Some of the best books I read in 2025
* I have to say some of because reading is such a personal thing and I read more than 100 books this year! If I had made this list on another day, I am sure the list might have come out differently! There are also still a TONNE of amazing new releases that came out in 2025 still on my TBR, and after I post this, I will be knuckling down and attempting to get to a few of those...
In no particular order:
* By Her Hand by Marion Taffe
* The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary
* What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez
* Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley
* The Wedding People by Alison Espach
* The Cicada House by Ella Ward
* Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (plus the next two books in the series... have yet to read the most recent.)
* The Paradise Heights Craft Store Stitch Up by Kate Solly
* The Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin
* The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center (and I enjoyed The Love Haters too)
* Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
* Silverborn by Jessica Townsend (worth the wait)
* The Underworld by Sofie Laguna
* Human Rites by Juno Dawson (again, worth the wait)
* Daughters of Batavia by Stefanie Koens
Also, because it isn't quite the end of the year yet, I thought I should include a few books I have been reading this week.
I just inhaled The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage - one of this season's most hyped books, but if you're someone who might be put off by that kind of thing, try to see past the Reese Witherspoon endorsement and the fact that the book is quite literally everywhere. It's a compassionate and compelling account of one member of a fictional version of the royal family having to reconcile her duty to the institution of monarchy with the care she owes to herself as a modern woman, written by someone who has reported on the real life royal family for the ABC. Think of it as The Crown meets Princess Diaries but with a little something extra thrown in. I read it in a day and a half.
Don't judge me but I also just picked up The Christmas Tree Farm by Laurie Gilmore after having neglected to read it for a book club earlier this month, and yes, it is a smutty romance book, but it's also very readable and cosy. It was good pre-Christmas vibe reading. I don't know that I will read the rest of the Dream Harbour series though.
Finally, I am part of the way through Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, which won Dymocks book of the year, but more importantly, was one of my dear writers friends' favourite books - Shannon even has a quote in the cover of the Dymocks special edition which is quite cool. I am enjoying it - it has a family living in a lighthouse, which is absolutely something that I am drawn to, thanks to growing up watching Round the Twist. It's a bit spooky, it has some climate anxiety, and there's a mystery about what happened to the research team that used to be on the remote island south of Tasmania, and why Rowan, who has washed up on the shore after braving a storm to try and reach said island, was travelling there to seek out someone who had already left.
Still thinking about what my first read for 2026 will be... what will yours be?