Best Books of 2025
The past 6 months have been solid for me in terms of my reading. I got back into a groove after a bit of a drop-off earlier in the year. Setting regular routines helped, but so did finding really good books that I could sink into before going to bed.
The following are my favorite books from the last six months. Some were quite dark, a few were fun thrillers, and still others were informative nonfiction. Hopefully there’s something on this list that you might enjoy too!
Happy reading,
Tim
Best Books of 2025
Flesh by David Szalay
I read this after it was short-listed for the Booker Prize and I was so happy it won! This is a wonderfully dark novel. It revolves around the main character Istvan as a young teen until he’s much, much older. And in this life trajectory, taking place in both Budapest and London, the author details all the ways in which Istvan is beat down by society and then brought back up again only to be crushed by forces stronger than him. It’s an interesting look at masculinity, capitalism, family feuds, and more. I highly recommend it, but do note that there is a lot of sex depicted in the novel and it’s not for everyone.
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart
This is a hilarious novel about a 10-year-old girl, Vera, the protagonist and narrator of the story, going about her life. Set in a plausible, but dystopian future, Vera narrates all that is happening to her at school and what’s happening at home. It’s an incisive look at modern society, reproductive freedom (or lack thereof), and technology. Most creepy of all is her AI teddy bear and I’ve read that AI teddy bears are going to be the next big toy for kids in the future.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
This is an exciting thriller that has you on edge until the end. It’s also well-written and literary. The novel centers on Alicia, a famed artist who is condemned to a mental institution after killing her husband. But since the killing, she hasn’t spoken a single word to a single person. She’s silent. Most of the novel is told from the point of view of her new therapist Theo. Alicia’s occasional diary entries are also interspersed throughout the text. And it’s not until the last chapter that you get the whole, complete, and true story of what’s happened. It’s an excellent read!
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
I really enjoyed getting stuck in this novel - in a snowstorm in England in the winter of 1962-1963. The novel follows two couples who live near each other during one particularly brutal winter. Both of the female characters are newly pregnant and they bond over this experience. It was the depth to their inner lives, and the complications in their respective marriages, that kept me reading this novel late at night.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
I was hoping to like this more than I did. I think my expectations were too high because I really like McEwan's writing. Still, it was good. Told in two distinct parts, and set in a dystopian future where climate change has decimated the world we know, readers follow two characters – university professors – in England, or what once was England, as they set out to find information about a lost Bundy poem (a fictional poet from our current time period). I enjoyed the critique of academia, the consequences of not addressing how to stop the planet from warming, and the play on what we think we know and how we know it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This is the classic self-help book. Written in the 1930s, Carnegie details all the ways in which we get people wrong and all the things we can do in our lives to change our behaviors so we get the desired outcome. Yes, it’s old, and yes the stories are out of context for a modern reader. But that’s also what makes it delightful. While I don’t love the title, it’s also timeless advice about dealing with people more effectively. I’m glad I finally read it.
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
This is a wonderful book of nonfiction. It’s also great because the chapters are short and snappy (think 3-4 pages or so). The book details 20 different ideas about how our thoughts and actions about money are much more emotional than rational. l really enjoyed how the author details how we go about thinking about money all wrong. Each chapter is dedicated to one emotional aspect of money and how we can reframe our thinking about it. This is an older book (2020) and he has a new one that just came out this year (also worth reading).
The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
Set in 1999, 6 young adults come together in an old cottage in England to create an app that will change dating forever. Led by a mysterious professor, they work furiously to release it in the heyday of the dotcom boom. Fast forward 25 years and the reader finds all 6 characters at a dinner party rehashing what happened one fateful night that led to the app never being released. It’s an intense and fun thriller with a ton of twists and turns.
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
Set in a post-apocalyptic future that is very vaguely described, in an unnamed desert, the novel revolves around a reality dating show. 20 contestants are brought to the compound to compete for various prizes, love, and a chance to be famous. Of course, it all goes a bit mad, and it’s in that chaos that the novel shines. It can be slow at times, and the narration can drag, but it’s worth it for the ending.
The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
I was looking for a fun YA thriller and this is it! It’s a series, but you don’t need to read all of the books. This novel stands alone. The Naturals follows Cassie, a 17-year-old from Colorado who is picked up by the FBI for her uncanny ability to profile people. She’s a “natural.” In other words, she has super-natural abilities to look at someone and just know them, all of them, instantly. Cassie gets taken into an FBI program for other naturals, young people her age who also have other incredible abilities, and the story takes off from there. They are supposed to crack cold cases, and specifically look into serial killers who have escaped capture. But as the storyline progresses, a cold case becomes, well, quite hot, and Cassie and her fellow “Naturals” get caught up in the action. It’s a fun and fast novel with a ton of behavioral psychology thrown in too. I highly recommend it!