I’m a little belated on this as I was on the fence about making this blog post, which feels a bit redundant with my recent posts, but for the sake of tradition, I do feel compelled to document my favorite books I read over the last year.
As always, these are just books I read for the first time in 2025, not 2025 releases. I also made this graphic to post on twitter without giving any thought to the order, so apologies for the lack of cohesion with this list which I did my best to put in order, though the top 3 are honestly interchangeable.
8. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Obviously a brutal account of a young man drafted into the Vietnam War, but also a masterclass in storytelling. If I ever decide to write a novel, I will be revisiting this, as I found O’Brien’s reflections on truth and subjectivity and the fine line between fiction and nonfiction to be so valuable.
7. The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. I stepped out of my comfort zone to read a commercial WWII novel for a book club and what do you know, it was fantastic. I wasn’t convinced for a while by the present-day narrative, but ultimately I thought it all dovetailed brilliantly, and the chapters set in Nazi-occupied Poland are some of the best historical fiction I’ve read in ages.
6. The Compound by Aisling Rawle. Part Love Island, part Lord of the Flies, The Compound gives a simple dating show premise a dystopian edge. Uneasy as this made me feel, I devoured it. This is the perfect beach read if you like your romance with a side of commentary on late-stage capitalism.
5. Maame by Jessica George. Maybe it’s just an occupational hazard of being in my thirties, but I have a bit of fatigue with narratives about women in their early twenties finding themselves, but I really loved Maame, which I found both poignant and occasionally hysterical and probably a touch too relatable given the fact that I am, indeed, in my thirties.
4. The Wedding People by Alison Espach. My friend lent this to me and I had a gut feeling that I wouldn’t click with it so I put it aside for a few months before deciding that I was holding onto her book for too long and it was time to bite the bullet, but I unexpectedly loved this. Maybe it’s another being in my thirties thing, but having had a career change recently, I’m so into the concept of self-reinvention, and this plays with that idea in such a fun way.
3. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (translated from the French by Roz Schwartz). Again, my top 3 books could be in any order. I was convinced this was my book of the year while I was reading and after I finished it. This is often compared to The Handmaid’s Tale but I find that does this book a disservice—I think it’s both more inventive and more rewarding.
2. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier. I get why this is less popular than Rebecca—it’s a lot less plotty and its protagonist much more despicable—but I think this book is arguably the more remarkable achievement. Rachel with her unknowable motivations makes for one of the most compelling characters I’ve encountered maybe ever, and the creeping sense of dread that du Maurier evokes feels almost suffocating by the novel’s climax.
1. Stoner by John Williams. The most tender portrait of an ordinary life. Stoner is filled with loss and disappointment but it also captures the quiet integrity of a life lived to the best of its ability. I think if I had read this during the worst of my depression a few years ago, I would have come out of it with a much more nihilistic take, but while this did dishearten me on many occasions I also really felt the power of Williams’ conviction that this man’s unremarkable life was worthy of filling every one of these pages.
Originally I was going to call this ‘Best and Worst Books of 2025’ but for worst I actually only have one contender: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano whose characters I found so poorly constructed that I couldn’t forgive the melodrama with which their troubles are recounted. I did read a couple of other pretty bad books, most of the Freida McFadden variety, but in general I think I’ve done a good job this year of reaching for the right books at the right time.
What was your favorite (and/or least favorite) book you read in 2025?
The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer ★★★★★ Well! I guess what they say about not judging books by their cover is actually true once in a while, because when my friend suggested we read this for a book club, I nearly dismissed it outright from its generic woman-walking-away cover art suggesting a depressing yet Oprah-esque WWII melodrama, but my god, I loved this book. While it does fall victim to the trap of most dual-timeline narratives where the historical storyline ends up being more interesting than the present-day one, Rimmer does an impressive job at balancing the stakes—not an easy feat when one character is struggling to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland and one is dealing with modern domestic challenges. One of this book’s strengths for me was how refreshing of a protagonist Alina was for a WWII novel—not particularly brave or exceptional, Alina is ordinary and romantic and sheltered, which really allowed for Rimmer’s depiction of the disruption of daily life to shine through.
Stoner by John Williams ★★★★★ This book gutted me. Life can be so banal and disappointing and unfulfilling and yet it’s all we have and there’s something beautiful in that, and I don’t know that this concept has been explored with more care or expert craftsmanship by any other writer. This might just be the Great American Novel of the twentieth century. Truly exceptional.
The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell ★★★★☆ I liked this a lot! I think it could have been shorter and Sophie’s POV was bordering on extraneous for me, but something about this mystery and Tallulah’s character really grabbed me.
The Bell by Iris Murdoch ★★★★☆ Not nearly as strong as The Sea, The Sea, which is the only other Murdoch I’ve read, and one of the best books I’ve read ever, but I enjoyed this depiction of an odd little religious community nestled next to an abbey, whose bell tower is conspicuously lacking a bell. No one blends humor and philosophy like Murdoch.
A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham ★★★★☆ Competent but exceedingly predictable. I pretty much guessed where this was going at every turn, but I loved the Louisiana setting and I’m excited to read more by Willingham if her debut was this solid.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ★★★★★ When I finished this, I fought the urge to google “how much of The Things They Carried was true,” which I think is both a natural curiosity that arises when reading this book and also one that completely undermines the point of this project. Really fascinating insights here about subjectivity and how to most accurately distill the brutalities of war down to a true story—how truth isn’t always in the details but in how the details make you feel. I was never assigned this in high school and then it fell off my radar, so I know I’m late to the game, but happy to have finally read this. I picked it up when in Chicago with my friend Jill this summer for an Oasis concert; there was quite a moving exhibition about the Vietnam War being hosted in the Chicago Public Library, which got us talking about Vietnam War literature.
Heartwood by Amity Gaige ★★☆☆☆ Very odd book. I don’t think this succeeded very well in the mystery aspect (the whereabouts of the missing hiker were ultimately not very interesting; one POV character was very trying on the reader’s patience), but what I found most intriguing about it was its depiction of the Covid-19 pandemic. I understand the impulse that a lot of writers have to skirt around the pandemic, or to mention it as an afterthought, but Gaige really delves into its psychological impact on both society and the individual in a way that I found refreshing. Unfortunately the rest of the book really did not hold up.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell ★★★☆☆ I’ve been enjoying Lisa Jewell this year and I expected this to be a standout based on its popularity, but I think I just don’t love cult narratives. I thought the twists and reveals of hidden identities were all well-executed and I don’t have much to fault it for except that I didn’t care much for the premise. I find that a lot of stories about cults just hit all of the same beats and this was no exception. I will still be reading the sequel, hopefully soon before I forget all the characters.
Escape! by Stephen Fishbach ★★★★★ Enjoyed this debut from Survivor contestant-turned-my-Twitter-mutual-turned-author, Stephen Fishbach, about a reality tv show modeled heavily on Survivor. Review to come for BookBrowse.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach ★★★★★ Stylistically this is nothing like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but it reminded me of it because both books indulge in such an absurd fantasy that there’s a perverse sort of escapism to both reading experiences. What if I could sleep for a year? What if I could step on a plane and leave my whole life behind and reinvent myself? The Wedding People has an incredible hook: Phoebe, depressed, books a suite in an upscale hotel room that she can’t afford and plans to kill herself that evening—little does she know every other room in the hotel has been rented out by a wedding party, and the bride is none too pleased that her wedding is about to be ruined by this random suicidal girl. It’s funny, it’s refreshing, it’s surprisingly incisive, and it really challenged me to shift my perspective on certain aspects of life that usually go unexamined. I was not expecting to love this or feel its impact as much as I did.
The Red Tenda of Bologna by John Berger ★★★★★ I generally care a lot less than I used to about # of books read in a year, but when I noticed I’d read 49 books on December 31 I figured that would be a good excuse to read this tiny slip of a book that I was gifted a while back. I briefly lived in Bologna and it remains my favorite city in the world and Berger captures the atmosphere so, so well in this travel essay/meditation on the death of his uncle.
And with that I have officially reviewed all 50 books I read in 2025, which was a goal that I set myself in the middle of the year when I randomly decided to take up blogging again. This has been a good and successful experiment that I intend to continue into the new year, as long as it doesn’t start feeling like a chore again, but so far so good. If you’ve been reading these posts I think my best and worst books of the year are evident, but I may write those posts for old time’s sake.
Reading-wise I also intend to continue doing what I’ve been doing lately: using the library more, reading more books off my shelves, reading strictly one book at a time, not trying to chase the literary zeitgeist by prioritizing new releases constantly. I’ve currently got Discontent and Katabasis out from the library and then I think I’ll browse my shelves for my next read—I think I’ll try to read a very long book this month since January is interminable anyway.
I’ll ask about your best books of the year in my next post, so for now, what have you guys been reading lately?
Want to Know a Secret? by Freida McFadden ★★☆☆☆ (Mild spoilers ahead!) I enjoy an unreliable narrator, but I don’t love when a plot twist revolves around the fact that the narrator was straight up lying to the reader, I don’t think that’s much fun. (Ok, fine, explicit spoilers ahead.) It’s revealed in the end that April killed her elderly neighbor, but when we were reading in April’s POV, she had suspicions that Maria killed the neighbor…? Girl why are you suspicious if you know you did it?! Just a very badly constructed book in many ways—Freida’s thrillers are always a bit on the silly side, but this really pushes credulity past its breaking point.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy ★★☆☆☆ I really liked Migrations but I just found this one a little too unsubtle and didactic. The relationship between Dominic and Rowan I felt was a classic case of telling rather than showing—it’s such a large part of the story but I didn’t feel it or understand it. I really dislike the convention of using child characters to spoon feed complex subjects to the reader and I felt McConaghy leaned too heavily into this in her treatment of climate change. I’m also not sure I agree with anything this book has to say about the complicated decision to bring children into a world that’s burning—McConaghy’s take seems to be that it’s always worth it, and while I’m happy for those who feel that way, I don’t love the choice to illustrate this position through the character who spends most of the story diametrically opposed to it.
Coram House by Bailey Seybolt ★★★★☆ I enjoyed this! I love a Vermont setting when executed well and you can really tell Seybolt has spent time here. The story itself is based on the sexual abuse scandal in St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington—I thought Seybolt researched and handled the subject well. Some of the character motivations felt a little lazily manufactured but that’s my only complaint. This was a decent way to spend a few hours.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman ★★★★★ Finally a good fucking book. This is a challenging book to categorize or get to the root of—certain passages suggest that the whole project is an allegory for patriarchal oppression, but the way male characters were integrated throughout the story muddies that reading and I find the book all the more interesting and unsettling for that. For a book that holds so much back, I haven’t felt this rewarded by a reading experience in a while.
I Am You by Victoria Redel ★★★★★ Set in 1600s Amsterdam against the backdrop of the Dutch Golden Age, I Am You tells the story of still life painter Maria van Oosterwijck, as narrated by her servant Gerta. The complex, ever-evolving relationship between these women as well as the lush, evocative setting is what makes this historical fiction novel well worth a read. Full review here on BookBrowse.
The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers ★★★★★ I haven’t given a thriller 5 stars in a long time, and I’m just as surprised as you are that the book to finally receive this honor is by the host of the Crime Junkie podcast, but this just ticked all of my boxes. It’s gripping, the mystery is compelling, the characters are three-dimensional, the twists are well-executed, the ending is both emotionally upsetting and narratively satisfying—not sure what more I could ask for. (I am curious about how much of this Flowers wrote and how much was penned by her coauthor Alex Kiester, who I’d love to read more from.)
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall ★★★☆☆ The Reese Witherspoonification of Thomas Hardy. This rural melodrama is certainly compulsively readable and at times emotionally affecting, but when you put it up against Far From the Madding Crowd (which it’s impossible not to do when Hall lifts all of her characters’ names straight from Hardy’s work), it’s just a bit anemic. I was never fully convinced by these characters, particularly Gabriel, who doesn’t have a single flaw, apparently.
The Pretender by Jo Harkin ★★★★☆ I think you need to already have an interest in the Wars of the Roses going into this to enjoy it, which I most certainly do, thankfully, but this wasn’t quite the slam dunk I expected it to be for me. There’s a very long section of this book set in Ireland that ends up being the emotional crux of the novel, but that’s the section that I felt dragged the most, which is probably why I ended up not having a very strong emotional connection to this story. Still, it’s hard not to admire Harkin’s incredibly thorough research, and the offbeat, jaunty tone she sustains for nearly 500 pages.
Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje ★★★★☆ After reading the first few chapters I assumed this was going to be a fairly standard Divorce Book, but it ended up having a lot more to offer, particularly in its examination of Croatia’s postwar economy. As a Divorce Book I don’t have much to fault it for—I think Hilje (writing in her second language, no less) does a great job of depicting the complex unraveling of two intertwined lives. My only criticism is that the emotional beats of the subplot didn’t totally dovetail with the main narrative—one wraps up and then the book somehow continues for another hundred or so pages, and it feels unbalanced. Still mostly very good, especially for a debut.
One by One by Freida McFadden ★★☆☆☆ This premise was just so insanely contrived to a point where I realize it’s not deserving of any of the brainpower I’m giving it but nonetheless, here is an abridged list of questions this inane book left me with.
Spoilers!
– How did Lindsay/Warner tamper with Claire’s battery? – How could they guarantee exactly where Claire’s van would break down? If Noah had kept driving without hesitating it wouldn’t have stalled—then what?? – How did Lindsay and Warner guarantee that they’d pass by a blueberry bush, and that nobody else would eat any blueberries? And when Lindsay was faking her seizure, her skin was described as pale with a greenish hue—how did she manage that if she was faking?! – Six fully grown adults manage to get lost in the woods for 3 days walking in circles in a 2-mile radius which begs a number of questions, but the one I keep coming back to is: Claire recognizes the same dead squirrel that she passes multiple times. Would she not be concerned that there’s no sign of Lindsay’s body where they left it?! – If Noah was planning to use this trip to reconcile with Claire, why did he spend all morning antagonizing her even before she revealed that she got them separate bedrooms? – If Michelle’s death was always just going to be collateral damage, why invite her on this trip? Why not convince Jack to let her stay behind and work, which she wanted to do anyway??
Two stars for entertainment value as always with Freida.
What have you guys been reading lately? I have so many of your blog posts to catch up on.
You’ve heard of 20 Books of Summer, you’ve heard of WITMonth, now get ready for: Books That Aren’t Very Good August. I’ve been in a rut. For some reason I’m struggling to pick out books, lately—I find myself bouncing back and forth from literary to commercial fiction and neither is quite what I’m after. Ah well, at least I’m reading somewhat consistently. Let’s just get these reviews out of the way and then hopefully on to better things.
Audition by Katie Kitamura ★★☆☆☆ An interesting project but this is exactly the type of solipsistic literary fiction that I’m sick to death of reading. I don’t deny that it would probably be satisfying to puzzle over this book’s structure but I’m finding I just have no desire to do that. Onto the next thing.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano ★☆☆☆☆ The longer I read the more I caught my estimation of this book slipping. At first I was distracted by the competent sentence-by-sentence writing and compelling enough setup (a Little Women reimagination, told through the eyes of a young man who grew up lonely in the shadow of his sister’s death, finding solace in basketball), but the more time I spent with this book I realized it just wasn’t delivering anything it promised. This is truly some of the weakest character work I’ve encountered in a long time—each character and their motivations can be summed up in a single word (William: quiet; Julia: pragmatic; Sylvie: bookish; Emeline: nurturing; Cecelia: artist), and whatever drives each of them is told to us repeatedly rather than shown. There’s a supposedly climactic and emotional scene between two characters which takes place on a bench, which is referred back to what feels like thousands of times (I lost track of how many variations of “it all started that night on the bench” we were treated to), but the significance of that scene isn’t felt in the moment—everything in this book feels wooden and hollow and nothing feels lived in.
I also found the dialogue particularly grating. One of my pet peeves in commercial fiction is inane philosophizing in dialogue, where characters articulate themselves with manufactured precision, and that is Hello Beautiful in a nutshell. Here is a taste:
“We’re not separated from the world by our own edges […] We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don’t have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they’re contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.”
—
“When an old person dies,” Kent said, “even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They’re like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like [redacted] dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.”
There’s no subtlety, no finesse—everything is laid out for the reader’s convenience. The Little Women intertextuality is executed just as lazily; why should the reader have to figure out for themselves who each of the sisters represents, when that’s argued between them and spelled out on the page? When one character receives a serious diagnosis, she point blank tells us that she’s Beth, just in case we missed that subtle reference.
I’m somewhat baffled by this book’s commercial success. I cannot fathom being touched by a single one of these characters but I guess I’m glad others were moved where I was not.
The Favorites by Layne Fargo ★★☆☆☆ I really enjoyed Fargo’s debut thriller They Never Learn which I thought had a bold and singular voice and was quite gripping from start to finish—in comparison, there’s something uninspired about her ambitious ice skating novel. Essentially Wuthering Heights meets I, Tonya, The Favorites is a soapy retelling of Emily Bronte’s classic, centered on Katarina and Heath, an ice dancing team with Olympic ambitions who overcome their poor upbringing to skate among the country’s elite. Drama and toxicity ensue, of course, but there’s something almost perfunctory about it. This book can be summed up as Kat loves skating and Heath loves Kat, except Heath is maybe the lamest, least convincing character I’ve ever read, which makes all the drama around him feel as underdeveloped as he is, and Kat herself isn’t much better.
Others have described this as a fun, beachy read, but even if I try to meet this book on those terms it falls short for me. Maybe I’ve read too many sports novels or encountered too many protagonists lately whose sole ambition is being the best, but I just found myself comparing this book unfavorably to other projects that have done this same thing much more convincingly.
The author also has this tic where she likes to end chapters on cliffhangers that basically amount to “a character just entered the room,” and once you start noticing it you will not be able to stop:
The voice interrupting my tantrum was female, harsh and smoky. With a Russian accent.
—
He stopped. Someone stood ahead of us, blocking the path. Heath.
—
He drew me close again, but not to dance. “What is it?” “My brother is here.”
—
When the door lock finally clicked open, I startled, dropping my phone on the bleached white duvet. Heath was back.
Recommended for those who like books where characters show up places.
Anyway, enough of that. I have a couple of books out from the library right now, Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore and a Vermont-set thriller called Coram House. My friend lent me her copy of The Wedding People which I’ve heard good things about and suppose I should read soon, but I’m nervous that it might be another Hello Beautiful situation so I might need some distance from book club books before I dive into that. I’ve also been reading Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels at a rate of one per summer, which means the time has come for me to pick up the third. I’m pacing myself slowly with this series for a couple of reasons, the main one being that The Story of a New Name was one of the more emotionally intense reading experiences I’ve had in recent years (don’t even talk to me about the Ischia chapters) and I felt it was best to give that one some time to settle before plowing ahead, but I am really looking forward to that—I feel like if anyone can cure my reading slump, it’s probably Ferrante. Anyway, if you’ve read anything recently that you think I’d like or feel like you have a sense of what sort of book I should be reading at the moment, do let me know.
Hello, I’m back again! I can’t promise that I will be posting with any consistency, but I am making it a goal to review everything I read in 2025 at some point or another, so, let’s get caught up from where I left you.
The Crash by Freida McFadden ★★☆☆☆ A sort of riff off Misery that makes you wish you’d stuck with the original. For this premise to work, for us to believe that Tegan is truly trapped, we have to endure a lot of tedium, which is one thing that certainly can’t be said of the other McFadden books I’ve read–readability is kind of her whole thing. It’s still a perfectly fine way to spend a few hours but that’s about it.
Summer by Edith Wharton ★★★★☆ Jesus Christ, bleak as hell. Summer is only my second foray into Wharton after Ethan Frome, a novel I hate, but Eleanor promised this one is much better despite Wharton viewing the two novels as companions. It’s easy to see why she did so, but Elle was right, this is the superior work. Lush and beautifully crafted, it’s shockingly modern in a lot of ways (its frank and haunting depiction of the sexual threat Royall poses to Charity, as well as the way it depicts Charity’s own sexual desire; its sequence about seeking an abortion). This makes me rethink my previous ambivalence toward Wharton. I do want to read The Age of Innocence at some point as I adore the Scorsese film.
Siracusa by Delia Ephron ★★☆☆☆ Ok, well, for one thing, I’m annoyed at the misleading summary promising ‘Rashomon-style’ narration which implies that these characters’ recollections are going to contradict one another’s. That is not the case, this is just a run of the mill multiple-POV thriller—which is fine, I had just gone into this book expecting it to have more interesting aims so I was disappointed that that wasn’t the case. I did think Ephron’s deplorable characters were well-crafted, but I unfortunately didn’t click with her writing style at all—I couldn’t get over the impression that this book thought rather highly of itself. Sicily is my favorite place on earth but I didn’t think Ephron particularly brought the setting to life.
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney ★★★☆☆ Freida McFadden aside, I don’t read this type of thriller very often, where it’s plot twist after plot twist after plot twist (I generally gravitate toward more slow burn/character-driven type mysteries). The novelty of it was fun, but I’m not sure any of the ludicrous reveals in this book hold up to much scrutiny. Great setting and atmosphere, but I think I’m done with thrillers set on remote Scottish islands for a while (see: the new Paula Hawkins, which is the superior novel in just about every way).
Open, Heaven by Sean Hewitt ★★★★☆ A tender, slow-paced, nostalgic stroll through the narrator’s memories of his first love, a boy he knew when he was sixteen. Hewitt, with a background in poetry, has a gorgeous command of the English language, but the characters and setting are at times a bit overly archetypical. Still worth spending some time with. Full review here on BookBrowse.
Northern Spy by Flynn Berry ★★☆☆☆ I’m a fan of Flynn Berry’s writing—Under the Harrow is an underrated thriller that I still recommend—but this Northern Ireland-set IRA thriller was a letdown. I don’t think Berry did a great job contextualizing the conflict, which was sort of boiled down to Catholics vs. Protestants and felt like it was set in the 80s despite supposedly taking place in the present day (Good Friday Agreement, what Good Friday Agreement?!) It was also remarkably devoid of tension and the character motivations seemed paper thin.
Isola by Allegra Goodman ★★★★☆ I’m having a hard time working out my thoughts on this one. Yes, the story it’s based on is remarkable, but is that enough? (It is, I’m finding, for a lot of people—I’ve been taking note recently of how many people in my life recommend books by saying ‘and it’s based on a true story!’ as if that lends a story more value, and I suppose I just don’t think that way—which is more of an observation than a judgement.) Anyway, this is, of course, a great story written well, but I thought it lacked urgency. Placeholder 4 stars for the exceedingly competent writing and research.
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid ★★☆☆☆ I made a grave error in thinking I would be the right reader for this book—I’ve enjoyed TJR in the past, enough to think that she was the kind of author who I’d be drawn to regardless of how suited the subject matter is to my personal tastes—only for me to reflect and realize the subjects of the three of her books I’ve read (Hollywood, 70s music, tennis) are ridiculously suited to my personal tastes. Space exploration, not so much. And while I knew the particularly science-heavy passages were going to drag for me, I did suspect that TJR’s character work would make up for it, but that just wasn’t the case. The domestic plotline involving the protagonist’s niece takes up too much space, and I found the romance very predictable–this is a book about discovering one’s sexuality, which is a great and important subject, but it does mean that the reader sees a lot of things before the main character, and when the romance does take off, it feels for the reader like retrodding already trodden ground.
The Compound by Aisling Rawle ★★★★★ Who was I to resist something that promises “Love Island meets Lord of the Flies“? Rawle immerses the reader in a positively diabolical reality tv show which is taking place amid a dystopian hellscape of a backdrop that hits a little too close to home for comfort. I absolutely devoured this. Full review here on BookBrowse.
The Tenant by Freida McFadden ★★☆☆☆ There’s just not a whole lot to say, all of her books are the exact same. A little goofy, compulsively readable, crazy twists, profoundly forgettable the minute you finish. I will probably read all of them.
How to Share an Egg by Bonny Reichert ★★★☆☆ This older man at my tennis club randomly gave me this book and said he thought I’d like it, and while it is sweet to be thought of in that way I’m not sure what the impetus behind this particular recommendation was. (Something about me is that I do not particularly care about food, I eat to live, not the other way around, so this “love letter to food” genre just isn’t for me, though I did think Crying in H-Mart was great.) Reichert’s dad’s story is a heartrending one, and when the focus is on him, Reichert’s writing shines. I understand the choice to structure the book the way she did and to interweave her own story with her father’s to echo what it was like to grow up under the shadow of the Holocaust, but it does necessarily mean that the finished result feels unbalanced.
Maame by Jessica George ★★★★★ I have coming-of-age novel fatigue, but this was a really special one, about a Ghanaian-British girl living in London trying to find herself. Jessica George has a really refreshing voice, capable of both humor and pathos, and Maddie is one of the more relatable protagonists I’ve encountered in this genre. I don’t tend to evaluate books on their relatability, but this one just hit extremely close to home in a lot of ways, and when you’ve read so much of this sort of narrative, I think the ones that do start to stand out are the ones that capture something about your own human experience.
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing ★★★☆☆ The thing about me reading this book is that I work at a tennis club and my dad is a tennis pro and I am very familiar with the personality type that is shared by the tennis community at large and I could just NOT take the concept of a tennis pro serial killer seriously, but if you can get past that, I guess it’s fine?
With a Vengeance by Riley Sager ★★★★☆ I was skeptical about this book for a lot of reasons. I’ve read everything Riley Sager has written and I’ve felt that he’s been going downhill for years (his debut Final Girls remains the standout to me of his 9 novels), and I also don’t tend to love mysteries told in the style of Agatha Christie, because no one does it as well as her so why even bother. But for whatever reason, this ultimately worked for me after a sort of slow start. Fusing elements of And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express, Sager adds his own twist to this premise with pretty entertaining results.
What Hunger by Catherine Dang ★★★★★ A macabre cannibal horror story but also a sharp look at intergenerational trauma. Dang fuses elements of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Jennifer’s Body which sounds like a tall order but somehow it coheres seamlessly. Full review here on BookBrowse.
What have you guys been reading lately, any recs? Thoughts on the Booker longlist?
I hesitate to announce that I’m back, because I don’t know that I am–for now I am just testing the waters to see whether I can incorporate book blogging back into my life in a way that feels nourishing and not stifling.
A lot has changed since I’ve last posted on here–namely, I am no longer working in the publishing industry, a decision that has brought me an unquantifiable amount of peace (unfortunately it’s true what they say about not monetizing your hobbies). Being an editor definitely complicated my relationship with reading and I ended up gravitating away from all of this for the last couple of years, which I think was needed. I’m only just getting to a place where I find myself actively wanting to read in my free time, which is why I don’t want to rush into any declarations that I’m going to be blogging on the regular, but somehow I’m finding myself compelled to share with you guys what I’ve been reading lately. (I’m also finding that I miss the era of the internet where there were blogs and websites and there were ways to virtually communicate with the outside world that weren’t on apps owned by billionaires so maybe that’s part of the allure here.)
But anyway, here’s everything I’ve been reading in 2025:
City of Night Birds by Juhea Kim ★★★★☆ A compelling insight into the cutthroat world of Russian ballet. A bit too man-centric (given that the men in this novel were extremely boring) but really excelled in its development of the setting and of Natalia’s character. More thoughts here on BookBrowse.
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier ★★★★★ Du Maurier is the undisputed master of atmosphere. My stomach was in my throat as I tore through this book despite the fact that nothing of real consequence was happening. Loved it. Best book of the year so far.
Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie ★★★★☆ Christie remains my go-to author whenever I need to wrench myself out of a reading slump. It’s no wonder this isn’t one of her more famous titles, but I quite enjoyed it, particularly Elinor’s character. Worth a read if you’ve also already read all the notable ones.
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors ★★★★☆ I missed Mellors’s debut but after this I’m very interested in going back and reading that one. This was a gripping saga of three sisters grieving the loss of their fourth sister that got a bit cornball toward the end, but I really enjoyed the journey.
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ★★★★★ I had been avoiding this one as I’m particularly disinterested in video games and the premise didn’t speak to me, but I’m glad I gave it a shot. This is a masterfully constructed gem of a novel whose shortcomings certainly exist but all feel inconsequential by the time you reach its conclusion and are forced to reconcile with the difficult truth that your life probably actually matters to those around you. Gorgeous novel.
Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang ★★★★☆ A satire about social media influencers written by someone who actually speaks that language. It goes off the rails toward the end, but it’s a fun ride. More thoughts here on BookBrowse.
In My Dreams I Hold A Knife by Ashley Winstead ★★★☆☆ I love a campus novel about a close-knit group of friends, but I just didn’t buy it here. Being forced together by an all-consuming love of the classics (see: The Secret History) or Shakespeare (see: If We Were Villains) or something of that nature is more convincing than a group of 7 students all riding a float together freshman year and becoming inseparable and making no other friends all four years of college despite having nothing in common. The protagonist Jess was a frustrating character and her one-note motivation (being the best) made for some tedious reading–I kept thinking the book could have been better served by focusing on Caro. It’s very readable, I’ll give it that, but it was just too much of a soap opera. My eyes rolled into the back of my head every time mysterious bad boy Coop was mentioned.
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue ★★★☆☆ Donoghue fictionalizes the events of a tragedy that occurred on the train tracks in 1895 Paris. While impeccably researched, this gets bogged down by its concept of breathing life into the whole host of characters on the train that day–it’s hard to keep track of the characters and it’s unclear why you should feel compelled to do so. Still, it’s Donoghue, so of course it’s good. Her prose is captivating as always as it builds tension well.
None of This is True by Lisa Jewell ★★★★☆ Forces you to spend time with the most deplorable character ever written, but if you can stomach that, it’s great. The true crime podcast gimmick worked better here than I’ve seen it done in other similar novels.
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins ★★★★☆ I think because of the astronomical commercial success of The Girl on the Train and how many lackluster knockoffs it inspired it’s easy to forget that Hawkins is actually quite a gifted writer, and this may be my favorite of hers yet. It’s moody, chilly, and set partially on a remote Scottish island and partially in the art world, which I always love.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe ★★★☆☆ A breezy, harmless, occasionally funny book about a young mother who starts an OnlyFans account. There is far too much talk of wrestling in this book for my liking and it ultimately doesn’t do everything I want it to do with its premise, but I enjoyed spending time with Margo.
So that’s that! A lot of thrillers and commercial fiction but I was looking through my shelves the other night and could feel myself itching to return to the world of Good Literature soon once I finish the silly Freida McFadden that I’m currently reading.
What have you guys been reading lately? Does anyone still post on here?! Should I keep doing this or have we moved on??
Like I mentioned in my previous post, this has not been a good reading year for me; I only read about 50 books, which I realize isn’t exactly nothing, but it’s the least I’ve read since 2015, apparently. So I did not expect to be able to come up with a top 10, but I actually did so quite easily; apparently I managed to read quite a few bangers before I became illiterate partway through the year. So let’s get straight into it…
10. Broken Harbor by Tana French
I only started reading Tana French last year; I read the first three books in her Dublin Murder Squad series in 2021, and I read the next three this year. This was the highlight for me by a mile, and may actually be my favorite in the series overtaking The Likeness. I honestly didn’t expect a whole lot from this premise or choice of narrator, but the atmosphere in this book is eerie and terrifying and the mystery left me guessing until the end; I really adored it.
9. The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
Chelsea can rejoice; this was the year I finally started reading her favorite series. All I can is “started,” unfortunately; I had every intention in the world of continuing this series immediately after I finished the first book, but I think I read this in June which is about when I started struggling with reading, so unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards for me to keep going, but I’m hoping I can return to it in the new year. But anyway, back to The Game of Kings: rumors of Dorothy Dunnett’s dense prose have not been exaggerated, but this tale of 1500s Scottish political intrigue is so intricately crafted that it’s such a rewarding and stimulating read, and oddly gripping once you really get into it.
8. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Finalmente ho letto un libro da Elena Ferrante. I still haven’t read her Neapolitan Novels quartet, which I fully intend to, but this ended up being a great place to start with her. This is one of the most oppressive, claustrophobic books I’ve read; it made me want to crawl out of my skin, which I suppose is a compliment because I loved it and never wanted it to end. I thought the character work was astonishingly good for such a short novel, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she’s able to do in her longer works.
7. Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber
This was my Project Book for the year: it’s a 1000-page long essay collection that has an essay on every single Shakespeare play. I received it as a gift for my birthday so I started reading it in April, reading one essay a week, so I didn’t finish until the fall. This is the one thing that managed to keep me hooked even when I couldn’t concentrate on reading anything else. If you’re new here, I really like Shakespeare, and this was a great way to continue to engage with his works without performing them on Zoom every week as I had been doing for a couple of years previously. I found myself disagreeing with Garber on occasion, but that just made things more interesting, and more often than not, I really resonated with her insights, and there were a couple of passages that left me breathless with the way they reframed a simple element of a play that I hadn’t considered before.
6. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
It’s pretty much a rule of thumb by now that if I read an Emily St. John Mandel book, it’ll make my favorites of the year list. Sea of Tranquility is a sort of companion novel to The Glass Hotel, which is my favorite book of hers, so I adored all of the Glass Hotel tie-ins, but I also really loved what this book was doing as its own project. I think I read this in a single sitting, it was just that engrossing and immersive, and I thought Mandel really succeeded in accomplishing a lot in such a short space. Something about her writing style is pure magic.
5. Either/Or by Elif Batuman
The Idiot is probably one of my top ten favorite books published in the last decade, so its sequel Either/Or had a lot to live up to, and it really succeeded. I loved getting to spend more time with Selin, who has one of my favorite narrative voices probably ever, and I found the continuation of her narrative arc to be so effortlessly natural and satisfactory. I’m usually very anti-sequel on principle, especially with works like this which were originally conceived as stand-alones, but in this case, I felt fortunate that Batuman allowed us to read the next chapter of Selin’s journey.
4. Nightshift by Kiare Ladner
My favorite book of 2022 that was published in 2022 was this hidden gem that I’d love for more people to read: Nightshift chronicles the obsession that a young woman living in London develops with one of her coworkers. This book was both brutal and tender and its ruminations on female sexuality were some of the most insightful that I’ve read. In an oversaturated sea of disaster woman novels, this is one that I’d really encourage everyone to reach for.
3. The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage
First and only male author on the list; I guess men deserve some rights. I watched the film adaptation of The Power of the Dog earlier this year and loved it so much that I felt compelled to pick up the book — kind of out of character since I’ve never seen a whole lot of appeal in westerns, but something about this story really got under my skin. The book cleared the high bar the film set; it deepens both the sense of creeping dread and the examination of power and masculinity and queerness. I really believe this is one of the lost masterpieces of 20th century American literature.
2. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
I’d been interested in reading Iris Murdoch for ages and I ended up being so glad that a bookclub finally gave me the push I needed to do so. I adored this. A common (understandable) bookclub complaint was that at around 500 densely-packed pages, this was too long, but I found myself in the minority in feeling like I could have spent another hundred pages with this narrator. This book was just so brilliantly crafted, so perfectly structured, that I felt the length suited this character with an over-inflated ego to a T. This book was both hysterical and sad and all of the Shakespeare references just made it even more of a delight. Just one of the most pleasant reading experiences I’ve had in a while. 2023 needs to be the year I read more Murdoch.
1. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
I guess my reading year peaked before it even began; this was the first book I read in 2022 and it also happened to be the best. I hadn’t had the most auspicious start to my Sarah Waters journey — I’d already read The Night Watch and The Little Stranger, both of which I thought were fine but I loved neither, so I am very grateful that I decided third time might be a charm with Fingersmith. Even though it’s around 600 pages, and nothing about it really screams page-turner, I absolutely tore through this: the twists were unexpected and delightful and the setting and characters both came to life for me like nothing else has all year. The film adaptation, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, is also exceptional, but if you haven’t seen it already I’d really encourage you to read the book first. It’s worth it, I promise.
What was everyone’s favorite book they read in 2022? Also feel free to link me to your own best of 2022 blog posts! I will read them and reply to comments soon, either this afternoon or tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great New Year!
Been MIA for half a year, sorry about that. If you follow me on Twitter you will know that I am still very alive, but due to a number of circumstances, my year was absolute hell, and that sort of manifested in a total inability for me to concentrate on reading and writing. I really hope to be back more regularly in 2023 but I’m also not making any official resolutions to that end because I am trying to not give myself a hard time for not feeling up to any of this when it’s ultimately meant to be a hobby, not something that adds more stress to my life. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter if you are interested in hearing me be annoying about movies multiple times a day.
But I couldn’t let the year end without honoring this tradition, so I will be doing my two annual end of year blog posts. So without further ado… my most disappointing reads of 2022, out of the ~50 or so books I read:
5. Learwife by J.R. Thorpe
I think I read this in January of 2022 which feels like several lifetimes ago… but anyway, it definitely still deserves a mention here. King Lear is my favorite Shakespeare play by a landslide but one that I find particularly challenging to take out of its original context, so I’m always interested to see how authors are going to tackle it in retellings, and the answer here was ultimately just: not well. For a project that endeavors to answer the age-old question about what happened to Lear’s wife, this book didn’t seem particularly interested in the source material, altering a number of details that are kind of critical to the text and not doing anything interesting to expand on the characters and themes present in the original. I also found the writing overwrought and all of the narrative beats incredibly predictable; I just didn’t enjoy spending time with this at all.
4. The Magician by Colm Tóibín
It had been a while since I read a book and thought ‘now what was the point of that?’ but that’s where The Magician left me. Essentially a fictional biography of the life of Thomas Mann, The Magician is a thorough excavation of Mann’s life that spares no details but leaves so much to be desired in the way of intrigue and forward-momentum. I found this novel to be lifeless and plodding and so lacking in narrative substance that I couldn’t help but to wonder, over and over, why Tóibín (who’s published both fiction and nonfiction) opted to write this as a fictional story instead of devoting this effort to an actual biography of Mann. I like Tóibín’s writing on a sentence-by-sentence level and have generally enjoyed him very much in the past, but this project was a miss for me.
3. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (cannot remember the translation I read; it wasn’t the one pictured here)
I read The Magician paired with Death in Venice for a bookclub and I pretty much disliked them both equally. This was my first foray into Mann and I honestly doubt I’ll be returning in a hurry—while I did enjoy our bookclub talk on this novella’s themes, Mann’s actual writing and sentence structure was just a giant headache for me that I didn’t find nearly rewarding enough to be worth the effort.
2. The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
I’ve long been a Riley Sager apologist, typically holding the opinion that you can’t take his books too seriously, you should just try to sit back and enjoy the ride (I really enjoyed the much-maligned Survive the Night; I hear all the criticisms but at the end of the day I tore through it). The House Across the Lake was another matter entirely. This book wasn’t even entertaining, to start with, and to me that’s the biggest sin that Sager could commit; I can forgive a lot of nonsense in this genre if a story’s compelling enough, but this was a chore to get through. And then I found the main twist so stupid it almost defies comprehension, so, absolute shit reading experience from start to finish.
1. Sentence by Daniel Genis
In Sentence, Daniel Genis recounts the decade he spent in prison for armed robbery, centering his experience as an “over-educated” white man in US prison system, and treating the experiences of queer and non-white incarcerated people with downright distain. This whole book left such a bad taste in my mouth, which was only exacerbated by this author harassing me over my review nonstop for days on Goodreads, going as far as to insult the profile pictures of several of my friends, claiming they all have the same “ugly glasses”? Anyway. Good riddance to this book, which I will never speak on again after I post this.
So let me know what your worst reads of 2022 were, if you have a full blog post about it that I should check out (I haven’t looked at my WordPress reader in months and I find the prospect a little overwhelming at the minute if I am honest), or tell me something you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone. I will be back in the next day or two with my best books of 2022, which is a list that I’m actually very excited to share, because despite my mediocre year of reading overall, there were some absolute highlights that I’m looking forward to talking about.
EITHER/OR by Elif Batuman ★★★★★ Penguin Press, 2022
“I felt that this is what I was fighting against, and always had been: the tyranny of the particular, arbitrary way that things happened to have turned out.”
Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot, published in 2017, chronicles a year in the life of Harvard freshman Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants who has vague notions of becoming a writer and thinks she may achieve this goal by looking closely at the way language works. Though she is derailed from her objective, the events of Batuman’s first novel take Selin on an odyssey through the Hungarian countryside in the summer between her freshman and sophomore years as she chases the affections of an aloof older student, Ivan, who has just graduated and is about to move to California.
You can read my full review HERE on BookBrowse and a piece I wrote about Søren Kierkegaard HERE.
THE BOOK OF COLD CASES by Simon St. James ★★☆☆☆ Berkley, March 2022
I think in a better mood I could have enjoyed this book a bit more, but I also firmly believe I would not consider this a good book under any circumstances. I really admired St. James’s The Broken Girls and was hoping for a similarly gripping paranormal thriller here, but I thought The Book of Cold Cases was largely a slog. The first half of the book drags, the twist is revealed early on and it’s easy to guess even earlier on, the paranormal element doesn’t dovetail with the mystery well enough to really justify its inclusion, and the whole premise is predicated on detectives having overlooked a painfully obvious link during a very high-profile murder case. And where I thought that Shea was a well constructed character, I felt that the way her trauma and eventual recovery was rendered was a bit overly simplistic. Anyway, if you like your paranormal thrillers heavy on tedious domestic drama, for whatever reason, this will be the book for you; otherwise, it’s just a bit of a flop. St. James can do better.
pace, amore, libri 