The best books of 2025

This list is part of the best books of 2025.

Join 1,277 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2025

Book cover of What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

❤️ loved this book because...

Extremely well researched. Wide range and consideration of different perspectives. Shared learning experiences. Reality and emotions captured with great amount of detail.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Stephanie Foo ,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked What My Bones Know as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life

“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Jambalaya

❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Luisah Teish ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Jambalaya as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A refreshed edition of Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals—updated with a note from the author sharing the changes that have occurred in the 30 years since its original publication. 

"A book of startling remembrances, revelations, directives, and imperatives, filled with the mysticism, wisdom, and common sense of the African religion of the Mother. It should be read with the same open-minded love with which it was written."—Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

Since its original publication in 1985, Jambalaya has become a classic among Women's Spirituality Educators, practitioners of traditional Africana religions, environmental…


My 3rd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Dirty River

❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dirty River as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Lambda Literary Award finalist

In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ran away from America with two backpacks and ended up in Canada, where she discovered queer anarchopunk love and revolution, yet remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate and riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it reveals how a disabled queer woman of color and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the past and, as the subtitle suggests, "dreams her way home."

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poetry book Love Cake…


Book cover of What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Book cover of Jambalaya
Book cover of Dirty River

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