeal-inducing books that I’ve read. 2025 was a much slower year for me in terms of books read. In 2024, I read around 57 books.

This year, I read 27 new books. (I don’t count rereads, which was most of my 2025 booklist). Regardless, I just wanted to show you that for me at least, reading is not the same. It becomes cyclical, something that I’ve noticed since I started tracking my books. I have a year where I read dozens of books and hit some high numbers. And then I have a slow year where I don’t even read half of what I read the year before. Clearly, this was a slow year. But I digress. Let’s talk about the books themselves! In no particular order, my top five of 2025! 

1. The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Ok, maybe I lied. This might be my favorite book of the whole year, because this led me down the rabbit hole of the Inheritance Games world. There are many books to this series, and I’ve now joined the hordes waiting for the next one to come out. 

It’s hard to describe the genre that this book falls into. It’s contemporary, but contemporary like you’ve never seen before. It’s all about puzzles, games, logic and mazes. It’s sort of a mystery, but lacking the major points of a mystery. There’s strong notes of romance through the whole series, but it never escalates beyond kissing. However, the family tree of the Hawthorne family, who are the main antagonists/love interests of the book, is messed up to say the least if that bothers you. 

This story follows a sixteen year old by the name of Avery Grambs, who abruptly finds herself heiress of the largest fortune in Texas -We’re talking billions of dollars here. She moves out of her car and into a mansion with one catch: The disinherited and furious Hawthorne family still lives there. 

It’s a thrilling tale of games, puzzles, secrets, and romance. I’m completely obsessed, and this is a world that spans eight books, with another on the way. It draws you in very quickly too –the first time I solved a puzzle before the characters, I quite literally jumped for joy. 

2. Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott. I do my best not to read only modern fantasy books and stay true to the classics that I grew up on. Eight Cousins was sitting on my to-be-read shelf for a long time before I finally picked it up. It was a delightful surprise, to put it honestly. I love Louisa May Alcott –she feels so familiar and homey to me. I love her books and will definitely be continuing the series. 

In a vein similar to Little Men, this story follows newly orphaned Rose who lives with her seven cousins, growing sick and pale with six different aunts fluttering around her. That is, until Uncle Alec shows up and takes guardianship of Rose. In true Alcott fashion, we see young Rose grow from a fretful girl into a happy, healthy child and see all of the adventures she gets up to with seven boy cousins. 

As much as I love my fantasy and stories like the Inheritance Games, books like Eight Cousins are a wonderful way to relax off of the high that adventure stories give me. I know that I’ll get a solid, sweet little story, and I love Alcott’s style of keeping her writing simple but endearing.

3. Fable. I’ve mentioned this book before, I believe in my romantasy post. Another surprise this year was Fable. While browsing in the library, I pulled the book off of the shelf, intrigued by the title and cover. The first page was not instantly hooking, like some other books, and it took me a while to get into the story. At first I took a dislike to the main character, Fable, because of how grumpy and bland she felt. 

But then I got into the book. Fable revealed herself and I was caught up in a world of seafaring adventure and low fantasy. I don’t usually read books that center around the ocean the way Fable did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s another romance book, as I’m sure you guessed from the romantasy post. So if that’s not up your alley, then steer clear of it. 

However, if you’re interested in stories with elements of ships, diving, found family, and crews that are not what they seem, then follow Fable as she flees from the island she was abandoned on and attempts to take down her merchant father through a web of secrets and lies. 

4. Games Untold, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. This feels like a bit of a cheat, since I already raved about the Inheritance Games for four paragraphs, but I cannot skip over this book. It’s actually a short story collection about the Hawthornes and each one is centered on a romantic plotline that is revealed or expanded on in these stories. (Unfortunately it’s not in the header picture because I don’t own the collection. But I do have one of the stories)

This contains The Same Backward as Forward, which just came out as a novel told through two different points of view. This story completely wrecked me, and still wrecks me every time that I read it. We’ll call it a tragic romance and that’s putting it nicely. 

The one that truly sticks out to me, however, is the story about Nash Hawthorne, the oldest Hawthorne brother, and Libby Grambs, sister of the main character Avery. Imagine a steady, drawling cowboy falling head over heels in love with a sunshine-hearted goth who bakes cupcakes when she’s stressed. If that doesn’t have you convinced enough, then I don’t know how else to get you into this story. 

We have peeks of this romance throughout the series, with little updates slipped in casually, but in this story you can see it through their eyes. These two stories are accompanied by a half-dozen others following other characters, explaining and leaving trails for the next books, and leaving you feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Unless you end with The Same Backward as Forward. Then you’re throwing the book against the wall and burying your face in your pillows. 

5. Oathbound, by Tracy Deonn. This is the third book in the Legendborn cycle, a series I have been reading for a while now. I was waiting on pins and needles for this book to come out, and I devoured it as soon as I could possibly get my hands onto it. This is a King Arthur retelling, but King Arthur is a teenage Black girl. This book does talk about spirits possessing others, if that’s something that bothers you. It begins heavy on the language, but it eases off the deeper into the series you get. 

Truly, this book was spectacular. Not only was it an amazing, well-written and compelling tale, it spoke to things like racism, sexism, and so many preexisting barriers that no one had questioned before, because it didn’t affect them. The first book also dives deep into grief and the healing journey of that, and the community that emerges in the later books. *chefs kiss* This is definitely a more mature book with topics and themes for older teenagers, not younger people. However, I had to include it because there’s no way it couldn’t be in the top five. Even if I’d read twice as many books in 2025, this book still would’ve made the list. It’s that good. 

Those are my top five books of 2025! What would you add to the list? What are yours? Let me know in the comments –I’m always looking for more book recommendations.