The Best Books We Read in 2025

The Best Books We Read in 2025

by Joe Walters & the IBR Staff

Millions of books were published in 2025.

That’s not an exaggeration. With the explosion of print-on-demand publishing, it’s been about 4-million titles for both of the last two years. 2025’s not over yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being even higher this year.

However, with more books comes more choices. Books don’t expire—or most of the best ones don’t at least—so readers might have somewhere around 150 million books to choose from right now.

So how do you choose which books to give your time and money to?

Well, we’ve got some ideas. Our list is going to look different than their list though. We review only indie books, and and we don’t care about publication dates. It doesn’t matter if a book was published twenty years ago; if it was great for someone in 2025, it’s going to be great in 2026.

Reading is subjective, and we don’t want it to be anything else. So you’ll be hearing from 22 of our reviewers, all with their own specific tastes and experiences, telling you why only one book was the best book they read in 2025.

Here are the best books we read this year.

1. North Sun

Whaling just got a whole lot weirder.

Moby Dick is long, technical, difficult, and poetic. It’s the book on whaling. But should it be?

North Sun is as good as I hoped Moby Dick would be. It’s got the same poetry, the same short chapters, the same whaling industry brain-blasts, but the adventure is fresh and the story is weird and it doesn’t get you lost in the technical details. It gives you the imagery of tiny, infallible humans working tirelessly to kill giant, majestic beasts but also shows you a strange half-bird-man who helps young men aboard the ship deal with unbelievable tragedy. The adventure is led by an inexperienced captain taking an impossible trip up north to find the boat’s previous captain, and it’s a true whaling wonder of a novel.

Honorable Mentions:

The Long Form by Katie Briggs (Amazon | Bookshop)

Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill (Amazon | Bookshop)

1. Homeschooling

A total game-changer for me and my most important people

Reading this book is transformative. I don’t know anyone who homeschools in my everyday life, so I don’t have many people to talk to about it, even though it’s such a deeply important aspect of my near future. I need help.

This book is that help. It made me feel supported, encouraged, and prepared in making this incredibly important choice. Ginny Yurich’s personal writing style and generally laid-back approach makes homeschooling feel attainable and takes the pressure off of jumping into it. If you’re even close to considering this for your little loved ones, this book is a no-brainer.

Honorable Mention:

Hard Is Not the Same Thing As Bad by Abbie Halberstadt (Amazon | Bookshop)

1. Spin Cycle

A moving, heartfelt story about the realities of caregiving and the proclivity to long for the past

Strawberry ice cream, little fibs , and cute animal videos on the good days; broken wrists, forgotten names, and outbursts on the bad. Alfredo Botello’s Spin Cycle: notes from a reluctant caregiver is an uninhibited, earthy look into the complexities of caring for a loved one who gradually becomes someone they didn’t used to be.

The book digs deep, suggesting that perhaps patience isn’t the most important quality when caring for a parent with dementia. With all the history, all the baggage, and all the resentment that comes with such a relationship, a regression of the mind doesn’t require looking to the past for answers. Readers are taken on a humanizing experience where they have no choice but to forgive themselves for their past crimes of impatience, frustration, and missed “I love yous.”

Honorable Mention:

Wethersfield Road by Anna Binder Reardon (Amazon | Bookshop)

Stopping to Feel by S. L. Collins (Amazon | Bookshop)

1. IT Dictionary

This satirical workplace guidebook is a laugh-out-loud group therapy session that offers technical and emotional support by decoding corporate-speak.

This book is an absolute blast. Author Adam Korga hilariously explains the dizzying industry terms you’ve heard in feedback from Finance, Legal, and Human Resources representatives.

This is a book to corrupt any semblance of workplace sanctity and protect your sanity as a result. The author has come up with some pretty genius phrases to describe the sheer stupidity of corporate-speak—delightfully eviscerating modern workplace norms with terms that feel impossible not to adopt into your lexicon, whether you work in IT or not.

This would be a hilarious gift to congratulate someone on their first job in software development or IT support. It’s something they’ll smile politely and thank you for upon receiving it, but cling to like a lifeline of real-talk advice and sanity in a sea of frantic requests after a few weeks on the job.

Honorable Mentions:

The Body In Zellar’s Barn by Arian Harandi (Publishing March 2026)

The Pharaoh’s Catacombs by Karen Bitzer (Amazon)

Crimson Wings: The Boy Who Flew by B.T. Skylark (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. In Death’s Company

A war against Death threatens mortal life and everything after in this epic urban fantasy.

May Haines has lived her whole life on the precipice between life and death, never knowing whether today will be the day her faulty heart gives out or the day she is offered a new one. Now, after nearly dying for the umpteenth time, she has a brand-new heart and the chance to live her life without the shadow of death hanging over her.

Actually, she has met Death: an eternal, coffee-swilling being with a terrible temper and a worse problem that needs solving. For countless lifetimes, Death has ferried souls from the world to her realm.

But now someone or something is trespassing on her territory. Death has never needed to rely on anyone else, but the dead are communicating with May, and she might be the only one who can find out what they are trying to say. 

The complexity of the magic in In Death’s Company is fantastic. The world has layers of lore that feel like they have only been touched on in this first novel of an expected series. There is so much to love in this book. The characters, plot, and worldbuilding all intertwine perfectly to create a wonderfully intricate, immensely bingeable story. A phenomenal beginning to a promising new series.

Honorable Mentions:

Blood on the Trailhead by Charlotte Zang and Alex Knudsen (Amazon)

Before the Next Crisis by Tista Ghosh (Amazon | Bookshop)

Solving the Anxiety Equation by Wendy Leeds (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Tokyo Juku

Exams can be murder.

Michael Pronko’s Tokyo Juku is a richly detailed and atmospheric crime novel that dives deep into Tokyo’s academic pressure cooker and examines the darker aspects of ambition. It is a murder mystery set in a cram school—one of Japan’s infamous juku—but beneath the classic whodunit structure is a more profound story about stress, failure, and the pursuit of perfection in modern Japanese society.

The story is about education, but it’s also about human worth—how people measure themselves and how society measures them. While Hiroshi manages to crack the case, there are no easy answers, only eventual understanding. Pronko captures the beauty and brittleness of modern life in Japan with a teacher’s insight and a detective’s precision.

Honorable Mention:

The Pusherman by Lisa Boyle (Amazon | Bookshop)

1. Lippincott Street

A touching historical novel about the hardship and hope of Irish immigrants in the 1860s

Lippincott Street by Sharon A. Ewing opens with Cate Leary and her sister, Mary Alice, on board a ship sailing for America. After some hardship and illness on board separates the sisters, Cate is left on her own when she disembarks the ship in Philadelphia, seeking out her brother who was supposed to meet them at the dock.

But her brother is nowhere to be found and Cate must deal with the large, foreign city on her own, running into thieves, dangerous streets, and desperate for employment so she can afford to board somewhere safe. Eventually, the siblings reunite, each of them struggling under the pressure of making a life for themselves in a city that isn’t so accepting to Irish immigrants. 

Lippincott Street is an emotionally resonant snapshot of the life of Irish immigrants in the 1860s, hardship and all. It’s sad, yes, but also stunning with quietly beautiful prose and characters who inspire hope even in the face of the truly terrible.

Honorable Mention:

Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. An Ocean Life

Balanced storytelling and evocative descriptions elevate a seemingly implausible premise to a convincing, palpably absorbing adventure.

Mark takes the family to Hawaii for a week of snorkeling and poolside relaxation. If on his own, Mark would spend the entire time scuba diving. He does pack his gear but promises to limit it to early morning trips to maximize family time.

Two days in, Mark rises early to join a scuba tour group. He isn’t enamored with its participants, particularly a younger man on a scooter with propellers. Once in the water, however, the tranquil sea life allows him to disregard the others. He shares his observations, enhanced by an almost encyclopedic level of knowledge about diving, the ocean, and its inhabitants. 

Only the great white doesn’t swim onward. It becomes his host.

Seeing things through the shark’s eyes, he learns to rely on the beast’s instincts for hunting and other basic survival while asserting his human will and wit to steer it to discover what’s going on, then what can be done about it. The detail in which all this is put forth earns the suspension of disbelief that makes his long passage through the Pacific Ocean, on a quest for answers and solutions, such an enjoyable read.

Mark is a tour guide sharing an experience rather than merely imparting facts. The reader truly shares his wonder at seeing and experiencing things otherwise inaccessible to humans.

Honorable Mention:

Fablenoir – Book One by Vic Sinclair (Bookshop | Amazon)

Summer Solstice by Kelly Williams (Amazon)

1. We Never Took a Bad Picture

A sublime soliloquy on love, marriage, and parenthood…a literary tour de force that excavates the human heart with careful precision and sensitivity

Infidelity, broken promises, and unspeakable tragedy—a fifty-fifth anniversary party is the catalyst of one family’s final reckoning. 

Sifting through old family photos in 2018, Gloria Joyce plans a glittering anniversary party to celebrate her and Artie’s fifty-five years of marriage, but under the surface of smiling faces and official poses, a deafening silence lingers. In We Never Took a Bad Picture, Ashley Roth crafts a spellbinding and authentic story of imperfect love, frail faithfulness, and parental regrets. 

Honorable Mention:

The Great Meadows by Christopher Walsh (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Everyone’s Going

A collection of healing laments about loss and grief presented in dazzling verse

Here is a poet who loves poetry. Northrup is concerned with the crafting of language, not only as a means to an end but also as a means to some kind of beginning. He writes about grief and mortality through a personal point of view, whether real or assumed as speaker, commenting on the experience of losing a father, a mother, and a partner. His poems are like alloys, with great lyricism mixed with memoiric narrative detail, not just seamlessly but inseparably.

George Northrup expresses an eloquent sorrow and a singing grief, signifying the mighty lament of a broken heart that keeps on beating.

Honorable Mentions:

Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17, by Rebecca West (Bookshop | Amazon)

The Devil Prefers Mozart by Anthony Burgess, ed. Paul Phillips (Bookshop | Amazon)

Window and Mirror by Ted Virts (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Sometimes Orange is Almost Gold

Hilarious, warmhearted, bite-sized stories of a cult softball team from West Virginia

Since 1998, a Bad News Bears-inspired softball team has been tearing up the fields of Morgantown, West Virginia. They’ve built a reputation around losing far more games than they win and having more fun than the winners—or anybody else for that matter. Dressed in “county orange” and white uniforms—as in “When I appeared before the judge, I was in my county orange”—Chico’s Bail Bonds have made a tradition out of playing chaotic, occasionally drunk softball, celebrating wins and losses alike at the 123 Pleasant Street bar.

These records are mashups of familiar yet disparate genres. There’s a dash of the tall tale, the frenzied sports announcer, and the romantic writer who can memorialize the most insignificant moments, lift up failure, laugh at it, and love it. Sometimes Orange Is Almost Gold gathers hundreds of post-game write ups, stretching from 1998 to 2025, along with photos across the decades, stats, and pop out highlights of team members past and present.

Honorable Mention:

Replays: Short Stories by a Jersey Guy by Gary Hawthorn (Bookshop | Amazon)

Only Son by Kevin Moffett (Amazon)

1. A Sense For Memory: Part Two

This can’t-miss sequel puts the reader through a wormhole to a realm filled with intrigue, adventure, and action.

A Sense for Memory: Part Two doubles down on its engaging protagonists, introducing two rock stars of the joint. These soldiers think the story is about them, but Commander Qwatajawa, her loyal squad, and her friend, illusionist Xa-Kol, must put a stop to their audacious plan.

The two novellas of A Sense for Memory: Part One are woven together into a more complex story in Part Two: more characters and more character development; bigger, more cinematic settings; and greater challenges as characters struggle to overcome problems. Experiencing these storylines coming together is to enjoy exciting space opera at its finest.

Honorable Mentions:

Mention My Name in Hell: A Streak Wilson Story by Daniel Boyd (Bookshop | Amazon)

You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant by Brad Neeley (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. If I Could Remember

A daughter’s grief, a mother’s fading memory, and a chorus of teddy bears that refuse to let the silence win – If I Could Remember is as heartbreaking as it is unexpectedly tender.

This is the kind of memoir that doesn’t just open a window into one family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s—it rips the curtains down, lets the cold air in, and forces you to sit in it. It is at once brutal and tender, blending memoir, fable, and medical fact into a tapestry that feels both unflinchingly real and strangely magical.

If I Could Remember is ultimately about how we hold onto love when memory fails us. It is about daughters carrying their mothers, bears carrying their makers, and words carrying what can no longer be spoken. To read it is to be both gutted and comforted, to laugh through tears, and to feel deep in your bones the urgency of remembering while we still can.

Honorable Mentions:

Unfollow Me by Kathryn Caraway (Amazon)

The Price of Freedom by Michael C. Bland (Amazon)

Deadpan by Harold Eppley (Barnes & Noble)

1. I Have Never Felt Alive

A frantic slice-of-life drama about a young man struggling with a dying mother and the ramifications of living too much in the past

Ryan left his small hometown just after college, but news of his mother’s failing health drags him back. She’s been transferred to an assisted living facility with the clear indication that she doesn’t have much time. 

Their strained relationship muddies his feelings, and instead of visiting her, he reconnects with his high school friends. Except that the once quiet town sags under the weight of abandoned businesses, contaminated land, and increasing violence. Ryan distracts himself from his dying mother’s last days by diving too deep into drugs, alcohol, and sex.

The writing is evocative with an engaging sense of cadence, often switching between short and long sentences to build an almost lyrical rhythm. Ryan isn’t that lyrical or poetic in his everyday speech, but his thoughts are deeper than he realizes. 

It is an uncomfortable but captivating story filled with explosive action and erotic encounters—a vivid character study overflowing with emotional revelations about the vagaries of life. 

Honorable Mention:

Recovering Maurice by Martin Zelder (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Alive and Beating

In which a terrorist attack becomes a salvific tragedy, transcending religious and cultural differences

Inspired by a real-life tragedy in which a young Jewish American woman was killed in a terrorist attack and her family chose to donate her organs, saving multiple lives, Rebecca Wolf’s debut novel, Alive and Beating, movingly captures the struggle to stay sane and preserve dignity while dying slowly.

Different lives, and indeed cultures, converge as time ticks away, and familial bonds strain under differing opinions on the right way to live, with some viewing organ donations from someone of a different religion as an abomination and others encouraging martyrdom.

Wolf evens the serious tone with humor, using characters’ eccentricities to lighten otherwise tense and somber atmospheres. I found Alive and Beating both thought-provoking and stirring, as it raises many questions about ingrained beliefs and what really is right and wrong, especially when faced with life-and-death situations.

Honorable Mention:

Slip by L. Ryan Storms (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Kristofferson: 67 Astounding Songs

A window into the heart and mind of a beloved musical talent

Kris Kristofferson was a talented singer & prolific songwriter who released 18 solo albums in addition to nine collaboration albums (“The Highwaymen,” Rita Coolidge, Barbra Streisand) during his life. In Kristofferson: 67 Astounding Songs, author Richard Somma dives deep into the world of Kris Kristofferson, examining his background, influences, and environment that lit his flame of creativity.

Richard Somma possesses a golden ear for lyrical intent. Kristofferson: 67 Astounding Songs is an insightful book fueled by the love of music. The interpretation of song lyrics has been done before, but Richard Somma’s book stands out as a more personal effort. This faithful, well-rendered book is an excellent companion for those who are already in love with Kristofferson and those who are about to be.

Honorable Mention:

The Nameless Dead by Leta Seraphim (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. No Big Deal

Tour vans, Xeroxed demos, and a front-row seat to a vanishing scene

Dean Brownrout’s No Big Deal: Chasing the Indie Music Dream in the Last Days of the Record Business spans two decades of music industry upheaval, from the rise of punk to the messy birth of digital distribution. Told with dry wit and sharp recall, it’s a memoir that understands the music business is rarely fair but always fascinating.

No Big Deal isn’t just about the music—it’s about what lingers after the amps cool down: the flyers that faded, the credits that rolled on, the people who shaped it all from the wings. Brownrout isn’t trying to sell a comeback story. He’s offering something rarer: a clear-eyed tribute to the people, places, and instincts that shaped a generation. No Big Deal doesn’t shout to be remembered—it endures because it remembers for us.

Honorable Mentions:

The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler (Bookshop | Amazon)

The Ten Thousand Things by Debbi Flittner (Bookshop | Amazon)

Formed in Silence: A Journey of Healing and Wholeness Through Attuning to God’s Voice by Matt Schmuker (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Boxcutters

John Chrostek’s stories hop the fence to the bizarre side while still rooting themselves deep within the heart in his debut story collection, Boxcutters.

Each of the 13 stories in this collection is distinct. While “Finding the Joy” plays with present day realism, featuring an Amazon package thief, “Jesus Christ, Human Relations,” (a title worth a laugh and a ponder in itself) bumps into the miraculous, the supernatural. And “Vice and Virtue” is set in a freely fictionalized B.C. Greece and features mythical creatures alongside ageless themes of love, courage, and generally just figuring out who you are. Chrostek’s characters are also varied: Artists, office workers, the aforementioned thief. All have deep lives, dense clouds of confusion to fight through.

Read in rapid succession, the stories in Boxcutters could cause mental whiplash. In a world of tightly-woven and linked story collections, Chrostek doesn’t offer the reader an easy merge between times, places, or people, but overall themes emerge. Many characters feel trapped. Whether it be by societal norms or a literal glass cage, they are imprisoned in lives that aren’t necessarily the lives they want to live. And just like with all trapped things, it’s beautiful to see their full potential, their entire freedom, once they’ve been set free.

Honorable Mention:

Freelance by Kevin M. Kearney (Bookshop | Amazon)

The Sofa by Sam Munson (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Bloodletting a Butterfly

Visceral, devastating, and brilliantly gory

Alec B. Hood’s Bloodletting a Butterfly places readers in the grief-hazy head of a speaker completely preoccupied with death and dying. We bear witness to the speaker’s near-synesthetic empathy through poems intent on creating raw, physical images.

Still-born infants, roadkill, ghosts, and brutalized birds populate the world of this collection, and Hood’s skill as a poet is tangible in the way he hangs onto these images, breathing new life into them through brightly alliterative description.

Bloodletting a Butterfly is a collection of beautifully ugly poetry, viscerally physical in nature, and violently emotional in practice. 

Honorable Mention:

American Entropy by Travis Hupp (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. I Contain Multitudes

A throng of terror, loss, doubt, and reckoning with trauma swirls together in a collage of wondrous worlds.

Trina Bell is on the run. Strange human-like shadows chase her across towns and fields. But their nightmarish presence pales in strangeness compared to what happens to her with each new day. The world is changing. The rough outline might stay similar, but details change, and no one recalls her presence from the previous cycle.

Jumping from small-town flyover-country America, to a Victorianesque metropolis, to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and more, I Contain Multitudes contains quite a few worlds. Certain motifs connect each of them into a cycle. The library, where Colin works. The asylum for dispossessed women. The ensemble of recurring characters, from the kind and helpful Edie, to the increasingly violent and erratic Dr. Sweets.

Christopher Hawkins’s seamless and simple prose immerses the reader in every successive world so thoroughly, I wished each episode within the novel was a book in its own right. The cast and the constant locations and motifs not only give cohesion to the multiverse storyline, but attachment to them are the bricks upon which the structure of heightening tensions and stakes solidly rests.

Honorable Mention:

Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. The Widow of Hartforde

In this rip-roaring yarn of Colonial New England, a young couple finds themselves in the crosshairs of supernatural trouble.

Rebecca Easton is struggling in her new life as a preacher’s wife in a Connecticut colony in 1661. And the strange creature she sees at the edge of the woods isn’t helping.

With hopes of sparing the widow’s life, Rebecca reveals to the court that she’s seen the beast too, causing an uproar and drawing the suspicions of the judge. He orders her out into the woods with a search party: find the beast by sunrise or risk being the next woman accused of witchcraft. Suddenly, Rebecca is on a breakneck journey through darkness.

Full of cinematic flair, this is a fast-paced read with twists and chills. New England’s rich history of witch trials is put to great use here, and J.F. Baker leans into it with creativity and canny twists. The book is one to be devoured in as few sittings as possible.

Honorable Mention:

Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa (Bookshop | Amazon)

1. Payback

A deeply human story about courage, solidarity, and what it takes to thrive in a world that isn’t fair

Samantha dares to dream of a meaningful career despite the absence of encouragement in her childhood. Her two friends, Inga and Josephine, confront their own personal and societal struggles and claim the lives they believe they deserve. Together, these three women navigate the storms of corporate life—sexual assault, bullying, invisibility at work, sexism, and racism—while wrestling with inner battles like overthinking, guilt, and impostor syndrome in Payback by Molly D. Shepard and Peter J. Dean.

Both a story and a mirror to global workplace inequality, this book equips women with practical ways to understand their terrain and rise above it with their dignity intact. It balances thrilling fiction with real-world wisdom—delivering career strategy and survival insight through the lives of its characters.

Payback is a globally relevant story, one that any woman, regardless of geography or culture, will find herself reflected in. It’s not just about women in corporate America; it’s about every woman who has ever been told to shrink to survive.

Honorable Mention:

Love Code by Emmanuel Iren

Epic and Lovely by Mo Daviau (Bookshop | Amazon)

What were the best books you read this year? Let us know in the comments!

About the Company

Thank you for reading The Best Books We Read in 2025! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post The Best Books We Read in 2025 appeared first on Independent Book Review.