My Favourite Books of 2025
Add these 12 titles to your 2026 reading list!
No December newsletter is complete without a round up of some kind and mine is no exception. These books are the ones that I couldn’t stop thinking about throughout this past year. Some are recent releases while others have been out for a decade or so. As such, this isn’t about the best books of 2025 but instead my favourite books of the past twelve months. I think they will make you think, help you daydream, and inspire your 2026 reading goals.
Pain and Prejudice: A Call to Arms for Women and Their Bodies by Gabrielle Jackson. Equal parts enraging and enlightening. No, it’s not all in your head and no, you’re not making a big deal out of things.
Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City by Robin Nagle. I love books that welcome me into entire ecosystems that I’ve never considered before and this is a beautiful example of that style. No matter where you live, this peak at New York City’s sanitation system and its people is compelling.
Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World by Will Cockrell. I am fascinated by stories about mountain climbing, truly the last activity on earth that I would ever have the slightest interest in partaking in. This book helped me understand why Everest is so alluring… and lucrative.
Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food by Megan Kimblew. Once upon a time, it was a great journalistic trend to do a ‘thing’ for a year and write about it. This is one of those books but I think its time is now, as processed food is the topic on everyone’s lips. Equally fascinating and accessible.
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. Set in 1950s Washington DC, this novel sees women boarding at the Briarwood House grapple with personal, professional, and political battles and each other.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. A civilization collapsed. Three intertwined timelines. A Canadian setting! This dystopian novel has haunted me unlike anything else I’ve ever read.
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. When people describe writing as spellbinding, this novella about good taste and bad actors is what they mean.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. This novel about hope and reckoning features an unlikely protagonist in an aging octopus. Beautifully written and so richly detailed, I could picture it all in my head.
Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping [On a Dead Man] by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I love Vera! This is the second book of the series and it’s even more delightful than the first. Vera is a little old lady (well, not that old) who runs a tea shop in San Francisco and she gets up to all sorts of trouble. If you like audiobooks, you are going savour the salty exchanges between Vera and her frenemy neighbour, Winnifred.
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon. This multi-generational novel has a unique setting, great character development, and plenty of action. If you want a murder mystery that’s neither cozy nor scary, this hits perfectly.
This Stays Between Us by Sara Ochs. A loose spin on the closed-door mystery genre, this Australia-set novel features reunited old classmates trying to unravel current and past events. It kept my attention until the very last page.
By the way…. are we connected on Goodreads? We should be! You can find me here.
Happy reading, friends.
Vanessa