If you’re looking for a great read for yourself or for a gift, these are the books that left a lasting mark on me this year. This roundup is a mix of fiction and nonfiction, think-y and beach-y. If there are recurring themes across the list, they are “human capability” and strangely, “British Isles.”
Peruse the list for gift ideas, or read the whole set if you want to feel like you’re in a damp wool sweater braving the winds and rains of a British coast (see numbers 11, 9, 6, 5, 2, 1). Looking for more ideas? Take a peek at the roundups of 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017!
My 10 favorite books in 2025
Bonus #11. The Salt Path, Raynor Winn. Please read this and call me when you’re done so we can talk about it. This book’s publication was followed by two more memoirs and a hit movie, kind of an Eat Pray Love situation. It’s the memoir of a couple who lose everything later in life. Essentially homeless and facing a neurodegenerative diagnosis for the husband, they decide to hike and wild-camp on the 630-mile South West Coast Path of England. I loved the snapshots of life in the full force of nature: the beating sun on their shoulders, blustering rain storms, owls hooting over their tent through the night. Yet some parts of the story didn’t quite add up. A post-read Google revealed a delicious scandal – the author’s tale of losing everything was a fabrication to cover up the fact that she embezzled money and became tangled in debt trying to pay it back. Once you see the A Million Little Pieces element of the story, it all makes sense. Nonetheless, the journey is a fun one.
Gift to: your mom who loves her BritBox subscription.
10. Heartbreak Is the National Anthem, Rob Sheffield. Taylor Swift’s body of work is increasingly a subject of scholarly inquiry – her musical innovations, her lyricism, and her skilled strategies for cultivating as devoted a fanbase as one can conceive. Rob Sheffield is an entertaining guide in this quick, gossipy read. He’s a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, a Gen-X guy who has had a front-row seat to the Taylor show from the earliest days. He puts her in an elite category of musician – a group that only seems to include Paul McCartney and Duran Duran – for the innovations of her songwriting. My favorite insight was how Swift resuscitated and modified musical techniques from the pop-synth of the 80s to invigorate country-pop and develop something completely new. He also points out how the many female singer-songwriters who followed have been enabled and emboldened by her path, as a writer-first and writer-last musician.
Gift to: a Swiftie with a flight to fill.
9. Long Island, Colm Tóibín. This is part two to the smash hit Brooklyn, though I never read the first and this book is beautiful as a standalone. It’s both an inner-life kind of book and a plot-driven story. Eilis Lacey is an Irish immigrant living in Long Island in the 1970s, married to an Italian-American man and steeped in the suburban life of his extended family. One day a man knocks on the door and announces that his wife is expecting a baby with Eilis’ husband, and the man will be delivering that baby to Eilis’ doorstep when it arrives. Eilis is torn, loath to raise the baby of her own husband and another woman, yet limited in her options – including the fact that no one seems to be allowed to talk about it. So little is said out loud between the characters, but the dilemma is deafening. You follow her home to Ireland for an extended visit to her own ornery mother. In Ireland, the constraints of rigid small-town expectations box her into a jail of another shape. Will she return to the U.S. or will she leave her own family, including two American children, for good?
Gift to: your favorite English major.
8. Nora Goes Off Script, Annabel Monaghan. There came a point in the year when I polled some favorite readers and said, what is the easiest, lightest, beachiest, most fun thing you read lately? This novel came recommended by multiple people and it was absolutely an easy and amusing read. Nora is a scriptwriter who cranks out Hallmark Christmas movies at a reliable clip from her rural New England home. She was married to a show-boater who wanted a “bigger life,” and off he went. Mourning her divorce and new life as a single mother, she writes a different kind of script: a blockbuster. When it’s filmed on her own property, a famous actor makes himself a little too much at home. Then – Hallmark movie style – she and the actor begin a romance. When he’s pulled back into the bright lights of Hollywood, the relationship looks unlikely to survive. But don’t forget the Hallmark story structure, just as enjoyable in a novel as in a movie, which brings it all together.
Gift to: a working mom who has time to read one book per vacation.
7. The Wedding People, Alison Espach. This is another easy and very entertaining read (and a Read With Jenna pick) but with a bit of a darker side. A depressed divorcee plans to end her life and spends her last pennies on a weekend at the fancy hotel where she and her ex were supposed to vacation – and where she will end it all. But the rest of the hotel is occupied by a huge wedding party, throwing off the vibes she was counting on. In fact, the wedding party swallows her up. Before you know it she has been appointed maid of honor, and – oops – she accidentally falls in love with the groom. Speaking of Taylor Swift, it has a charming “you belong with me” storyline.
Gift to: anyone who would enjoy book 10.
6. Clear, Carys Davies. Okay, now we’re into quirkier territory. Clear is a short and ethereal novel, another one set on the rocky coast of a British isle. It’s a story of the Clearances of the 19th century, a period where Scottish landowners were evicting rural tenant farmers to make way for more profitable agricultural use. Needing some income while he tries to get a new church established, a pastor takes a gig to go evict the last remaining tenant from a small Scottish island. But he’s not a bouncer, he’s a pastor. He’s also not equipped for rough country life, nor does he speak the local language of the tenant. After a fall on the cliffs, he is badly injured. Guess who nurses him back to health – the evictee. They establish a tricky but genuine friendship, with the evictee still unaware of the true intent of his visitor. Then at the end: a plot twist. This is another one that I want you to read and call me when you’re done!
Gift to: someone who is in a book club.
5. Intermezzo, Sally Rooney. Sally Rooney is a standing favorite, and this new novel did not disappoint – in fact I really enjoyed how different it was from Normal People. An older brother has addiction problems and relationship problems, including that he is still in love with his now-crippled ex and also sort of in love with his (paid) younger girlfriend. A younger brother is a neurodivergent chess master who embarks on his first romantic relationship with a significantly older woman. In the wake of their father’s death, the two brothers long to be in harmony with each other. But they can’t seem to sync; every time they interact it erupts into a tiny nuclear war. They find their way to reconnection. Rooney’s writing is always gripping. It’s like a super strong espresso, filling all your senses to capacity.
Gift to: your brother/in-law who likes the occasional novel.
4. Hidden Potential, Adam Grant. Grant is an earnest super-nerd who seems to work meticulously at making his work enjoyable to consume – and it is! This book is about nurturing potential by cultivating the mindset and tactics that help humans grow and improve at just about anything. It’s very real-life, use-it-yourself-right-now kind of teaching. So if you wanted to improve your guitar playing, or run more productive meetings, or pitch better fastballs, you will walk away from this book with a laundry list of useful ideas. He uses good stories to illustrate his points, including discussions of how he developed into an accomplished diver from a rough starting point and how he worked to improve his teaching ratings over time (he was ranked by his students as the best professor at Wharton from 2011 to 2017). Entertaining, practical and inspiring, a great combo.
Gift to: whoever is most likely to make a New Year’s resolution.
3. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese. This dense but beautiful novel centers on the dramas and joys within the walls of a small Ethiopian hospital in the 1970s. A nun, an Indian nurse at the hospital, secretly falls in love with a brilliant but difficult British surgeon. She hides her pregnancy and dies in childbirth, delivering twin boys who are conjoined at the skull. The other two Indian surgeons on staff are able to separate and save the boys, and they raise them as adopted sons after the ashamed and grieving father flees. Growing up in the Ethiopian hospital, the boys go on to become surgeons themselves. But, the years drive many wedges between them; in fact they become estranged. In the end, their absent father is the one to bring them back together. I loved the characters in this novel, especially the adoptive parent-surgeons in Ethiopia, and I loved experiencing their lives in a time and place that I can only imagine.
Gift to: the friend who uses their library card the most.
2. The Midnight Library, Matthew Haig. If you enjoyed last year’s recommendations for their near-death and quantum-metaverse influences, good news: this novel deploys all of the above. Nora (no relation to book #8) is filled with regrets about her life as she finds herself alone, depressed and aimless in her 30s. When she overdoses, she wakes up in a great library somewhere in space/time, a library where every book is a different version of her life. Her childhood librarian is the guide as she tries on different life paths like a royal wedding guest in a hat shop. It’s a little Sliding Doors and a little Defending Your Life. Her takeaway: Don’t be so busy wrestling for perfect meaning that you neglect your “one wild and precious life,” as poet Mary Oliver put it.
Gift to: your most woo-woo/metaphysical friend.
1. Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, Elizabeth Winkler. Did William Shakespeare of Stratford – a man with no confirmed education, no known book collection, no known travel abroad or connection to the courtly life featured throughout his own writing – actually author all those magical works? A glance at the evidence brings to mind one word: yikes. Sure seems hard to prove his authorship, though there is a fair amount of documentation about his rinky dink loans, property purchases and other business affairs. Winkler wrote a 2019 article in The Atlantic on the topic and it went toxically viral, with the pro-Shakespeare “Stratfordians” comparing her to a Holocaust denier. She was inspired to explore the question further, but also to examine the rabid reactions of the establishment scholars who might be reasonably expected to welcome curiosity and skepticism as the pillars of their craft. The book gets a tad too scholarly sometimes, but you can rest assured that she has done all of her homework. While I don’t think it was William of Stratford who did it, I also wasn’t convinced about the women poets she considers. I did finish the book with a pretty strong pick though; ping me if you want to know my vote!
Gift to: yourself, and then tell me who you think Shakespeare really was.
What was your favorite read this year?
As always, I love hearing your recommendations – please let me know the top book you read this year.
Happy holidays to you and yours! Please reach out in 2026 if you could use an experienced financial writer and consultant to help get those projects done.