2025 in Books

Well, 2025 has certainly been a year! Between publishing my debut, getting married, and doing my first events as an author, it feels like it’s flown by.

I’m forever indebted to everyone who’s made it so special, from everyone at Angry Robot, to my excellent agent Caro, friends, family, my new husband James, and every reader who picked up Awakened and said nice things about it — I’ve felt myself to be very lucky!

I’ve spoken, in the past, about how M.E. knocked out my ability not only to write but to read as well. For a good few years, my memory was so bad that I could read a page of a book and a few minutes later have forgotten everything about it.

It took a number of years of painstakingly reading and writing fanfic (no, really!), for me to retrain my brain to be able to write Awakened, and this year I’m pleased to say that despite a fair few crashes caused by me overdoing it, I’ve managed to read more books than I have done since before I got sick in 2015/16.

So, what were they?

Well, this year I read 66 books in total. These ranged from little novellas, to large fantasy epics, with a whole spread of genres in-between.

A lot of friends had books out this year, including Rachel Charlton-Dailey with the brilliant Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism, Elspeth Wilson’s gorgeous dark academia These Mortal Bodies, Lucy Rose with the stunning cannibal literary sensation The Lamb, and Nydia Hetherington with the Shakespearean retelling of Sycorax.

Unsurprisingly, I also read a lot of horror, some of it for vibe-catching for my second book, and some of it purely for pleasure. I returned to a lot of Shirley Jackson’s books this year, and while my favourite will always be The Haunting of Hill House, I found reading her debut The Road Through the Wall incredibly interesting in terms of how her style developed over the years, and I also read Hangsaman for the first time and really enjoyed it — although I can see why some people don’t get on with it as well as they do with her more famous stories.

Some of my favourite horror books this year were The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, Model Home by Rivers Solomon, the gothic medical dystopia Leech by Hiron Ennes, and the literary horror Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez.

I was also impressed, in more fantastical terms, by Extremophile by Ian Green — shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award — The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, the Empire of the Vampire series by Jay Kristoff, and The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth.

Unusually for me, I read fewer “literary” books this year, but out of the small selection I did read I particularly enjoyed The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, and The Definitions by Matt Greene.

Wild Hunt Books’ “Northern Weird” collection of novellas has been a great series released this year, and my personal favourite was probably (Don’t) Call Mum by Matt Wesolowski, although all of them are well worth a read.

I’ve also been lucky enough to get my hands on proofs of some great books that are due out next year, including We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower, Hunt the Ever Wild by S.E. Kiser, Under the Hammer by Samantha Dooey-Miles, In This City, Where it Rains by Lyndsey Croal, Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy, and Moon Over Brendle by Jeff Noon — all of which I think you should be looking out for in 2026!

I read much less non-fiction than usual as well this year, although I really enjoyed Writing the Magic: Essays on Crafting Fantasy Fiction, edited by Dan Coxon for Dead Ink Books, and Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene by Xuanlin Tham.

I love the end of a year for setting little goals for the next one, and in 2026 I’m hoping to embark upon my Year of Dickens/other Classics I haven’t quite got round to. I have a box set of Dickens’ most famous books awaiting me in preparation, as well as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Sea, The Sea, to mention two glaring gaps in my reading that I’m hoping to plug up by the end of next year.

For those of you who are really nosy and want to know exactly what I’ve been reading, the full list is below!

In the meantime, do please let me know which books have been your favourites this year, and what your goals are for 2026 — because I am also nosy.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season, and a wonderful New Year.

2025 Books in full

1. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

2. The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

3. Orbital by Samantha Harvey

4. Sycorax by Nydia Hetherington

5. The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth

6. These Mortal Bodies by Elspeth Wilson

7. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

8. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

9. The Lamb by Lucy Rose

10. The Road Through the Wall by Shirley Jackson

11. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

12. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

13. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

14. Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson

15. Model Home by Rivers Solomon

16. Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene by Xuanlin Tham

17. Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

18. Empire of the Damned by Jay Kristoff

19. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

20. Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

21. The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica

22. This House Isn’t Haunted but We Are by Stephen Howard

23. (Don’t) Call Mum by Matt Wesolowski

24. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

25. Greater Sins by Gabrielle Griffiths

26. Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of Disability Activism by Rachel Charlton-Dailey

27. The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

28. Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

29. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

30. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

31. When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

32. Leech by Hiron Ennes

33. All’s Well by Mona Awad

34. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

35. Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf

36. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

37. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

38. Extremophile by Ian Green

39. HellSans by Ever Dundas

40. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

41. Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez

42. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

43. The Off-Season by Jodie Robins

44. The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

45. The Haunting of William Thorn by Ben Alderson

46. Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh

47. One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford

48. The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

49. The Way to Write for Children by Joan Aiken

50. Good Boy by Neil McRobert

51. The Retreat by Gemma Fairclough

52. It by Stephen King

53. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

54. The Definitions by Matt Greene

55. The Ghosts of Merry Hall by Heather Davey

56. Writing the Magic: Essays on Crafting Fantasy Fiction, edited by Dan Coxon

57. The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

58. Hunt the Ever Wild by S.E. Kiser

59. In This City, Where it Rains by Lyndsey Croal

60. We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower

61. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

62. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

63. Turbine 34 by Katherine Clements

64. Moon Over Brendle by Jeff Noon

65. Under the Hammer by Samantha Dooey-Miles

66. Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy