The best books of 2025

This list is part of the best books of 2025.

Join 1,210 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Mad Sisters of Esi

Charlie Jane Anders ❤️ loved this book because...

Vivid and gorgeous, full of surprises

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Tashan Mehta ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mad Sisters of Esi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figure they know only as 'Great Wisa'. To Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough.

When Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe where shapeshifting islands and ancient maps hold sway. There, she sets off on an adventure that is both tragic and transformative, for her and Laleh. For at the heart of her quest lies a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries: the truth about the mad…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Moonflow

Charlie Jane Anders ❤️ loved this book because...

Super weird and colorful

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Bitter Karella ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'MOONFLOW will sink its tendrils into you and infest you with its spores . . . and you'll enjoy it' Drew Huff

Moonflow is three-time Hugo Award nominee Bitter Karella's debut horror novel - a gloriously queer and irreverent psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the horrors of (cis)terhood. Answer the call of the forest, if you dare.

I see something out there, in the woods. It does not have a face.

They call it the King's Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune…


My 3rd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Charlie Jane Anders ❤️ loved this book because...

The wildest and most exciting take on vampires I've seen in forever

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Stephen Graham Jones ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Buffalo Hunter Hunter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An instant New York Times bestseller, a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Lessons in Magic and Disaster

By Charlie Jane Anders ,

Book cover of Lessons in Magic and Disaster

What is my book about?

In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders's own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic.

A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.

Jamie is the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, and an esoteric dissertation proposal. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.

Book cover of Mad Sisters of Esi
Book cover of Moonflow
Book cover of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

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