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 The Switch

❤️ loved this book because...

This novel is incredible!! Don't miss it!

McCloud's debut shows a mastery of craft rarely seen in a first novel. Her characters are engaging, complex, and quirky. Her story arc is perfectly proportioned, with edge-of-your-seat pacing that will make the pages fly by. Her elegant, crisp prose and distinctive POV voices sink you straight into the fascinating speculative world, and the unique blend of cyberpunk, noir, and speculative carries the best facets of all three genres.

My only complaint is that my time with these characters was over too soon. I will be waiting with bated breath to see what this talented author has for us next!!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By April McCloud ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A hundred years in the future, in a world where technologically enhanced bodies are valued above organic ones, Complete Life Management (CLM) is selling perfection in the form of the latest and greatest bionic model, the Apogee. As an elite runner and inadvertent spokesperson for the humanism movement, NYPD Detective Naomi Gate has eschewed vanity upgrades. However, if she hopes to survive in New York City’s fierce criminal Underground and find her brother, she can’t show up in her organic cop body. When Jax Raelyn—CLM’s playboy CEO and Naomi’s boyfriend—offers her an unauthorized body transfer, she accepts in order to…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Ring Shout

❤️ loved this book because...

This is a magnificently dark and brilliant work of speculative fiction with an absolutely stunning and original premise. The characters are rich, complex, flawed, and magnificent. I don't want to say too much and spoil the experience, but it's horrifying and gorgeous and absolutely not to be missed.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By P. Djèlí Clark ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Ring Shout as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror

“A fantastical, brutal and thrilling triumph of the imagination...Clark’s combination of historical and political reimagining is cathartic, exhilarating and fresh.” ―The New York Times

A 2021 Nebula Award Winner
A 2021 Locus Award Winner

A New York Times Editor's Choice Pick!
A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick!

A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist
A 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist
A 2021 Ignyte Award Finalist
A 2021 Shirley Jackson Award Finalist
A 2021…


My 3rd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Wasteland Heart

❤️ loved this book because...

Like always, Al delivers rich characters in startling, thought-provoking, and addictive speculative worlds. Wasteland Heart was deeply engaged and went by so fast, I'm desperate to read book 2!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Al Hess ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In order to escape being a worker drone in a dismal dictatorship, Sasha joins a group of people seeking asylum on the continent of Galvlohi. Once a world power, deadly nanobots wiped out much of Galvlohi's population. A century later, cities have given way to wilderness, and descendants of the surivors live insulated and harmonious lives with the land, only opening their borders for refugees like Sasha. It's the perfect place to start over, to get clean, and to figure out who he is.But his fellowship is strict about not wandering off, and it’s willing to use violence to get…


Book cover of The Switch
Book cover of Ring Shout
Book cover of Wasteland Heart

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