Best books of 2025

Welcome to our annual best books episode! This year we’re switching things up and doing book awards and superlatives for each category, like best book of the year, best series, biggest gut punch, etc. We hope you get lots of recommendations from this episode, and send us your recommendations with favorites from this year too!

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Book awards for 2025!

Favorite book of the year
- Blood Over Bright Haven, by ML Wang
- Heartless Hunter, by Kristen Ciccarelli
Best book that wasn’t fantasy
- Vera Wong’s guide to snooping on a dead man, by Jessi Q Sutanto
- Dinner for Vampires, by Bethany Joy Lenz
Best series
- City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty
- Avalon Tower (Fae Academy for Spies series), by CN Crawford
Biggest gut punch:
- Jade Legacy, by Fonda Lee
- the Kiss of Deception, by Mary E. Pearson
Books we had the most fun reading:
- First-Time Caller & Good Spirits, both by BK Norison
- Sinful Justice, by Amelia Finn
- The Bakeshop Mysteries series, by Ellie Alexander
Books we couldn’t stop thinking about:
- Jade City, by Fonda Lee
- The Wrath and the Dawn – Renée Ahdieh
Favorite new (or recent) release:
- Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins
- A Curse Carved in Bone, by Danielle L. Jensen
Hyped books: worth the hype or not?
- Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman
- Spark of the Everflame, by Penn Cole
- If It Makes You Happy