Best Books I Read in 2025

Welcome to another Tuesday! Today for Top Ten Tuesday, we’re talking about the best books we read in 2025.

So this year, there weren’t exactly a lot of standout books that I read. Sure, there were some, and I didn’t read a lot of bad books… but there weren’t a lot that I know I’ll have to reread over and over again, like Carve the Mark (which I’m currently reading for the I don’t know how manyth time). But I did read some pretty good ones, and a few that I will probably reread some day.

Whenever I do one of these lists, I follow two basic rules: 1) It doesn’t have to be a book that came out in the previous year, but it does have to be a book I read for the first time in the previous year, and 2) If I read two books in the same series that make the list in a year, they take up one space (although that’s not applicable this year).

So without further ado, here’s my list:

10) Pox Romana—Colin Elliott. I always love reading about plagues and really cold periods of history, like the Little Ice Age. This book is about a plague that hit the Roman empire during the time of Marcus Aurelius, which I didn’t really know much about before reading this book.

One of the things I found interesting about this book was how the plague might have affected Marcus Aurelius’s son, Commodus. I lot of people think Marcus Aurelius was a pretty decent guy, but his son Commodus—not so much. And since at the time, most emperors didn’t normally appoint their sons to succeed them as emperor, that was a pretty big mistake on Marcus’s part. But it’s also possible that Commodus was severely affected by this pandemic that severely uprooted his young life. Think about how our recent pandemic has affected people—we’re still recovering from it in some ways, if only in small ways like we don’t have 24-hour grocery stores anymore.

9) Dungeons and Drama—Kristy Boyce. This was a fun book, and its follow-up, Dating and Dragons, was also pretty good. It’s a book set in modern times where the main character is really into theater but ends up having to work in her father’s gaming store. She ends up playing a D&D game and falling in love. My kids play multiple D&D games every week, and I play D&D on Saturday, so I liked that aspect of the book. Will this book be one I revisit year after year? Probably not. But it was fun.

8) Count of Monte Cristo—Alexandre Dumas. At 1,276 pages, this was the longest book I read in 2025. I read it on audiobook at work, so that made it much easier. It was interesting to see how the pieces of the main character’s revenge slowly fell into place. While he doesn’t go into pages-long explanations of the Paris sewers like Victor Hugo does, he did take us to various places in Early Modern Europe, like Marseilles and Rome (both of which I visited shortly after reading the book, although I had previously lived in Italy, so I’d been to Rome a couple times already). If you like longer books, this might be one to add to your reading list.

7) The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers: Elizabeth Cobbs. If you want a book that will make you angry, this is the one. During World War I, America sent a couple hundred ladies over to France to help work the phone lines over there. At the time, phones were manually switched. Ladies were typically faster at the job. So they enlisted several female soldiers that were skilled in telephone operating and could speak French, and sent them over to the war—sometimes close to danger. In addition to the dangers of the war, there was the danger of the influenza epidemic going around at the time.

After all their hard work, when they got home, they weren’t recognized as soldiers. No pensions. If they were disabled or died overseas, too bad so sad—the government wasn’t going to pay for their injuries. I think they finally were recognized in the 1970s or 1980s, after most of them were dead. That’s the part that will make you mad.

6) Soulmatch—Rebecca Danzenbaker. This book is a very interesting concept. Many years in the future, everybody believes in reincarnation, and your souls must pay for the sins of your previous lives. Some people also have soulmates, which you match with year after year.

Yet whenever there’s a system in place that can affect people’s lives so strongly, there’s bound to be corruption. And our protagonist unwillingly finds herself in the middle of it.

5) I Love You Like it’s 1999—A.J. Pine. This is a fun book where the main character curiously wanders into an anomaly—a Blockbuster Video—and ends up in a time warp in 1999, where everybody is worried about Y2K. While she’s there, she runs into someone else who has also been sucked into this alternate reality.

It’s a fun book. Although I don’t really remember everybody fretting about Y2K every day like these characters do. Yes, it was a concern, but it’s a huge preoccupation for a lot of the characters. Still, I loved getting to go back in time, if just for a little while, and if only in book form. Isn’t experiencing different worlds part of the fun of reading?

4)  The Ragpicker King—Cassandra Clare. While I prefer Clare’s Shadowhunter books to this series, this series is enjoyable. And there was a twist at the end that I really wasn’t expecting. I’ll want to reread this and the first book in the series before the third book comes out (whenever that may be).

I got the first book in this series in Spanish when I was on vacation this year–one of my souvenirs.

3) Red City—Marie Lu. While this book doesn’t exactly have the same magic (for me, at least) that Legend and The Young Elites did, I did like this book and look forward to the second book, whenever that one comes out. Currently, there isn’t even a title available, but the first book ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, so I hope it won’t be too long.

The hardback has sprayed edges, which is pretty cool, I thought.

2) Better in Black—Cassandra Clare. This is a collection of short stories that came out as part of her Seasons of Shadowhunters Kickstarter collection, although you can buy this book in the stores now as well.

You can’t go wrong with Shadowhunter’s stories, as far as I’m concerned. It has stories of (probably) your favorite Shadowhunter couples, and even some story advancement for the upcoming Wicked Powers series.

1) Sunrise on the Reaping—Suzanne Collins. This book is all about Haymitch, and his Hunger Games. If you’ve ever wondered why Haymitch is the mess that he is, this book brilliantly explains everything. I’m looking forward to the movie coming out in November.

So those were my favorite books that I read for the first time last year. What books did you list as your favorites?