Goodreads’ 15 Best Books of the Year 2025: Add These to Your TBR

1. Readers’ Favourite Fiction: My Friends by Fredrik Backman

My Friends explores the quiet, life-shaping power of friendship and art. When aspiring artist Louisa notices three overlooked figures in a famous painting, she becomes determined to uncover their story, especially after the artwork unexpectedly falls into her care.

Her search leads back to a single summer years earlier, when a group of teenagers escaped difficult home lives by gathering on an abandoned seaside pier. Their bond, forged through humour, rebellion, and loyalty, gave rise to a painting that would carry their story forward. As Louisa draws closer to the truth, she learns that the most meaningful legacies often come from moments the world barely notices.

2. Readers’ Favourite Historical Fiction: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Atmosphere follows Joan Goodwin, a quiet physics professor whose lifelong fascination with space propels her to apply for NASA’s first space shuttle program for women in 1980. As she trains alongside a close-knit group of ambitious astronauts, Joan discovers unexpected friendship, love, and a new understanding of herself and her place in the universe.

But as the team prepares for flight, one mission in 1984 changes everything. Set against the exhilaration and danger of the space race, this is a powerful story about ambition, connection, and how a single moment can alter the course of a life forever.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Read my full review of Atmosphere here.

3. Readers’ Favourite Mystery and Thriller: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson

Jet Mason has seven days left to live. After a brutal Halloween night attack leaves her with a fatal head injury, doctors tell her an aneurysm will kill her within a week. Instead of risking surgery, Jet chooses certainty and time. Just a little more time.

With death looming, Jet starts to question everyone around her, from her powerful family to old loves and fractured friendships. As her memories blur and her body weakens, she teams up with her childhood friend Billy to do the one thing she’s never finished before: uncover who tried to kill her, before her time runs out.

4. Readers’ Favourite Romance: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Alice Scott, an endlessly hopeful writer, and Hayden Anderson, a celebrated but brooding Pulitzer winner, find themselves competing for the same once-in-a-lifetime job: writing the biography of the elusive Margaret Ives, a reclusive heiress wrapped in decades of scandal. Invited to Little Crescent Island for a one-month trial, both writers are fed only fragments of Margaret’s story, bound by NDAs that prevent them from sharing what they learn.

As professional rivalry sharpens and undeniable chemistry simmers, Alice and Hayden begin to realize that Margaret’s life isn’t the only story unfolding. Caught between ambition, attraction, and unanswered questions, they must decide whether the truth they’re chasing will become a mystery, a tragedy, or a love story of their own.

My Rating: ★★★

Read my full review of Great Big Beautiful Life here.

5. Readers’ Favourite Romantasy: Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

With war fully underway, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no room left for hesitation. Enemies threaten Navarre from beyond its borders and from within, and trust has become a dangerous gamble. To protect everything she loves, Violet must leave the safety of Basgiath and venture into unfamiliar lands in search of allies powerful enough to turn the tide.

As the journey tests her strength, loyalty, and resolve, Violet carries a secret that could unravel everything she’s fighting for. With magic, dragons, and destiny colliding, the truth she alone can uncover may decide who survives the coming storm, and who is lost to it.

My Rating: ★★★★

Read my full review of Onyx Storm here.

6. Readers’ Favourite Fantasy: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

Spanning centuries and continents, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil follows three women bound by desire, defiance, and transformation. In 1532 Spain, María makes a dangerous bargain to escape a life where she is only ever a commodity. In 1827 London, sheltered Charlotte is offered freedom and passion by a mysterious widow, only to discover its devastating cost. And in 2019 Boston, Alice’s search for reinvention after a destabilizing encounter turns into a pursuit of truth and vengeance.

Through hunger, love, and rage, V.E. Schwab weaves a dark, lyrical story about power, identity, and the choices that echo across lifetimes, exploring how lives are ended, remade, and forever changed.

7. Readers’ Favourite Science Fiction: The Compound by Aisling Rawle

Lily wakes up in a remote desert compound with nineteen other contestants, all competing on a wildly popular reality show where the goal is simple: stay longer than everyone else. Challenges offer indulgent luxuries alongside basic necessities, and every moment is filmed, scrutinized, and shaped by unseen producers. While tensions rise inside the Compound, the outside world quietly unravels, making the game feel less like an escape and more like a refuge.

As alliances form and intimacy deepens, the competition turns darker, pushing contestants into increasingly dangerous territory. Desire, fear, and survival begin to blur, and Lily must decide how far she’s willing to go to win a prize that promises everything, at a cost she may not be able to live with.

8. Readers’ Favourite Horror: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

In the sweltering summer of 1970, fifteen-year-old Fern is sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, a place where “wayward girls” are hidden, controlled, and stripped of their voices. Pregnant, frightened, and isolated, Fern meets other girls navigating similar fates, each dreaming of escape or a chance to reclaim their lives.

When a mysterious librarian gives Fern an occult book on witchcraft, the girls gain a new kind of power, one that allows them to take control for the first time. But power comes at a cost, and in a house ruled by secrecy and rigid authority, every spell cast could have deadly consequences.

9. Readers’ Favourite Debut Novel: Alchemised by SenLinYu

Helena Marino, once a promising alchemist, is now a prisoner in a world reshaped by war. Her Resistance allies have been slaughtered, her powers suppressed, and the corrupt ruling guilds, backed by necromancers and their undead horrors, hold her captive.

Haunted by memory loss from the months before her capture, Helena struggles to uncover the truth about her past and the secrets hidden within her mind. Sent to the powerful and ruthless necromancer High Reeve, she must navigate treacherous alliances and unearth dangerous secrets to reclaim her history, and herself, before it’s lost forever.

10. Readers’ Favourite Audiobook: Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

With war fully underway, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no room left for hesitation. Enemies threaten Navarre from beyond its borders and from within, and trust has become a dangerous gamble. To protect everything she loves, Violet must leave the safety of Basgiath and venture into unfamiliar lands in search of allies powerful enough to turn the tide.

As the journey tests her strength, loyalty, and resolve, Violet carries a secret that could unravel everything she’s fighting for. With magic, dragons, and destiny colliding, the truth she alone can uncover may decide who survives the coming storm, and who is lost to it.

My Rating: ★★★

Read my full review of Onyx Storm here.

11. Readers’ Favourite Young Adult Fantasy & Sci-Fi: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

In Sunrise on the Reaping, the fiftieth Hunger Games, or Quarter Quell, brings double the tributes, and fear grips every district of Panem. Haymitch Abernathy faces the unimaginable as his name is called, forcing him to leave behind his family and the girl he loves.

Thrown into the Capitol alongside three other District 12 tributes, a sisterly friend, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the town’s most stuck-up girl, Haymitch realizes he’s been set up to fail. Yet even in the deadly arena, he finds a spark of defiance, determined to fight not just for survival, but for something that could echo far beyond the Games.

12. Readers’ Favourite Young Adult Fiction: Fake Skating by Lynn Painter

In Fake Skating, Dani returns to Minnesota for her senior year after years away, only to find that her childhood best friend Alec has grown into a popular hockey star, far from the nerdy, soft boy she once knew. Once inseparable, the two now struggle to reconnect as their past and present collide.

Circumstances force them to pretend to be a couple, and as they navigate their fake relationship, old bonds are rekindled, family secrets are revealed, and Dani discovers the real reason Alec has kept his distance all these years.

13. Readers’ Favourite Nonfiction: Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John Green explores the long and complicated history of tuberculosis, a disease once romanticized but now seen as a deadly consequence of poverty and inequality.

Through the story of Henry Reider, a young patient in Sierra Leone, Green weaves together personal narrative, scientific insight, and social commentary, highlighting the inequities that make a preventable disease still one of the world’s deadliest, and urging readers to consider how our choices can shape its future.

14. Readers’ Favourite Memoir: The House of My Mother by Shari Franke

In The House of My Mother, Shari Franke recounts her harrowing childhood under the strict and abusive rule of her mother, Ruby Franke, whose public persona as a wholesome YouTube mom masked a tyrannical parenting style.

Franked details how Ruby, influenced by relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, imposed a cruel disciplinary regime on her six children, a truth that ultimately led to Ruby and Jodi’s 2023 arrests for aggravated child abuse. This memoir exposes the dark side of influencer culture while chronicling Shari’s struggle for survival, truth, and freedom from her mother’s cruelty.

15. Readers’ Favourite History & Biography: How to Kill A Witch by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi

How to Kill a Witch by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi explores one of history’s darkest and most misogynistic periods: the Scottish witch hunts of the 16th century. Drawing on trial transcripts, witness accounts, and legal records, the authors detail how the Witchcraft Act of 1563 codified violence against women, creating a bureaucratic system designed to root out “witches” and control society through fear.

With sharp wit and feminist insight, Venditozzi and Mitchell reveal how accusations, trials, and executions were carried out under the guise of justice, exposing the absurdity and cruelty of the system. This gripping account not only illuminates the historical horrors of the witch hunts but also serves as a cautionary tale about bias, superstition, and the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.