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 This Is Happiness

Rebecca Hazell ❤️ loved this book because...

This is a fictional memoir of a golden past. Set in early twentieth-century Ireland, it recounts a vanished time when happiness didn’t depend on possessions but on relationships and the deep connection with the land. It alternately charms you and breaks your heart as you’re immersed in a time and place that was so demanding yet so splendid.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Niall Williams ,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked This Is Happiness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain 'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times 'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain. But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of Death at the Sign of the Rook

Rebecca Hazell ❤️ loved this book because...

What a send-up of the cozy British mystery! Atkinson's genius is her ability to infuse everything she writes with humor and irony. She clusters the cliches of characters (the grand dame, the greedy relatives, the vicar, the servants, the PI) and plot, and transforms them into the wildest mystery ride I've ever taken.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Kate Atkinson ,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Death at the Sign of the Rook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER (SUNDAY TIMES, UK) • The highly anticipated return of "irresistible" (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series hailed as "unputdownable" by Time

“How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson.”–Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

In…


My 3rd favorite read in 2025

Book cover of The Searcher

Rebecca Hazell ❤️ loved this book because...

Tana French is a word artist. She conjures up a world that is both beautiful and heartbreaking. And her plot is so believable, so flawless, that I can only be glad that it’s the first in a series. In her hands, a murder mystery becomes a work of art.

It was so good that I recommended it to my book club—everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Tana French ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Terrific - terrifying, amazing' STEPHEN KING
'Completely, indescribably magnificent' MARIAN KEYES
-----

A DISAPPEARANCE. A SMALL TOWN. A QUESTION THAT NEEDS ANSWERING...

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens.

But then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

I Left My Heart

By Rebecca Hazell ,

Book cover of I Left My Heart

What is my book about?

Set in the magical city of San Francisco during the final decades of the last century, this is a story about the many possibilities of love, from romantic to misplaced to mature to love of place, and about lost hopes and second chances.

Book cover of This Is Happiness
Book cover of Death at the Sign of the Rook
Book cover of The Searcher

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