2025 Reading Wrap-Up

Happy New Year! It's that time again for me to ramble about books! (*insert cute little Goodreads Year In Books infographic*)

In 2025, I read 73 books! (Technically 72 because I read one twice lol.) I read more last year, but I wasn't trying too hard this year. My goal had been set at 50 and I managed to surpass that in September or so. But compared to most others in this world, I did read a lot, learned a lot, and gained a lot of new favorite books. But with new favorites comes books I didn't enjoy as much, books I would even go as far as to say I hated. I couldn't even narrow it down to a top 3 and bottom 3 like I did last year. So without further ado, here is my 2025 reading wrap-up!

My Top 10 Favorite Books of the Year

(In No Particular Order)

Before I get into the top 10, though, I have to go over some honorable mentions first.

  • Was The Nanny by Lana Ferguson previously a Reylo fanfiction? Yep. But it was really good, and honestly better than anything she's put out since. I would know, I've read every book of hers to date.
  • Wisteria & Holly were the perfect conclusion and epilogue novella to end Adalyn Grace's Belladonna series. Not to mention how the covers and hardcover casings stun me every time. Adalyn Grace truly got blessed by the pretty book deities.
  • Alex Aster's Lightlark really surprised me this year, as did its sequel Nightbane. Despite the writing feeling like it was intended for a much younger audience, the story, characters, betrayals and twists kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time. Unfortunately, I didn't get that same feeling with Skyshade, the third book in the series, which I found to be lacking in quality compared to the former two books.
  • Powerless & Reckless, despite the strange controversies surrounding them, hold the award for my favorite young adult fantasy series published in recent times. Lauren Roberts knocked it out of the park, and so what if she was inspired by another media to write her story? So was E.L. James, and Ali Hazelwood, and Olivie Blake, and so on and so forth.
  • Speaking of, Ali Hazelwood put out a couple of novellas this year- Hot for Slayer, a Halloween rom-com about a vampire and her mortal enemy slayer with amnesia, and First, a dark romance set in Medieval times. Both were excellent and had such potential to be fleshed out into full novels. Just goes to show how great of a writer Ali is.
  • I also enjoyed Hazelwood's Not In Love sequel, Problematic Summer Romance. Though I preferred Eli and Rue's story, it was nice to finally see a conclusion to Conor and Maya's yearning.
  • It took me reading Callie Hart's Quicksilver twice (yes, I read it twice this year!) to understand how good it is. Unfortunately, I found the sequel Brimstone weaker and less structured in comparison.
  • The only reason that The Wedding People by Alison Espach isn't in my top 10 is because I haven't finished it yet. It's a gorgeous and raw story about love, death, and finding happiness, chock-full of dry humor and dark matter. It's rare that I truly love a book outside of my preferred genres (I think the last time was Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), but this one manages to do just that. I predict that it will end up somewhere in my 2026 wrap-up.

Now, for the actual top 10...

  • The first two books of the Crowns of Nyaxia series, The Serpent and the Wings of Night & The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent. These were my first two five-star reads of the year, and I'm still thinking about them almost a year later. The plot was well-written and full of tension, and the love story between Oraya and Raihn was so beautiful.
  • Holly Jackson has yet to disappoint me, and The Reappearance of Rachel Price is proof of that. I truly thought she wouldn't be able to beat As Good As Dead, but Rachel Price's story had me hooked from page one. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and I was truly thrown for a loop by the shocking twist at the end.
  • It wouldn't be me if I wasn't claiming an Ali Hazelwood book in my favorites. Deep End is Hazelwood's best contemporary of the year. I never thought I would be saying that about a sports romance, but here we are. Scarlett is so sad girl core and I can't help but love her.
  • One of my two rereads of the year, Ali Hazelwood's Bride had a much bigger impact on me than before. And the sequel, Mate, was also excellent. Though I will say, I didn't love it as much as my best friend Madelyn, who has a dedicated shrine to the book. I think she's bought about 10 different copies now? And way more merch for it than I could count lol.
  • Being an Audible exclusive, Ali Hazelwood's Bound truly stunned me (and yes, I totally stole my bestie's Audible account for a week to listen to it). I can't wait for her to publish it as a physical copy like how she's publishing her previous Audible exclusive, Two Can Play, this coming February. I will definitely be rereading. Possibly my favorite story from her thus far!
  • Laura Thalassa's Bewitched & Bespelled were such a pleasant surprise! I was expecting another run of the mill witchy fantasy series, but I was so blown away! Memnon has become my favorite male main character, and the cliffhanger was brutal!
  • A Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Young Adult Fantasy, Laura Steven's Our Infinite Fates is such a unique and elegantly written piece of literature. It encompasses love, hatred, betrayal, and loyalty and turns it into a story about cursed soulmates reincarnating over and over again. It was such a brilliant read, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Steven's work.
  • After not liking Kristen Ciccarelli's Iskari series, I was hesitant to try her Crimson Witch duology. But I was pleasantly surprised when Heartless Hunter & Rebel Witch (the latter of which was another Goodreads Choice nominee) were both five star reads for me! I'll have to give the Iskari trilogy a second chance.
  • And what was possibly my favorite reads of the year come from debut author Rebecca Robinson. The Serpent and the Wolf & The Wicked and the Damned, the latter of which I got the opportunity to read early before its publication next year, are the best politically-driven fantasy romance books I've read since the later Throne of Glass novels. That is not a compliment I give lightly, as Throne of Glass is my favorite book series and Sarah J. Maas is my favorite fantasy author. An absolutely stunning debut and sequel, and the only thing I dislike is how I have to wait for the third book!

My Least Favorite Books of the Year

Now there can't be a hoard of books I loved without a grouping of those that I did not. I'm not going to go into intensive details about many of them as not to offend anyone (cough cough my bestie). Without further ado, the honorable mentions:

  • Once Upon a Broken Heart & The Ballad of Never After are going to be the last books I'll read from Stephanie Garber. I feel like I should know my own tastes enough, I shouldn't need to read five books from an author to realize that their works aren't for me. I'm shocked that the latter is as hyped as it is and maintains a 4.5 average rating on Goodreads.
  • I put down Stacia Stark's A Court This Cruel and Lovely near the end because the pacing had been so slow, and I could tell that it was not going to speed up or end in a way that I would enjoy.
  • I also put down An Heir Comes to Rise by Chloe C. Peñaranda not because it was boring, but because this book is so similar to Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses that I genuinely believe that Peñaranda plagiarized from Sarah J. Maas's works.
  • Sophie Jordan's Firelight trilogy was an extremely disappointing prequel to her Fire In the Sky series, and honestly pretty pointless in the grand scheme of her story.
  • I don't know why I thought trying another K.A. Linde book would be a good idea, but it very much wasn't. The Monster and the Last Blood Match is the newest series from the author whose book I called my least favorite read last year (The Wren In the Holly Library). I thought giving her another try, fairly, would be interesting. Unfortunately, and as expected, I did not enjoy it at all. I might have to give it the second place in my least favorites.
  • No notes, but a few more are: Lights Out by Navessa Allen (sorry Maddy), A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley, and Icebreaker by Hannah Grace (again, sorry Maddy!).

The winner for my least favorite book read in 2025 is... Metal Slinger by Rachel Schneider! I mean, what was that? I don't know what I was expecting but considering its popularity on TikTok, but I wasn't expecting a poorly written story with a plot twist that made no sense at all. Without revealing any spoilers, Metal Slinger is written in first person point-of-view. However, the plot twist would only work if the book had been written in a third-person point-of-view, or at least the point-of-view of a different character. It made me feel like I had completely wasted my time pushing through a book I already wasn't enjoying just to get to the plot twist that had gone viral because of "how good it is."

My Reading Goals for 2026

And as in previous years, I do have a number of reading goals I'd like to achieve in 2026.

  • My overall reading goal is to read 75 books. If I achieve it earlier in the year, I'll up it to 100.
  • I want to read a number of books before their adaptations appear on the big screen. In particular, People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn (the basis for Bridgerton season 4), Sunrise On the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and a possible reread of Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I'll take any chance I can to reread her books.
  • I also found myself entering a fiction era as this year has come to a close (maybe my frontal lobe is finally finishing development?). But I've been drawn to books with more grounded, mature plots as of late. Stories from Taylor Jenkins Reid, Alison Espach, Rose Quinn, Bonnie Garmus, Liz Moore, and Layne Fargo have all caught my eye, among others.
  • Some 2026 releases I'm looking forward to are: The Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent, The Final Score by Lana Ferguson, Every Exquisite Thing by Laura Steven, The Wretched Divine by Adalyn Grace, Half City by Kate Golden, and the untitled third book in Callie Hart's Fae & Alchemy series.
  • Finally, I'm looking forward to whatever my favorite authors, Sarah J. Maas, Ali Hazelwood, and Holly Jackson release this coming year!
If you've made it this far, thank you so much for checking out my reading wrap-up for 2025! Let me know what books you liked and didn't like this year, and I'll see you next year!

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