The Best Books from the First Half of 2025
Hard to believe it, but it’s that time of year already. It’s the ninth year in a row that I’ve been making a first-half superlatives list. It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year rundown, but for now, these are my 16 favourite 2025 releases that I’ve read so far (representing the top ~21% of my current-year reading). Pictured below are the ones I read in print; all the others were e-copies. Links are to my full reviews.
Fiction
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel: Alison has writer’s block and is consumed with anxiety about the state of the world. “Who can draw when the world is burning?” Then she has an idea for a book – or maybe a reality TV series – called $UM that will wean people off of capitalism. That creative journey is mirrored here. Through Alison’s ageing hippie friends and their kids, Bechdel showcases alternative ways of living. Even the throwaway phrases are hilarious. It’s a gleeful and zeitgeist-y satire, yet draws to a touching close.
Sleep by Honor Jones: A breathtaking character study of a woman raising young daughters and facing memories of childhood abuse. Margaret’s 1990s New Jersey upbringing seems idyllic, but upper-middle-class suburbia conceals the perils of a dysfunctional family headed by a narcissistic, controlling mother. Jones crafts unforgettable, crystalline scenes. There are subtle echoes throughout as the past threatens to repeat. Reminiscent of Sarah Moss and Evie Wyld, and astonishing for its psychological acuity, this promises great things from Jones.
Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse: Twelve first-person narratives voiced by people in crisis, for whom encounters with strangers tender the possibility of transformation. In the title story, the narrator is taken hostage in a convenience store hold-up. Others are set in Thailand and Japan as well as various U.S. states. Krouse focuses on young women presented with dilemmas and often eschews tidy endings, leaving characters on the brink and allowing readers to draw inferences. Fans of Danielle Evans and Lauren Groff have a treat in store.
Insectopolis: A Natural History by Peter Kuper: “If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” (E. O. Wilson) After an unspecified apocalypse, only insects remain. Group by group, they guide readers through an empty New York Public Library exhibit, interacting within and across species. It’s a sly blend of science, history, stories and silliness. There are interludes about insects in literature and unsung heroines of entomology. Informative and entertaining at once; what could be better? Welcome our insect overlords!
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch: In her research into UK divorce cases in the 1980s, Lynch learned that 90% of lesbian mothers lost custody of their children. Her earnest, delicate debut novel, which bounces between 2022 and 1982, imagines such a situation through close portraits of three family members. Maggie knew only that her mother, Dawn, abandoned her when she was little. Lynch’s compassion is equal for all three characters. This confident, tender story of changing mores and steadfast love is the new Carol for our times.
Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund: Nine short fictions form a stunning investigation into how violence and family dysfunction reverberate. “The Peeping Toms” and “The Stalker” are a knockout pair featuring Albuquerque lesbian couples under threat by male acquaintances. Characters are haunted by loss and grapple with moral dilemmas. Each story has the complexity and emotional depth of a novel. Freedom versus safety for queer people is a resonant theme in an engrossing collection ideal for Alice Munro and Edward St. Aubyn fans.
Dream State by Eric Puchner: It starts as a glistening romantic comedy about t Charlie and Cece’s chaotic wedding at a Montana lake house in summer 2004. First half the wedding party falls ill with norovirus, then the best man, Garrett, falls in love with the bride. The rest examines the fallout of this uneasy love triangle as it stretches towards 2050 and imagines a Western USA smothered in smoke from near-constant forest fires. Still, there are funny set-pieces and warm family interactions. Cross Jonathan Franzen and Maggie Shipstead.
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld: Sittenfeld’s second collection features characters negotiating principles and privilege in midlife. Split equally between first- and third-person perspectives, the 12 contemporary storylines spotlight everyday marital and parenting challenges. Dual timelines offer opportunities for hindsight on the events of decades ago. Nostalgic yet clear-eyed, these witty stories exploring how decisions determine the future are perfect for fans of Rebecca Makkai, Kiley Reid, and Emma Straub.
Nonfiction
Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You: A memoir of saying the unsayable with food by Candice Chung: A vibrant essay collection spotlighting food and family. Chung reconnects with her semi-estranged parents by taking them along on restaurant review gigs for a Sydney newspaper. Fresh from a 13-year relationship with “the psychic reader,” she starts dating again and quickly falls in deep with “the geographer.” The essays range in time and style, delicately contrasting past and present, singleness and being partneredr.
Poets Square: A Memoir in 30 Cats by Courtney Gustafson: Working for a food bank, trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs and rising rents: Gustafson saw firsthand how broken systems and poverty wear people down. She’d recently started feeding and getting veterinary care for a feral cat colony in her Tucson, Arizona neighbourhood. With its radiant portraits of individual cats and its realistic perspective on personal and collective problems, this is a cathartic memoir and a probing study of building communities of care in times of hardship.
Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing, ed. Alden Jones: Sixteen authors of diverse sexual orientations and genders contrast here and there and then and now as they narrate sensory memories and personal epiphanies. In these pieces, time abroad sparks clarity. There’s power in queer solidarity, whether one is in Berlin or Key West. Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s piece is the highlight. A stellar anthology of miniature travelogues that are as illuminating about identity as they are about the places they feature.
Immemorial by Lauren Markham: An outstanding book-length essay that compares language, memorials, and rituals as strategies for coping with climate anxiety and grief. The dichotomies of the physical versus the abstract and the permanent versus the ephemeral are explored. Forthright, wistful, and determined, the book treats grief as a positive, as “fuel” or a “portal.” Hope is not theoretical in this setup, but solidified in action. This is an elegant meditation on memory and impermanence in an age of climate crisis.
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future that Never Was) by Colette Shade: Shade’s debut collection contains 10 perceptive essays that contrast the promise and political pitfalls of “the Y2K Era” (1997–2008). The author recalls the thrill of early Internet use and celebrity culture. Consumerism was a fundamental doctrine but the financial crash prompted a loss of faith in progress. Outer space motifs, reality television, Smashmouth lyrics: it’s a feast of millennial nostalgia. Yet this hard-hitting work of cultural criticism, recommended to Jia Tolentino fans, reminisces only to burst bubbles.
Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson: A book about everything, by way of ginseng. It begins with Thompson’s childhood summers working on American ginseng farms with his siblings in Marathon, Wisconsin. As an adult, he travels first to Midwest ginseng farms and festivals and then through China and Korea to learn about the plant’s history, cultivation, lore, and medicinal uses. Roots are symbolic of a family story that unfolds in parallel. Both expansive and intimate, this is a surprising gem from one of the best long-form graphic storytellers.
Poetry
Is This My Final Form? by Amy Gerstler: This delightfully odd collection amazes with its range of voices and techniques. It leaps from surrealism to elegy as it ponders life’s unpredictability. The language of transformation is integrated throughout. Aging and the seasons are examples of everyday changes. Elsewhere, speakers fall in love with the bride of Frankenstein or turn to dinosaur urine for a wellness regimen. Monologues and sonnets recur. Alliteration plus internal and end rhymes create satisfying resonance.
Small Pointed Things by Erica McAlpine: McAlpine’s second collection is full of flora and fauna imagery. The title phrase comes from the opening poem, “Bats and Swallows” – in the “gloaming,” it’s hard to tell the difference between the flying creatures. The verse is bursting with alliteration and end rhymes. She expands the view through conversations, theories and travel. What-ifs, consequences and regrets; mythical allusions, elegies and the concerns of motherhood. Just my sort of poetry: sweet on the ear, rooted in nature and the everyday.
Which of these grab your attention? What other 2025 releases should I catch up on?
Book Serendipity, Mid-April to Mid-June
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- Raising a wild animal but (mostly) calling it by its species rather than by a pet name (so “Pigeon” and “the leveret/hare”) in We Should All Be Birds by Brian Buckbee and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.
- Eating hash cookies in New York City in Women by Chloe Caldwell and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A woman worries she’s left underclothes strewn about a room she’s about to show someone in one story of Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
The dialogue is italicized in Women by Chloe Caldwell and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- The ‘you know it when you see it’ definition (originally for pornography) is cited in Moderation by Elaine Castillo and Bookish by Lucy Mangan.
- Women (including the protagonist) weightlifting in a gym in Moderation by Elaine Castillo and All Fours by Miranda July.
- Miranda July, whose All Fours I was also reading at the time, was mentioned in Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You by Candice Chung.
- A sibling story and a mystical light: late last year into early 2025 I read The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham, and then I recognized this type of moment in Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- A lesbian couple with a furniture store in Carol [The Price of Salt] by Patricia Highsmith and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
- Not being able to see the stars in Las Vegas because of light pollution was mentioned in The Wild Dark by Craig Childs, then in Moderation by Elaine Castillo.
- A gynaecology appointment scene in All Fours by Miranda July and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- An awkwardly tall woman in Heartwood by Amity Gaige, How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney, and Stoner by John Williams.
- The 9/11 memorial lights’ disastrous effect on birds is mentioned in The Wild Dark by Craig Childs and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A car accident precipitated by an encounter with wildlife is key to the denouement in the novellas Women by Chloe Caldwell and Wild Boar by Hannah Lutz.
- The plot is set in motion by the death of an older brother by drowning, and pork chops are served to an unexpected dinner guest, in Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven and Days of Light by Megan Hunter, both of which I was reading for Shelf Awareness review.
- Kids running around basically feral in a 1970s summer, and driving a box of human ashes around in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven.
- A character becomes a nun in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- Wrens nesting just outside one’s front door in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman and Little Mercy by Robin Walter.
- ‘The female Woody Allen’ is the name given to a character in Women by Chloe Caldwell and then a description (in a blurb) of French author Nolwenn Le Blevennec.
- A children’s birthday party scene in Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny and Friends and Lovers by Nolwenn Le Blevennec. A children’s party is also mentioned in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and A Family Matter by Claire Lynch.
- A man who changes his child’s nappies, unlike his father – evidence of different notions of masculinity in different generations, in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate, and one piece in Beyond Touch Sites, edited by Wendy McGrath.
- What’s in a name? Repeated names I came across included Pansy (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Days of Light by Megan Hunter), Olivia (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and A Family Matter by Claire Lynch), Jackson (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and So Far Gone by Jess Walter), and Elias (Good Girl by Aria Aber and Dream State by Eric Puchner).
- The old wives’ tale that you should run in zigzags to avoid an alligator appeared in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez and then in The Girls Who Grow Big by Leila Mottley, both initially set in Florida.
- A teenage girl is groped in a nightclub in Good Girl by Aria Aber and Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann.
- Discussion of the extinction of human and animal cultures and languages in both Nature’s Genius by David Farrier and Lifelines by Julian Hoffman, two May 2025 releases I was reading at the same time.
- In Body: My Life in Parts by Nina B. Lichtenstein, she mentions Linn Ullmann – who lived on her street in Oslo and went to the same school (not favourably – the latter ‘stole’ her best friend!); at the same time, I was reading Linn Ullmann’s Girl, 1983! And then, in both books, the narrator recalls getting a severe sunburn.
On the same day, I read about otter sightings in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman and Spring by Michael Morpurgo. The next day, I read about nesting swallows in both books.
- The Salish people (Indigenous to North America) are mentioned in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman, Dream State by Eric Puchner (where Salish, the town in Montana, is also a setting), and So Far Gone by Jess Walter.
- Driving into a compound of extremists, and then the car being driven away by someone who’s not the owner, in Dream State by Eric Puchner and So Far Gone by Jess Walter.
- A woman worries about her (neurodivergent) husband saying weird things at a party in The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal by Robin Ince.
- Shooting raccoons in Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson and So Far Gone by Jess Walter. (Raccoons also feature in Dream State by Eric Puchner.)
- A graphic novelist has Hollywood types adding (or at least threatening to add) wholly unsuitable supernatural elements to their plots in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson.
- A novel in which a character named Dawn has to give up her daughter in the early 1980s, one right after the other: A Family Matter by Claire Lynch, followed by Love Forms by Claire Adam.
- A girl barricades her bedroom door for fear of her older brother in Love Forms by Claire Adam and Sleep by Honor Jones.
- A scene of an only child learning that her mother had a hysterectomy and so couldn’t have any more children in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Other People’s Mothers by Julie Marie Wade.
- An African hotel cleaner features in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Hotel by Daisy Johnson.
- Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” is mentioned in Nature’s Genius by David Farrier and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos.
- A woman assembles an inventory of her former lovers in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Book Serendipity, Mid-February to Mid-April
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- The protagonist isn’t aware that they’re crying until someone tells them / they look in a mirror in The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and Three Days in June by Anne Tyler.
- A residential complex with primal scream therapy in Confessions by Catherine Airey and The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey.
- Memories of wiping down groceries during the early days of the pandemic in The End Is the Beginning by Jill Bialosky and Human/Animal by Amie Souza Reilly.
- A few weeks before I read Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst, I’d finished reading the author’s husband’s debut novel (Going Home by Tom Lamont); I had no idea of the connection between them until I got to her Acknowledgements.
- A mention of the same emergency money passing between friends in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez ($20) and The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey ($100).
- Autobiographical discussions of religiosity and anorexia in The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey and Godstruck by Kelsey Osgood.
- The theme of the dark night sky in The Wild Dark by Craig Childs, followed almost immediately by Night Magic by Leigh Ann Henion.
- Last year I learned about Marina Abramović’s performance art where she and her ex trekked to China’s Great Wall from different directions, met in the middle, and continued walking away to dramatize their breakup in The Ritual Effect by Michael Norton. Recently I saw it mentioned again in The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey. Abramović’s work is also mentioned in Human/Animal by Amie Souza Reilly and is the basis for the opening track on Anne-Marie Sanderson’s album Old Light, “Amethyst Shoes.”
- The idea of running towards danger appears in Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s essay in Edge of the World, a queer travel anthology edited by Alden Jones; and the bibliography of The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey.
- I then read another Alex Marzano-Lesnevich essay in quick succession (both were excellent, by the way) in What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate.
- A scene in which a woman goes to a police station and her concerns are dismissed because she has no evidence and the man/men’s behaviour isn’t ‘bad enough’ in I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell and Human/Animal by Amie Souza Reilly.
- Too many details as the sign of a lie in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Three Days in June by Anne Tyler.
- Scenes of throwing all of a spouse’s belongings out on the yard/street in Old Soul by Susan Barker, How to Survive Your Mother by Jonathan Maitland, and Human/Animal by Amie Souza Reilly.
- Reading two lost American classics about motherhood and time spent in a mental institution at the same time: The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman and I Am Clarence by Elaine Kraf.
- Disorientation underwater: a literal experience in I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell, then used as a metaphor for what it was like to be stuck in a blizzard on Annapurna in 2014 in The Secret Life of Snow by Giles Whittell.
- A teenager who has a job cleaning hotels in Old Soul by Susan Barker and I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell. (In Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue, Maria is also a teenaged cleaner, but of office buildings.)
- A vacuum cleaner bag splits in Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund – in the latter it’s deliberate, searching for evidence of the character’s late son after cleaning his room.
- An ailing tree or trees that have to be cut down in one story of The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel and The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell.
- Buchenwald was mentioned in one poem each in A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi and The Ghost Orchid by Michael Longley.
- A reference to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass in To Have or to Hold by Sophie Pavelle and Human/Animal by Amie Souza Reilly.
- A mentally unwell woman deliberately burns her hands in I Am Clarence by Elaine Kraf and Every Day Is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel.
- A mention of the pollution caused by gas stoves in We Do Not Part by Han Kang and The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell.
- An art installation involving part-buried trees was mentioned in Immemorial by Lauren Markham and then I encountered a similar project a few months later in We Do Not Part by Han Kang. Burying trees as a method of carbon storage is then discussed in The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell.
- Imagining the lives of the people living in an apartment you didn’t end up renting in Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin and one story of The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel.
- The Anthropocene is mentioned in Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin and The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes.
- I was reading three debut novels from the McKitterick Prize longlist at the same time, all of them with very similar page counts of 383, 387, and 389 (i.e., too long!).
- Being appalled at an institutionalized mother’s appearance in The End Is the Beginning by Jill Bialosky and Every Day Is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel.
A remote artist’s studio and severed fingers in Old Soul by Susan Barker and We Do Not Part by Han Kang.
- A lesbian couple in New Mexico, the experience of being watched through a window, and the mention of a caftan/kaftan, in Old Soul by Susan Barker and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
- Refusal to go to a hospital despite being in critical condition in I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
- It’s not a niche stylistic decision anymore; I was reading four novels with no speech marks at the same time: Old Soul by Susan Barker, Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin, The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes, and We Do Not Part by Han Kang. [And then, a bit later, three more: Wild Boar by Hannah Lutz, Mouthing by Orla Mackey, and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.]
- A lesbian couple is alarmed by the one partner’s family keeping guns in Spent by Alison Bechdel and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
- Responding to the 2021 murder of eight Asian spa workers in Atlanta in Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh and Find Me as the Creature I Am by Emily Jungmin Yoon.
- Disposing of a late father’s soiled mattress in Mouthing by Orla Mackey and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
New York City tourist slogans in Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A Jewish care home for the elderly in The End Is the Beginning by Jill Bialosky and Joanna Rakoff’s essay in What My Father and I Don’t Talk About (ed. Michele Filgate).
- A woman has no memory between leaving a bar and first hooking up with the man she’s having an affair with in If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
A stalker-ish writing student who submits an essay to his professor that seems inappropriately personal about her in one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund and If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard.
- A pygmy goat as a pet (and a one-syllable, five-letter S title!) in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Sleep by Honor Jones.
- A Brooklyn setting and thirtysomething female protagonist in Sleep by Honor Jones, So Happy for You by Celia Laskey, and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A mention of the American Girl historical dolls franchise in Sleep by Honor Jones and If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard, both of which I’m reviewing early for Shelf Awareness.
A writing professor knows she’s a hypocrite for telling her students what (not) to do and then (not) doing it herself in Trying by Chloé Caldwell and If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard. These two books also involve a partner named B (or Bruce), metafiction, porch drinks with parents, and the observation that a random statement sounds like a book title.
- The protagonist’s therapist asks her to find more precise words for her feelings in Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison and So Happy for You by Celia Laskey.
- The protagonist “talks” with a dying dog or cat in The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey and If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard.
Shalimar perfume is mentioned in Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin and Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis.
- The Rapunzel fairytale is a point of reference in In the Evening, We’ll Dance by Anne-Marie Erickson and Secret Agent Man by Margot Singer, both of which I was reading early for Foreword Reviews.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 