“The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.”
Looking for the best new books from 2025 to add to your reading list? Whether you’re looking for pulsating fiction, thought-provoking debuts, or the most anticipated book releases of 2025, this list has you covered. From page-turning thrillers to swoonworthy romances and hidden literary masterpieces, these are the top books of 2025 that readers and critics alike are already hyping up as must-reads. If you’re wondering which new books to read in 2025 or simply want to stay ahead of the game with the best books of the year, you’re in the right place. Each of these titles offers something fresh, bold, and unforgettable. So, whether you’re a casual reader or a seasoned bookworm, join us today at What We Reading as we run through the best new 2025 books so far, handpicked just for you.
Onyx Storm (The Empyrean #3) – Rebecca Yarros
Kicking off our list of the best new books from 2025 is Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm, the latest entry in her BookTok sensation romantasy series, The Empyreann. After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s little time left for more lessons. That’s because the battle has truly begun. And, with enemies closing in from outside their walls and from within their ranks, it’s becoming impossible to know who to trust.
Now, Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to find allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip promises to put every ounce of her wit, strength and luck to the test, but she will do anything to save what she loves – her dragons, her family, her home, and him. Nevertheless, a storm is coming in… and not everyone can survive its wrath.
Great Big Beautiful Life – Emily Henry
Alice Scott is an eternal optimist who still dreams of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning human thundercloud. And they both find themselves on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen for years, or at least meet the octogenarian claiming to be Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied families of the twentieth century.
Margaret has invited the pair for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll decide the person best-suited to telling her story. But the problem is, Margaret is only giving them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t piece together thanks to an NDA and an undeniable yearning pulsing between them whenever they’re in the same room together. The latest release from Emily Henry, 2025’s Great Big Beautiful Life, follows these two writers competing to tell the story of a larger-than-life character with more than a few plot twists up her sleeve.
Check Out These Essential Emily Henry Books
Heartwood – Amity Gaige
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker vanishes. She is a forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has disappeared two hundred miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she grapples with the elements and struggles to keep her hope alive.
At the centre of the investigation into Valerie’s disappearance is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Amity Gaige’s new mystery novel, Heartwood, roves between these three compelling narratives as a frantic search soon suggests that Valerie’s vanishing may not be accidental.
Atmosphere: A Love Story – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Atmosphere is the latest book by serial bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid, and has become one of the best new fiction books from 2025. Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her quiet life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. That is, until she happens upon an advert looking for the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan yearns to become one of the few people to make it into space.
Selected from a pool of thousands in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training alongside an exceptional group of talented candidates. As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan discovers a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan starts to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changed in an instant.
Death Of The Author – Nnedi Okorafor
Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years. However, when she’s suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the midst of her sister’s wedding, her life is completely changed. Disabled, unemployed, and coming from a nosy, judgmental family, she isn’t sure where to turn next. In her hotel room that night, she takes a risk that will define her life – she decides to pen a book unlike any of her others. A science-fiction work about androids and AI after the extinction of everything. And then everything changes.
What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world and another. And as Zelu’s life evolves, the fragile lines between fiction and reality also begin to blur in one of the best new sci-fi books from 2025, Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author.
The Favorites – Layne Fargo
She may not have the famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a loner stuck in the foster care system, their instant chemistry makes them a formidable pairing on the ice. Clinging to skating and to one another to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry and rebellious style. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a crashing halt.
As the ten-year anniversary of their final dance approaches, an unauthorised documentary claiming to uncover the ‘real story’ reignites public obsession with the duo. Kat can’t stand the idea of someone else telling her story, so she begrudgingly agrees to tell all. Gripping and poignant, Layne Fargo’s The Favorites is already proving a book club favourite as one of 2025’s hottest new sports romance stories.
A Drop Of Corruption (Shadow Of The Leviathan #2) – Robert Jackson Bennett
Another one of the best fantasy books from 2025 comes from Robert Jackson Bennett and his novel A Drop of Corruption, the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup. In the canton of Yarrowdale, an impossible crime has occurred. A treasury officer has disappeared into thin air – abducted from his heavily-guarded quarters whilst all doors and windows remained locked from the inside. To solve the case, the Empire calls upon brilliant investigator Ana Dolabra, joined, as always, by her bemused assistant, Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana discovers that they’re not investigating a disappearance. This is a murder. And the killing was just the first step by an adversary who seems to be capable of passing through walls like a ghost, and predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see into the future. Din has seen Ana solve the impossible before. Yet, this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their rival at every turn, he begins to fear his superior may have finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
The Bright Years – Sarah Damoff
Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a secret she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about. As a result, Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall. When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Gerogette attempts to distance herself from any reminders of her past.
Years on, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them and herself before time runs out. Told from three intimate perspectives, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy, but gradually healed by the power of love and grace.
Check Out The Best Historical Fiction Books From 2025
Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil – V.E. Schwab
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily. Her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. Yet Maria knows she can only ever be a prize or a pawn in the games played by men. When an enigmatic stranger offers an alternative path, Maria makes a desperate choice. 1827. A young woman is shipped to London after a forbidden entanglement. Charlotte’s tender heart is swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow; however, the price of freedom is higher than she could have ever imagined.
2019. Boston. College was meant to be a chance at being someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night-stand leaves her questioning her past, present, and future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers… and revenge.
The Emperor Of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
One late summer evening in the small industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in the pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone yell from across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly woman with dementia who convinces him to take another course of action. Without many other options, he soon becomes her carer. Over the span of a year, the pair develops a life-altering bond, built on empathy, reckoning, and heartbreak, with the potential to change Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
One of the best new books from 2025, The Emperor of Gladness, shows the profound ways in which love, labour, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society, and to grapple with the wounds that haunt our collective soul.
My Friends – Fredrik Backman
Most people don’t pay them any attention. Three small figures are sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the world’s most famous paintings. But Louisa, soon to be eighteen years old and an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise. She is determined to unearth the truth about these figures.
Two decades earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier. These lost souls find in one another a reason to get up every morning, a reason to dream and love. Featuring Fredrik Backman’s signature charm and attention to detail in charting everyday life, My Friends is one of the best 2025 books about the enduring, transformative potential of art and friendship, perfect for anyone looking for their next summer read.
When The Wolf Comes Home – Nat Cassidy
One night, Jess, a struggling actor, happens upon a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy soon find themselves on the run, their lives at stake.
As they attempt to dodge the boy’s increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them wherever they go. At first, Jess thinks she understands what the pair of them are up against. But she’s about to discover that there’s more to these surreal and grisly events than she could have ever imagined. And that when the wolf comes home, none will be spared. The latest book by Nat Cassidy, When the Wolf Comes Home is a new horror novel that promises to be one of the most adrenaline-pumping, pulsating reads from 2025.
Sunrise On The Reaping (The Hunger Games #0.5) – Suzanne Collins
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honour of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tribes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
Yet, when Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all of his dreams shatter. He’s torn from his family and one love, and shuttled off to the Capitol with three other District 12 tributes. As the Games get underway, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight. The latest entry in The Hunger Games series, Suzanne Collins delivers one of the most anticipated books from 2025 in her new novel, Sunrise on the Reaping.
Check Out How To Read The Hunger Books In Order
The Crash – Freida McFadden
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately trying to put her crumbling life behind her. So, she hits the road. What she doesn’t realise is that she’s driving straight into a blizzard. Soon stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and a broken ankle, Tegan is saved by a couple who offer her a warm room in their cabin until the snow clears.
But something isn’t right. As time ticks by, she comes to realise that she might be in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here might have been her deadliest mistake yet. The latest Freida McFadden novel, The Crash is already one of the bestselling thriller books from 2025, and sure to be a favourite among readers who have already become big fans of the practicing physician’s work.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
