The best books of 2025

This list is part of the best books of 2025.

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My favorite read in 2025

Heart the Lover

By Lily King ,

Book cover of Heart the Lover

Jill Fordyce ❤️ loved this book because...

I received this book as part of Parnassus’ First Editions Club and although I’ve heard much about Lily King over the years, I had not yet read one of her books. Now I want to read them all. “Heart the Lover” was that rare combination of smart and sentimental, with beautiful fully drawn characters, lyrical prose, literary references, and a narrative arc that followed a transformative college friendship into middle age. A bonus is that it has one of those endings that is at once inevitable and surprising. A very satisfying and thought-provoking novel!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Story/Plot

  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it

  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace
Heart the Lover

By Lily King ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Heart the Lover as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky.” —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love

You knew I'd write a book about you someday.

Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.…

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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Some Bright Nowhere

By Ann Packer ,

Book cover of Some Bright Nowhere

Jill Fordyce ❤️ loved this book because...

I'm a huge Ann Packer fan. Years ago, "The Dive From Clausen's Pier" deeply affected me and changed the way I thought about writing and telling a coming of age story. In "Some Bright Nowhere," Packer does such a beautiful job expressing the interiority of characters who often make unexpected, controversial decisions. She deftly portrays the life of Eliot and Claire, past, present, and future, as Claire is suffers from a terminal illness and their life together is coming to an end. Packer avoids sentimentality altogether, giving the story a grace and weight that kept me thinking about it long after I finished the novel.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Thoughts

  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it

  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace
Some Bright Nowhere

By Ann Packer ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

'One of those rare books that once you've finished, comes with you for life' RACHEL JOYCE

'A moving book ... I was enraptured by it' PHILIPPA PERRY

'Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book' ANDREW SEAN GREER

'A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy' MEG WOLITZER

An extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer.

Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They've raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town…

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My 3rd favorite read in 2025

The Uncool

By Cameron Crowe ,

Book cover of The Uncool

Jill Fordyce ❤️ loved this book because...

Although I'm a fan of music journalism and memoir, there was a lot I didn't know about the journey of Cameron Crowe. His memoir is filled with great stories and characters from his decades as a music journalist, beginning when he was a young teenager. (His encounters with Gregg Allman and David Bowie stand out as particularly wonderful). I appreciated Crowe's ability to both convey his youthful sense of wonder and his adult reflection on his life as a journalist and filmmaker into this powerful memoir. A particular joy is the description throughout of his mother, including quotes of her singular wisdom and humor at the beginning of each chapter. (Many of us will remember a version of her from the film "Almost Famous"). A bonus if you listen do the audio book is Crowe's warm and funny narration.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Writing

  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it

  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace
The Uncool

By Cameron Crowe ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Cameron has written a book that feels like music, an intimate souvenir, like a song you can't stop listening to.” —Stevie Nicks • “A delicious tale of a devotee who worships at the altar of rock and roll....It's a love letter to fandom, sealed with Cameron's trademark sincerity and heart.” —Maggie Rogers • “Such a joy and so well written...My favorite book in a long, long time.” —Anderson Cooper

The long-awaited memoir by Cameron Crowe—one of America's most iconic journalists and filmmakers—The Uncool is a joyful dispatch from a lost world, a chronicle of the…

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Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Belonging

By Jill Fordyce ,

Book cover of Belonging

What is my book about?

Appealing to readers of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing, Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane, and Ann Packer’s The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, Belonging is a heartbreaking and hopeful coming of age story that traverses lifelong friendship, first love, and a young woman’s fierce desire to transcend her traumatic childhood.

Jenny is thirteen when an epic dust storm rolls into her central California town in December 1977. Bedridden after contracting a life-threatening illness in the storm and suffering a shocking loss, Jenny realizes she will never be cared for by the mother who both neglects and terrifies her or the father who allows it. She relies on her cousin, Heather, who has the loving home Jenny longs for; her beloved great-uncle, Gino, the last link between generations; her best friend, Henry, a free spirit with whom she shares an inexplicable bond; and earnest baseball star, Billy, who becomes her first love. After a stunning turn of events in both their lives, Jenny and Henry leave for college in LA together in the summer of 1982—Jenny fleeing a broken heart, and Henry running from something he can’t reveal, even to his best friend. When she returns home years later, the life Jenny so carefully created collides with the one she left behind.

Spanning three decades, Belonging is about first love and heartbreak, friendship and secrets, family and forgiveness, hometowns and coming of age, and memory and music. The heart of the story is Jenny’s struggle to undo the binds of a childhood that have deeply affected her life, the painful path to love endured by children raised in alcoholic families, and the grim reality of believing you must hide a part of yourself in order to belong.

Book cover of Heart the Lover
Book cover of Some Bright Nowhere
Book cover of The Uncool

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