Did I finish Into the Stacks posts for the fall? I did not. But since this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is a freebie, I thought I’d at least get around to sharing my favorite reads of 2025, and maybe get caught up later (or not).

The first half of the list are my five-star reads of the 60 books I finished last year. The second half were my favorites of the four-starred books. There were 35 of those, so narrowing that group down took some work (and thus, I have also included an honorable mention list). If I wrote about it last year, I’ve linked to the post:

1. We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang
   A charming picture book about kindness and community and how we interact with those who are different
2. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sanju Mandana
   A found family romantasy about what constitutes real magic and power
3. These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett
   An essay collection that explores the relationships we form over the years, the adventures we have along the way, and how we imbue things with meaning to mold a life that is dear and true.
4. The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
   A romantasy with a main character who must overcome fear and anxiety to help save her new community — and herself (and whose community must do the same for her)
5. 49 Days by Agnes Lee
   A graphic novel that covers the seven weeks following a young woman’s sudden death: we witness her family and friends mourning in their own ways, while at the same time her soul navigates the bardo, or Buddhist limbo between life and being reborn
6. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
   In the near future, the British government tests a way to pluck doomed souls out of the past and bring them forward in time. When a “minder” falls in love with the 19th-century sailor in her care, she must work to uncover the why’s of the mysterious program.
7. A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
   An onion of a epistolary science fiction novel set on a future/mirror/alternative Earth: at the story’s core is correspondence between an agoraphobic young woman who lives an insular life in a submerged house in the ocean and a renowned young zoologist living in an academic community on its surface, while the surrounding layers are provided by the correspondence between her sister and his brother as they later work to uncover how and why their siblings disappeared.
8. Back After This by Linda Holmes
   A contemporary romance set in D.C., because sometimes you just need a love story set in your city. (If you need more, it starts with a meet-cute involving a gigantic loose dog and two strangers who chase it, builds with continued random (and then not) encounters between them, and is anchored by a work situation that manipulates the protagonist into a starring in a reality podcast series involving blind dates.)
9. The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King
   A work of historic science fiction and generational trauma that focuses on the power of storytelling about a contemporary computer programmer and her grandmother, who, after escaping oppressive Chinese regimes twice, must decide how much of her backstory and their matrilineal magical gift to share with her granddaughter before it is lost to the ravages of dementia.
10. Starter Villain by John Scalzi
    This science fiction novel focuses on a middle-aged, down-on-his-luck loner who’s lost his marriage, job, father, and (imminently) family home. He’s substitute teaching while failing to make ends meet and has just been laughed out of the bank when asking for a loan to buy the local pub. With the only thing going for him being the two cats who have adopted him, he learns his long-estranged, wealthy uncle has died and asked for him to host his wake. When it turns out that the event is filled with hit men of his uncle’s enemies who then proceed to blow up Charlie’s house, he’s whisked off by his newfound “handlers” to his uncle’s supervillain lair where, it turns out, he’s inherited a cache of nefarious businesses. As I wrote to my nephew when I gave him this book for Christmas, while it’s a James Bond caper on the outside, it’s really, at its core, a book about kindness.

Honorable Mentions:

• I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (alternative fiction)
• World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (personal essays)
• There’s Something About Mira by Sonali Dev (romance)
• Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer (romantasy)
• We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (mystery)
• Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (kidlit fantasy)
• Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three by Dawn Staley (memoir)
• Good Spirits by B.K. Borison (romantasy)

I love the seasonal posts at That Artsy Reader Girl if for no other reason than I get to start looking ahead to what’s come out recently and what’s coming out in the next couple months. Am I supposed to be reading more backlist titles this year? Absolutely I am! But that doesn’t stop me from looking ahead. And the keyword there is “more”; I’m just supposed to look backwards in between new releases.

Here are ten books I hope to read this spring:

1. Deanna Raybourn’s A Ghastly Catastrophe
2. The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer
3. Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby
4. Love by the Book by Jessica George
5. Kory Stamper’s True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink
6. Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe
7. Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae
8. Mac Barnett’s Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children
9. The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch
10. Behind Five Willows by June Hur

Which books are you looking forward to this spring?

I finished five books during February, which feels a bit like I slacked after January’s ten. But that’s how it goes…

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley

A middle-aged magazine advice columnist commutes into London every day with her dog. She doesn’t make eye contact. She certainly never talks to anyone, even if she does recognize the regulars on her route and form judgments based on what she observes. Until one of those regulars starts choking in front of her and she has to get involved. And once one of those rules fall, she finds herself unable to put the lid back on, intermingling with a bullied student, a nursing student, a young woman starting her career, and men having marital and career woes. A heartwarming story for those who love found family stories. Some of the twists are telegraphed early, but you never mind.

Library. Audio. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books with titles that contain ordinal numbers. I wanted to give you just one for each, but capped out of individual numbers I’d read at nine. I’ve doubled up on “first,” which is also the number that appears most in books I’ve listed as to-read.

1. First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
2. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
3. The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser
4. The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
5. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan
6. Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes
7. Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth
8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
9. Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies
10. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

I put this summary off, thinking I’d get around to sharing 2025’s reads before writing up the books I completed during January. But if I wait any longer, I’ll be behind for this year as well. So, onward to the ten books I read last month (and here’s hoping March is a better month for wrapping up last year):

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas

Shortly after a young widow starts working at the library near her grandmother’s home, two patrons die in seemingly separate events. But it turns out they may not be, and the employees of the branch may or may not be good suspects for their demise. If you like your murders straightforward, this is going to rely on coincidence too much for you. If you like your characters to be realistic, again, probably not your cup of tea. If, however, you are happy to read your murder mysteries with your tongue in your cheek and not to consider the circumstances too closely, I’d joyfully endorse this workplace found-family mystery.

Paper. Library copy. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is recommendations for armchair travelers:

1. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (British couple goes on vacation, falls in love with the region, and buys a fixer upper there. Hilarious to read about, but probably not to live through.)
2. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (Girl and boy meet by chance in New York City and have an adventure.)
3. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (A widow moves her family to Corfu, Greece, in the late-1930s)
4. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (Middle-aged man and his out-of-shape buddy embark upon a hike of the Appalachian Trail)
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (No matter your opinion of Cathy and Heathcliff, you can’t deny the power of the moors)
6. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (A teen ends up bound to the Mayan god of death and must travel around Mexico to help free him—and her)
7. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (A forced proximity romance between a widow and an MLB pitcher trying to overcome the yips in a coastal town in Maine)
8. Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia (A treasure hunt through Boston)
9. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (The fictionalized adventures of a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s)
10. Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson (A woman finds a map to a secret city and travels to Belize to follow it)

Honestly, I feel like there are certain cities (New York, London, Paris…) that I could do individual lists for.

How about you? Are there books you’d recommend especially for the setting?