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)