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 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

❤️ loved this book because...

A completely getting history of the Troubles that complicates ideas of good and bad, heroes and villains, and makes you genuinely care about the people whose lives you are following.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Teach
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Patrick Radden Keefe ,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked Say Nothing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions

"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review

Jean McConville's…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Hamnet

❤️ loved this book because...

It really brings to life how Shakespeare and Agnes's world in Stratford-upon-Avon might have been, and makes you feel how the pain of a child's loss was felt no less keenly hundreds of years ago.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Maggie O'Farrell ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021
'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times
'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell

TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither…


My 3rd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of The Trees

❤️ loved this book because...

Before I knew anything about this book or Percival Everett, I expected perhaps a slightly worthy book, something I should read but a bit of a slog. That couldn't have been further from the truth: a surprising, refreshing, gripping page-turner that makes you think about issues of race and injustice with wit.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Percival L. Everett ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone

Percival Everett's The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

The detectives suspect that these…


Book cover of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Book cover of Hamnet
Book cover of The Trees

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