Best of 2025 (Thus Far)
The thing is, it’s only December 8th and I’ve been saving some of my most anticipated for the lull before I start reviewing again so know that I may be making an addendum to this post before New Years. That said, I want to make sure those looking for holiday gift recommendations for the book lovers in their life have them in time to make personal selections rather than relying on a gift card or a random close-your-eyes-and-point.
And so, in no particular order, here are my (initial) 10 favorite reads of 2025:
Lucky Seed by Justinian Huang
I know, I know, I can see all of your shocked faces from here. Huang’s second novel could not possibly be more different than his debut, The Emperor and the Endless Palace which was my absolute ranked #1 favorite of 2024, other than the fact both are gloriously queer, but there is no sophomore slumping here. A lot of people comped Lucky Seed with The Godfather x (insert favorite 80s soap here) but I prefer KinnPorsche only because the level of shenanigans that happens between and among the members of the Sun family and the dramatics that accompany and ensue remind me so deliciously of Tahnkun’s antics and Kinn’s bizarre double life as a college student/mob accountant. And as the soap opera, I think I’d choose Dynasty because while no one actually wears giant hats, this book is full of giant hat spirit. And a weird cult. Because where would super-rich people be without a weird cult.
There are so many more layers to Lucky Seed though, wrapped in the ludicrous drama, smaller stories that draw the narrative in and connect each character to their humanity and to ours. It asks us to examine the meaning of family and lineage and blood. Whether or not children owe a debt to their parents. When tradition becomes a generational curse. When what we thought was history is a skewed version of the truth. What we should do when the truth is ugly and our elders can’t, or won’t, acknowledge that ugliness. How to go our own way when we need help. How to start over again with nothing when the bottom falls out.
Congrats to Justinian on the birth of this incredible book and the birth of his daughter. Please buy this for everyone you know so he can keep writing to support Pip and we can get more books.
Lucky Seed: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780778387862
The Emperor and the Endless Palace: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780778387596
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
The Starving Saints is a really fucking weird book and I really loved it. For those of you who aren’t aware, I have a Masters in Theology; it’s an academic degree, not a pastoral one (MDiv) but we still read a lot about saints and visions and sacred vs. profane and as a very, very secular Jew, I developed a framework of what these experiences were like but not an understanding (think of the difference between sympathy and empathy).
Having read The Starving Saints, however, I think I get it now. This journey was a revelatory narrative experience because at no point during this book was I sure what was going to happen on the next page or even in the next sentence, but as soon as it did, it was right and impossible that anything else could have happened. The way Starling described the characters and their movements and the rituals and the strange events felt as though they couldn’t be described any other way. They all melt together into a narrative that flows through jagged turns and over several cliffs and even underground but still keeps its weird, impossible shape. With a sort of pulsing Excalibur filter over it.
It is truly glorious.
And yes, as promised on the jacket/back, there is cannibalism. And even that is strangely beautiful.
The Starving Saints: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780063418813
Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away by Coltan Scrivner
Good news, horror fans: next time someone tells you you’re creepy, you can tell them you’re just preparing yourself for the inevitable apocalypse. Scrivner, a PhD and psychologist who works at the Fear Institute (yes, it’s a real place), has done extensive work on the phenomenon of morbid curiosity and it turns out that humans of all ages use this very specific type of cringey interest to train themselves to encounter those same experiences in their own lives - much like we have fire drills to prepare ourselves for an actual fire. The horror genre, including books, movies, and games, allows us to do so for all sorts of extreme circumstances in a safe, controlled environment. This is especially true for children, which is why seemingly violent play, interest in morbid subjects, and a draw to the horror genre, shouldn’t be discouraged within safe parameters.
More info in the book and, as always, as regards individual and specific cases, consult a professional.
Morbidly Curious: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780143137344
Vagabond: A Memoir by Tim Curry
If at all possible, I recommend listening to this one; Time Curry reads it himself and while his speech is slower than it once was due to his stroke, his comedic timing is still impeccable and he is still very much himself.
And this man has lived a life. That’s pretty much all I can say without telling the stories it’s so much better to hear from him. I will say that, with one exception, he does stick to his promise not to kiss and tell but he is very happy to tell his audience who he doesn’t like and why. Which, honestly? So much more scandalously delicious.
Vagabond: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780306835841
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
I don’t read a ton of doorstoppers these days because, quite frankly, most of them don’t actually need to be doorstoppers. I find that most books over 350 pages (excluding the ones on this list, appropriate length for story is part of my criteria) could lose at least 25 pages and actually be the better for it (the number of pages that can be lost increases exponentially as the book gets longer). So when I tell you King Sorrow needed every single word on every single page, know that I mean it.
Dragons and friendships and first loves and promises and major fuck-ups and trust and betrayal… there are so many moving parts to this novel. This story has so much range in character growth and timeline and the morality twists and turn, and also did I mention the dragon? I had the privilege of seeing Hill at the Carnegie Lecture Hall on his book tour and he talked about dragons being kin to cats; King Sorrow has this amazing sphinx quality to him that’s both whimsical and deadly, that makes him different from other literary dragons I’ve met, one that made me love him despite how horrifying he can be, one I can see in my own cat’s eyes when I’m too slow with breakfast and he gives me the, “You did this to yourself,” look that tells me I’m going to hear about it later.
At its heart though, this book is about people. About whether a lifetime of rights can make up for one, desperate wrong. Whether denying oneself happiness balances the cosmic scales. Whether or not we can truly change and, if we can, how late is too late? Where our demons actually come from. Can we ever really exorcise them? Do we deserve that privilege if we invited them in?
Is King Sorrow an optimistic story? I wouldn’t say that. But it still reminded me to look for the tiny magical things that happen every day. It reignited my spirit of adventure because if here there be dragons, then here there be stories. And we all have stories to write. Just don’t look in any WWI helmets. Or cracked mirrors. And whatever you do, don’t play Puff the Magic Dragon on a player piano.
King Sorrow: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780062200600
My Documents by Kevin Nguyen
Reminder: There is supposed to be a diacritical mark (~) above the “M” in My Documents that changes the meaning of the word in Vietnamese. It’s an important part of this story when it comes up which is why I’m not going to tell you what it means. I do, however, want you to know that it’s there; my computer already gets confused between my English keyboard and my Mandarin one and it won’t put that mark over an “M,” which is why I haven’t included it.
I first heard about this book on a Daily Show clip; Ronnie Chieng was interviewing author, Kevin Nguyen and seriously, every book recommendation I’ve taken from his interviews has been impeccable so I immediately put it on hold at the library.
The basic premise is this: a small group of Vietnamese men commit an act of terrorism in the United States. The government responds by rounding up Vietnamese immigrants and everyone of Vietnamese descent and puts them in internment camps. The novel focuses on two sets of cousins, one of whom is sent to a camp. Of the other set of cousins, one is white-passing journalist and the other is protected by his position at a large tech company. Leopards eventually appear to chew faces.
Here’s the thing: My Documents came out in April 2025, sure, but that means it was turned in April 2024 at the latest. In April 2024, would we have read this book and thought, “Fuck, this could actually happen? Again?” Most of us probably would have thought: dystopian fiction. Most of us, it turns out, were unbelievably fucking stupid. Stupid not to realize this country was running on a thin veneer of politeness and an excess of White Supremacist American Exceptionalism, especially when so many people were telling us it was.
So what do we do? We read books like My Documents. We scrape away the thin veneer of politeness and we see what people who know have been trying to show us all along. That things are not okay and they never have been. That it has always been nasty and ugly and bigoted and racist and we need to kick down the foundations and start again because if this book presents a possible present or a possible near-future, and it does, then we all need to scream the walls down. Sesame Street may have radicalized me but books like this one remind me why I have to stay radicalized.
My Documents: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780593731680
Peerless by Meng Xi Shi
Okay, it is not all doom and gloom up in here. Peerless kicked Guardian out of the #1 danmei of my heart spot this year purely by virtue of its two main characters, Cui Buqu and Feng Xiao, being absolute cunts and I do not use that word lightly. This is immaculate enemies to lovers but, like, lovers who are still trying to get the best of one another and out maneuver each other and like, kiss it better while possibly, literally stabbing each other in the back (they will tenderly take care of the other person after accomplishing their goal). Like, “If you are in the most dire of straits, I’ll always be there to help you, but you have to call me Daddy so that you will also be utterly humiliated,” lovers (I’m not kidding, that’s an actual thing they do to each other, it starts when one of them is falling off a cliff). I also have to give props to Meng Xi Shi for giving us Cui Buqu who is reasonably attractive but who Feng Xiao is enamored of because he’s a fucking genius above all else. There is no historical equivalent of taking off the smart girl’s glasses and putting on her makeup; Feng Xiao think Cui Buqu is cute enough but it’s that big, sexy brain he’s obsessed with.
And I’m glad someone has one because there are, like, five political subplots going on and I needed someone to big reveal the connections for me at the end so, kudos to Cui Buqu for holding on to that for all of us.
Anyway. Peerless is absolutely delightful and at 5 volumes, it clocks in around the same length as MDZS with less additional stuff. Though it does have five epilogues. Don’t worry, none of them involve an incense burner.
Peerless: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798888438183
Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The way our local library branch is set up, I walk by Braithwaite’s 2019 My Sister, The Serial Killer every time I go in to pick up holds. And every time, I check to see if she has a new book. And finally, last month, she did.
And of course, it’s another book about sisters and of course it destroyed me.
While Ebun and Monife aren’t sisters by blood, they are sisters in every way that counts, just as their own mothers are sisters in every way that counts. And it is left to Ebun’s daughter Eniiyi, who doesn’t have a sister but once did, who perhaps should (in one way or another), to unravel the mystery of a family that is uncoupling, falling apart.
Braithwaite has written another incredible story about women, beautiful and tragic by turns, examining what life gives to women and what it takes away, what creates sisterhood and what wrenches it apart, how different things might be (could be?) if we learned to talk to our sisters and mothers and aunts and grandmothers as women rather than as rivals or outdated, outmoded sources of what used to be instead of what is and what could be. If it treated men the same way it treats us, had the same expectations of them as it did us, punished them as it did us, separated us from the collective as it did us. What our lives could be if society listen when we said, “It hurts, I don’t understand, please help.”
Cursed Daughters: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780385551472
My Sister, The Serial Killer: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780525564201
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
Cora’s Zeng’s sister, Delilah is murdered, pushed in front of a subway train. The man who did it yells, “Bat eater,” a slur against East Asians that made a reappearance during the Covid-19 pandemic. After the horrific event, Cora, a crime scene cleaner, starts finding bats at job sites, all, suddenly, places East Asian women have been killed.
She is also being haunted by Hungry Ghosts but refuses to prepare for the Hungry Ghost festival as her aunt advises, risking Hell when the Gates open.
Which is worse: hungry ghosts or the horror of living through the pandemic? The virus that spread everywhere faster than we could track or react causing thousands of deaths or the ignorant response of the general populace to Asians, their fellow citizens, simply because the first case of Covid was reported to have occurred in Wuhan, China? Insanity or being dragged to Hell? Cora faces these questions and so many others over the course of the novel, questions that are impossible to answer, questions to which there is no good answer or no answer at all. But she persists, alive, trying to survive when her beautiful, successful sister has not only died but had her life stolen by some random, racist asshole on a subway platform for no real reason at all.
What is grief? How do we process it? Does faith help or does it hurt? How do we make meaning from a meaningless death? How do we survive in a world that wishes we were dead? How do we live surrounded by fear? How do we live with our own fear: can we coexist? Or do we live despite it? Is action the answer? What if we’re wrong? What is a ghost?
What does it mean to survive?
What does it mean to live?
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781335001528
If the Dead Belong Here by Carson Faust
Six-year-old Laurel spent the summer talking about what her sister Nadine thought were imaginary friends.
Now, Laurel is gone. She disappeared from her room in the middle of the night. All the windows and doors were closed and locked.
The only thing she left behind was a ghost.
Nadine won’t give up the search. But to continue, she will need the support and teaching of her aunts and her great-grandmother, women who defied society and the men in their lives to continue learning and practicing medicine, ghost-talking, and the ability to walk the in-between.
Indigenous horror is where it’s at, folks. I know I’ve been saying that for a while, but that doesn’t make it any less true because every time I catch up to my TBR, I find a new author to add and I will definitely be adding Faust. If the Dead Belong Here scared the absolute shit out of me - there were several points in the book where I was reading curled up in a ball with one eye closed - and it made me cry, as a mother, a daughter, and as a sister, which… oof. If you’re a woman in a family, expect it to hurt at some point during this novel. But you’ll feel lightness at some point as well.
This is one that will have you wondering which is more horrible: the things in the dark or people? I’m not sure that’s resolved by the end. But I’m still thinking about it two days later so… mark of an excellent read.
If The Dead Belong Here: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780593830895
And there you have it! As I said, check back in around New Years to see if I’ve added a few more! Happy reading and gifting.