9 Favorite Books of 2025 (So Far)

what I've been reading

Aug 07, 2025

Generally speaking, my 2025 reading year has remained uneventful. Far too many “that was just okay” books and far too few “wow, that was amazing” books. Thankfully, I did find a few new-to-me favorite books. For me, a favorite book is the one I enjoyed the most. They might not be the same book I’d choose for an award or put on a “best of” list, but they are the books that drew me and gave me an unforgettable reading experience.

graphics featuring the cover of Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, Oathbound by Tracy Deonn, and Load In Nine Times by Frank X Walker

Favorite Memoir

Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya

Performed by Traci Kato-Kiriyama

I’m a sucker for books about books, and Chihaya’s Bibliophobia is one of the best. Chihaya describes her struggle with mental health as she pursued her career as an academic. But even in her darkest times, books pulled her back towards the light. The Bluest Eye, Anne of Green Gables, A Tale for the Time Being—these books changed her life. Traci Kato-Kiriyama performs the audiobook in a way where she disappears as the narrator, in the best possible way. Kato-Kiriyama captures the depth of emotion embedded in the prose to such a degree that you forget that the author isn’t reading the audiobook.

Favorite Series

Oathbound by Tracy Deonn

Performed by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Andrew Eiden, Hillary Huber, Tim Paige, Adenrele Ojo

I adored Legendborn, so I had Oathbound pre-ordered for months. The book release happened while I was in Kentucky helping to care for my mom after her emergency surgery, so it hit my audiobook app at the perfect time. Returning to Tracy Deonn’s world felt so seamless. I didn’t have to relisten to her previous books. I just jumped right back in to this Arthurian legend-inspired fantasy series. Joniece Abbott-Pratt is one of my favorites narrators, and she knocked this performance out of the park, as always.

Poetry Collection

Load in Nine Times by Frank X Walker

I rarely can read in print these days, but I set aside a day to sit with Load in Nine Times. In my favorite cafe with a steaming cup of coffee, I read through this stunning collection, annotating as I went. This is a historical collection informed by Walker’s research into the lives of Black families before, during, and after the Civil War. When I interviewed him for Read Appalachia, he read some of the poems from the collection, and—my stars—these poems are so powerful.

graphics of Sucker Punch, Stone Yard Devotional, and Murder at Gulls Nest

Essay Collection

Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul

Performed by the Author

Scaachi Koul is one of the funniest, most sincere essayists working today, which is quite the difficult combination. In her previous collection, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Koul details how she met and fell in love with her husband. In Sucker Punch, she writes about their divorce. Koul doesn’t shy away from this less-than-desirable situation. I found it especially fascinating when she wrote about her previous collection, engaging with her past work in a way that revealed the things she had hidden from readers in her older essays. These moments made you feel as if you are getting a peek behind the curtain of Koul’s creative process.

Literary Fiction

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Performed by Alisa Piper

For years, I’ve heard readers praise Charlotte Wood’s incredible stories and engrossing prose, so I couldn’t get my hands on this audiobook fast enough. Stone Yard Devotional follows a woman who decides to live with a group of nuns living in rural Australia. She doesn’t join the order. Instead she just lives and works with them, which creates quite the unique dynamic. Over the course of the novel, a plague of mice descends about the state, a nun’s body is returned to the order for burial, and a celebrity nun from the area happens to be the one to accompany the body back to Australia. There isn’t really much of a plot to this book, but Wood doesn’t need one. Her compelling characters are engrossing enough. I suspect Wood could write a shopping list and I’d adore it. Such talent.

Cozy Mystery

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Performed by Siobhan McSweeney

In 1954, Nora Breen leaves her cloistered order of nuns to search for a former novice who has mysteriously gone missing. She finds herself at Gulls Nest, a boarding house in a small English town by the seaside. There, she searches for her friend, exploring a world much changed since she first took her vows decades ago. Of course, this is a cozy mystery novel, so when a body turns up in the garden, Nora decides to find the killer herself. Siobhan McSweeney, of Derry Girls fame, performs the audiobook with perfect comedic timing. Her narration highlights Nora spunky character, eye for detail, and determination to find her friend. Jess Kidd, an autistic author with an intense love of mysteries herself, has said that Murder at Gulls Nest is the first in a series. I can’t wait to see what Nora gets up to next, and I will riot if Siobhan McSweeney isn’t the one performing the next one.

graphic of the covers of Jane Austen's Bookshelf, Find Her, Louder Than Hunger

Book Club Pick

Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend by Rebecca Romney

Performed by the Author

My IRL book club is made up of readers with VERY different tastes. One friend likes vampire romance novels, while another prefers memoir, and yet another prefers novels in translation. It shocked everyone when we all really enjoyed Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, a nonfiction book about the women writers who inspired Jane Austen. I love reading about this time period as the English novel itself came to be, but it was extra special to view this period of literature through the lens of Jane Austen’s library. Romney’s performance of the audiobook is warm and inviting, turning Jane Austen’s Bookshelf into an excellent comfort listen.

Middle Grade Novel

Find Her by Ginger Reno

Performed by Amy Hall

Adults often struggle to find a way to have conversations about big topics with the kids in their lives. Find Her is a great way to start a conversation about the epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks that’s currently happening across North America. In Find Her, a young Cherokee girl named Wren runs a private eye business finding missing animals in her town. When she begins to discover murdered animals one right after another, she begins to suspect something more serious is going on. In the background is the constant absence of her mother, who has been missing for years. Over all, Amy Hall does a good job of performing the audiobook, but at times, she seems to struggle to embody the voice of a young girl.

Disability Lit

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Performed by Jess Ebner

I rarely see book about a boy with eating disorders, so as soon as a friend told me about Louder Than Hunger, I knew I had to have a listen. This novel-in-verse follows Jake, a boy sent to an in-patient facility to help him with his OCD and anorexia. It must have been challenging for Jess Ebner to perform this novel as poetry AND maintain the narrative and emotional threads of the story, but he does it beautifully. I’ve rarely listened to a book so deeply impactful. It captures the feelings around OCD and ED’s perfectly. I definitely ugly cried over this book, which in this case is a good thing.