My year in reading: The 7 best books of 2025
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Though these books were not all published last year, for me, they are the seven best books of 2025. The reason for this, is that each of these books stayed with me long into the new year.
These books are all very different from each other – different genres, different centuries, different continents – but they have one thing in common: they made me feel something specific that I had not felt before. This is, at the end of the day, the only criterion that has ever mattered to me.
01 North Woods by Daniel Mason
This book made me feel connected to something larger than myself – to the land, to time, and to the realisation that a simple building made out of wood holds so much more history than any human life ever could.
I did not know what to expect from this one, and I think that was the right way to go into it. North Woods is not a novel in any conventional sense – it is a series of stories, portraits, and episodes, all set in the same patch of Massachusetts woodland across several centuries. A cabin in the woods, the same trees watching each of our characters live their lives.
This book made me feel connected to something larger than myself – to the land, to time, and to the realisation that a simple building made out of wood holds so much more history than any human life could contain.
What Mason does, and does brilliantly, is shift not just the time period with each chapter but the prose style itself. A chapter set in the Puritan era reads differently from one set in the nineteenth century, which reads differently again from the present day. The writing does not just describe different historical moments. Rather, it directly inhabits them.
It is also, at times, wonderfully strange. Creepy in the way that old woodland can be creepy. The sort of ambient unease that comes with knowing that the ground beneath you has been walked on by centuries of people who are now entirely gone.
For anyone who loves nature writing, structural experimentation, and books that trust you to keep up without over-explaining: this is one of the best things I read all year.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
02 There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
As I stood in front of the lamassus, I felt the weight of not knowing how everything came to be.
I finished this book and immediately visited the British Museum with the wonderful friend who lent me her hardback copy. As I stood in front of the lamassus, I felt the weight of not knowing how everything came to be.
There are Rivers in the Sky follows several characters across three different time periods – ancient Mesopotamia, Victorian London, and the present day. All are connected by water, by the Epic of Gilgamesh, and by the vast human desire to understand things that may not be possible to understand. Shafak moves between these strands with a confidence that made me feel, while I was reading, that time itself was more porous than I’d previously given it credit for.
The Victorian London sections gripped me most. Arthur Smyth is based on the real historical figure George Smith, a pioneering Assyriologist who was the first to translate the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is a part of history I had never encountered before, and I found Arthur’s story almost unbearably moving – a working-class man born on the bank of the Thames who taught himself cuneiform and became one of the most important archaeologists of the nineteenth century. Arthur is driven by a need to understand that had nothing to do with professional ambition and everything to do with some deeper human hunger.
Shafak’s prose is extraordinary. It does not show off, but it is precise and warm and full of long, searching sentences that carry you somewhere new on every page. This is a book about history, water, and the search for belonging. But mostly, it is a book about what connects us across time, which is one of my favourite things to read.
I have since bought two more of her books, and I can’t wait to dive into more of her work.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
03 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
There is a friendship at the centre of this book that made me cry on the Northern line at 8a.m.
Full disclosure: science fiction is not usually where I live.
I arrived at Project Hail Mary slightly reluctantly, nudged by a friend whose taste I trust, and I was wrong to hesitate for even a moment.
I listened to this one as an audiobook – the narration by Ray Porter is genuinely some of the best audiobook work I have encountered. Listening to this book had me looking forward to my commute, if you can believe that.
The book opens with a man alone on a spaceship, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. What follows is a mystery that unravels slowly and then all at once, interspersed with the gradual return of his memories, until the full shape of what he is doing and why becomes clear. I will say nothing more about the plot, except that there is a friendship at the centre of this book that made me cry on the Northern line at 8 a.m.
Weir writes with great confidence about complex scientific principles, and makes them not just comprehensible but exciting. The problems are real problems and the solutions feel earned. But beneath all of this is a story about connection, about what it means to find someone who speaks your language. That lingers long after the plot has resolved.
As I write this, the film adaptation has just released in cinemas, and I cannot wait to experience it all over again.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
04 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Nothing prepared me for how gripping this book was, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, all the way to an ending I will not describe except to say that I absolutely did not see it coming.
I don’t know what took me so long.
Rebecca is one of those novels I always assumed I knew without having read. The broad outlines of it are so absorbed into popular culture that the experience of reading it felt somehow predetermined. I was completely wrong. Nothing prepared me for how gripping this book was, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, all the way to an ending I will not describe except to say that I absolutely did not see it coming.
Du Maurier writes the unnamed narrator – young, naïve, and perpetually overshadowed by the first Mrs de Winter – with uncomfortable precision. The social anxiety is so specific. The way she misreads situations, shrinks in rooms, exists in the enormous shadow of a woman she will never meet: it is brilliantly rendered throughout. I recommended this book to everyone I know in 2025, and I intend to keep recommending it for the rest of time.
The gothic atmosphere, Manderley, the coastline and the constant presence of the grey sea. This is not just a backdrop, but a backbone to the entire novel. Everything feel damp and airless and full of a menace that is never seen.
A new favourite, and a deserving modern classic. If you have been putting it off for the same reasons I had: don’t.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
05 The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
Howard explains only as much of the world-building as the story needs to hit home.
This one came out of nowhere.
I picked up The Other Valley at my local bookshop on a Saturday afternoon. The cover caught my eye, the concept sounded interesting, and I had not heard a single person mention it. This is usually a gamble, but I wanted to chance it.
The novel is set in a valley where three versions of the same town exist at different points in time, each spaced 20 years apart. The towns are visible to each other but separated by strict borders. When our young protagonist accidentally witnesses a visit from one of the neighbouring towns, the consequences unfold with devastating logic.
This is speculative fiction that uses its concept precisely and sparingly. Howard explains only as much of the world-building as the story needs to hit home. The temptation to over-explain in this kind of novel must be significant, and he resists it completely.
This book is emotionally impactful in ways I did not anticipate. The concept sounds cold – almost philosophical – but the story it generates is human and heart-breaking. I read this in less than a week over the summer, and when I finished I spent the rest of the evening in my garden alone, thinking about the ending.
I have no idea why this book is not being talked about more.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
06 Normal People by Sally Rooney
These are not likeable characters in the conventional sense, but they are real. Their emotions are messy, contradictory, and recognisable.
My first Sally Rooney novel. I’m a little late to the party.
I had been circling this author for years with a vague suspicion that the hype had outpaced the reality – a prejudice entirely unsupported by any actual reading of her work, which makes it all the more indefensible. Normal People corrected me thoroughly. I read it in three sittings, and it left me feeling slightly off-balance, unable to return to myself immediately.
What Rooney does so well that it looks effortless, is write an internal monologue that feels so incredibly real. The back-and-forth between Marianne and Connell, the miscommunications and resulting assumptions and desires left unspoken, the way two people can be speaking to each other but having entirely different conversations. Rooney captures this perfectly. These are not likeable characters in the conventional sense, but they are real. Their emotions are messy, contradictory, and recognisable.
I have not watched the TV adaptation and I do not intend to (as much as I love Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones). The interpretation of Connell and Marianne that lives in my head is complete, and I have no desire to replace it with someone else’s. This is not a criticism of the production, which I’ve heard is phenomenal. Rather, it’s a tribute to the novel.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
07 Emma by Jane Austen
I was not prepared for how wickedly witty Emma is, or for how much I would both love and despise its protagonist in equal measure.
I’ll admit, I am new to Jane Austen, though I do adore the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Matthew McFadyen.
I was convinced to start my Austen journey this year by my wonderful flatmate who has several copies of each book. She told me that Emma was the perfect place to start, and she was totally right.
I was not prepared for Emma. I was not prepared for how wickedly witty it is, or how much I would both love and despise its protagonist in equal measure (and often at the same time).
Emma Woodhouse is one of the great character creations of classic English literature. She is clever, vain, often well-meaning, but spectacularly wrong about almost everything she believes she knows. The pleasure of this novel is in watching her misread situation after situation with absolute confidence, and in the slow, earned process by which she comes to understand herself a little better. Austen does not punish her for her wrongness. She allows her to be wrong and to grow, which is far more interesting.
A note on the 2020 film adaptation: it is wonderful. Anya Taylor-Joy is perfectly cast, the production and costume design are extraordinary, and it captures the novel’s tone perfectly.
I finished Emma and immediately added Sense and Sensibility to my Christmas wish list. I am, belatedly, an Austen person. Better late than never.
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
Closing thoughts
I hope this post convinces you to pick up one or more of these books. And if you’ve already read any of them, I’d love to know what you thought. Let me know in the comments below.
live slow, read more.
