Top Ten Books I Read in 2025

As most of you know, I’m a voracious reader. And I enjoy most genres (with the exception of fantasy. But even supernatural and science fiction can make the list as you will see) so I read a variety of books (again you’ll see on the list). I read on average 5-6 books per month (some a little more, but definitely not less) so I had a lot to choose from. Another note: I only got this journal in February and I’m not really sure what I read in January so it’s pretty much just February till now.

10) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

I actually started reading this book when I was in the hospital and I was really wrapped up in it. But then it had to go back to the library and I forgot about it. Until my mom and I read it together (we often read books aloud to each other. Well, I read the book  aloud). The book is about a girl (Frances) growing up in Brooklyn. Her mother is strict and fairly obvious about the fact that she prefers Frances’s younger brother to her. Her father is a singing waiter and raging alcoholic which eats up all the family’s money so Frances is forever in poverty. Frances loves reading but she has to drop out of school to earn money for her family. It isn’t always a happy book but my mom said it really took her out of our world and plopped us right down next to Frances. I think its her favorite out of all the books we’ve read. It did give a very good perspective of a girl forced to grow up too fast. The book was partly autobiographical.

9) Opinions by Roxane Gay

I’m a sucker for essays (mostly because I like writing them so much). I really didn’t agree with the majority of what Roxane Gay believes but I can respect her as a writer, a woman and a human being. I gave her opinions a chance, entering each new essay with an open mind and because she was so passionate and eloquent, she earned a spot on the list (and I also read all of her books). She didn’t change my mind about anything but she didn’t piss me off. We are all allowed to have our own opinions.

8) Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore

Meg Mitchell Moore was my author find of 2025. I read three of her books after I tore through this one. Its about the Hawthorne family-two parents, three kids. The father is being blackmailed at work by a cheeky intern who has figured out that he has not actually gone to Harvard as he pretended to his business partners. Meanwhile his wife will do anything to secure her position at work as a real estate agent. The pressure the parents put on themselves trickle down to their children. Angela, the Harvard bound eldest who has put all her eggs in one basket, is driven to steal and cheat while Cecily (the middle child who gives up beloved Irish dancing after a humiliating mistake) and Maya (the youngest) are left to their own devices. Family and what it stands for is lost as most of the Hawthorne family is wrapped up in a big game of keeping up with the Jones’s.

7) Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates

One of (maybe my favorite) short story writers, Joyce Carol Oates delivers a bunch of haunting short stories to play with your mind like a spider likes to play with its food. This book contains ten stories but each one is so artfully arranged it seems like you  plunge into a new world for an indefinite amount of time per story. If you  are looking for cheerful or a lighthearted story you might want to forgo this book. With Joyce Carol Oates you read at your own risk.

6) The Green Mile by Stephen King

I started this book on a big family vacation and spent most of my time finding excuses not to read and to go play with my cousins instead. But I came back. And I’m very glad I did. The Green Mile takes place in the thirties on Death Row. Paul Edgecombe, one of the prison guards, has his hands full of convicted criminals when strange things begin happening. One of the inmates (John Coffey, convicted of raping and killing two nine year old girls) starts showing magical healing powers, challenging everything Edgecombe believed and he starts to wonder who the real villain in this prison is. This was a book club pick and we had a movie night after (Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecombe)

5) The Outsider by Stephen King

Maybe it seems unfair to give the fifth and sixth slots to Stephen King. But if  you read the books you will see both of these  books are masterpieces. In a small town, a boy is brutally sodomized and murdered. The crime seems open and shut. The perp was seen with the child and his fingerprints are all over the crime scene. He is publicly arrested in front of his wife and family. But his guilt is called into question when he presents an airtight alibi but not before he is shot down on the way to court. The more the police investigate, the less it makes sense until those closely connected with the crime- his family, his lawyer and the police aren’t sure what they are dealing with anymore, only that it is up to them to solve the mystery. 

4) The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

I think this was one of the longest books I read all year. Every night I would read for an hour. I loved it. I loved learning how all the different queens came to different ends dealing with the same king, The steadfast Katherine of Aragon who was cast aside when the King became enchanted with Anne Boleyn but never spoke a word against him, there was Anne Boleyn, executed on trumped up charges, painted as a whore and a traitor, pious Jane Seymour who died in childbirth (providing Henry his only male heir to the throne), Anne of Cleaves, whom the King insisted was too ugly and had the marriage annulled, Catherine Howard, executed for promiscuity both before and during her marriage to the King and Kathryn Parr, the only one who outlived him and probably was the only one who escaped unscathed. There’s romance, scandal and intrigue….what’s not to love about the Tudor court (hint for first place).

3) Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

It’s a great movie. And it works just as well as a book. You know the story. A pair of paleontologists are invited to take a look at an island which turns out to be inhabited by dinosaurs genetically created by a greedy scientist. And as it turns out we can not control nature especially if that includes T-Rexes or velociraptors. Just a heads up: in the book everyone is a lot more unlikeable. 

2) This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter

My absolutely favorite crime author. In this book she takes Will Trent and his now wife, Sarah, on their honeymoon. Of course there just happens to be a murder where they are (the same thing always happens to Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes) and everyone looks pretty guilty (mostly because they are guilty but all of different things). I never saw the twist coming. Any of them, it has about five reveals. It has a bittersweet ending. A good person is dead but justice was done. Sort of. 

1. The Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory 

I wanted to spend more time at the Tudor court and this historical fiction novel (told through the perspective of Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law, Jane also known as Lady Rochford) enabled me to do that. I should let you know I only finished it last night but I raced to finish it, raced to turn every page. I don’t want to give out spoilers but I will say Jane is the chief lady in waiting to Queens Anne, Jane, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, spending her adult life at court, playing spy for prominent men like Thomas Cromwell and basically trying not to piss off the king and get killed.  It’s a glamorous life (at times). It is also dangerous. 

Honorable Mentions:

5 Days Left by Julie Lawson

Parable of the Sower/ Parable of the Talent by Octavia E. Butler

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner 

Bluebeard’s Egg by Margaret Atwood