Fiction 2025 Recap

My last post recapped the nonfiction I read in 2025. This one does the same with novels. I enjoyed each of the books on this list enough to finish it, which is saying something, as I picked up and put down a lot of novels this year and even DNF’d some that I was 50+ pages into. I won’t attempt to rank these books, but I’d say each is at least four stars out of six.

Young Adult

• The Belgian Girls by Kathryn J. Atwood. YA Historical Fiction. A dual timeline story about the bravery of two young women in war-torn Belgium, one in World War I and the other in World War II. I’ve read Atwood’s YA nonfiction and enjoyed this first foray into YA fiction. The real-life Gabrielle Petit, a Belgian spy in WWI, inspired this story. Atwood seamlessly weaves historical research into both characters’ stories, making them and the situations they find themselves in feel realistic. Gabrielle and the fictional Julienne are compassionate young women who want to help fellow citizens of Brussels during German/Nazi occupation. I appreciated that the first two chapters were dedicated to one character and the third and fourth to the other. I helped firmly lodge them in my mind as distinct characters in different times. The novel flowed well and does not shy away from the barbarity of the Nazis, but it doesn’t go into gory details. The focus is on these women who are fighting for something they love, and Atwood keeps it on that more than on the atrocities of war. This translates into an excellent message for readers today who are concerned about our democracy facing growing authoritarianism. If you channel your anger into what you love rather than what you hate, you can find a way forward through the darkness.
• Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet. YA Mystery/thriller. This doesn’t come out until January 6, 2026, but I couldn’t resist diving in when I received an advance reader copy. I love Little Women, and the Beth in Bernet’s imaginative new YA thriller is the sister who dies in Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel. The setting is contemporary, and the sisters and other characters from the original are, at one time or another, all suspects in the death. Beth does not die from an illness in this version. She’s found murdered in the woods on New Year’s Day.
  I wrote on Goodreads:
  Such a “fun” read for fans of Little Women, and a solid mystery/thriller for those who are unfamiliar with Louisa May Alcott’s classic tale. It’s funny and heartfelt, with convincing moments of intensity during arguments between the sisters and other situations. The characters felt vibrant and alive as they struggled with coming-of-age issues and trying to solve Beth’s murder. Bernet does a wonderful job of honoring Alcott’s story and characters while re-creating the March sisters for a modern audience. YA, but an engaging read for all adults.

Horror

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I listened to an audio version narrated by Ralph Cosham that was excellent. I know this story so well, and it always makes me cry at the end, even if I don’t think it will. Cosham’s performance brought out the humor.
• The Good House by Tananarive Due. This was a Book Cougars readalong for our year of reading Ghost Stories. The novel had a good premise, and although the execution was somewhat lacking, it held my attention. When we discussed it on Zoom, the group had a lot to say about the novel’s ending.
• The Upstairs House by Julia Fine. Another Book Cougars’ readalong. This one involved a woman experiencing post-partum hallucinations. Or maybe she’s haunted? It’s an homage to The Awakening, which I re-read prior to this novel, which involves Margaret Wise Brown (who should be dead), author of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. The ending made this book for me. Fine really nailed it.
• Anne Brontë: Nightwalker by Gea Haff. Anne Brontë didn’t really die. She’s a vampire working as a paramedic in Asheville, NC. This had a strong beginning but struggled toward the end. It’s supposed to be the first in a series, and I would gladly read another by Haff.
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. This classic was the Book Cougars’ first readalong of the year for our year of reading ghost stories. I’ve read it several times and think it’s more brilliant each time. I like it so much more than We Have Always Lived in a Castle.
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I read this many moons ago, and didn’t remember much other than a governess arrives to take care of two children, and things don’t go well. It was both painful and slightly enjoyable to suffer through it a second time.
• How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. This was the last readalong for the Book Cougars’ year of reading ghost stories, and boy, was it a banger! Content warning: puppets and dolls. It was a good read, but not as great as Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.
• The Shining by Stephen King. I’ve read this novel three times now, and it has changed for me with each reading. I think a good partial definition of a classic is that it grows with you. This time, the racism around how a Black character is described was glaring and lessened my enjoyment of what is a brilliant ghost story and a depiction of a man’s descent into madness.
• Women, Eating: A Literary Vampire Novel by Claire Kohda. This story made me nauseous at least once. It’s bizarre, uncomfortable, but full of interesting musings about women and the meaning of food. I imagine I’ll re-read this one at some point because it still pops into my mind now and then. Oh, and there’s a puppet involved.
• The Militia House by John Milas. If I had to pick only one favorite novel of the year, it might be this one. Roxane Gay called it, “An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.” It’s the story of Marine Corporal Loyette, who is serving in a forward area of Afghanistan during a transition from British to US control. He is drawn to an old Soviet-era barracks that’s outside the wire. The British squad that takes the Marines to visit the barracks noticeably does not go inside. Corporal Loyette and his men do go inside, and nothing is ever the same—a depiction of PTSD from the inside. Milas has said he’s a fan of Shirley Jackson’s work, and it shows.
• Fiend by Alma Katsu. I’m a fan of Katsu’s historical horror, and this is her first novel set in contemporary times. It did not disappoint and will probably be on my top 10 list. This is a story about an ancient family dynasty, inheritance, succession, and siblings. Be careful what you ask for. This novel has the most heartbreaking dedication I’ve ever read: “To all the seven-year-olds whose souls starved waiting for parental love and approval that never came.”
• The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce, selected and edited by Michael Newton. The Book Cougars read these stories throughout the year. It’s an excellent introduction to the ghost story in British and American literature.
• The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton. I’ve read some of the stories in this collection before, and they’re better the second time around. This is one of the few short story collections by a single author that I considered a pleasure to read. They are all so different in tone, subject (other than the ghost issue), and location.

Historical Fiction

• The Garden by Clare Beams. Inspired by actual events. A woman enters a private research facility in the hopes of carrying a baby to full term.
• The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis. A dual timeline featuring The Met in 1970s NYC and Egypt in the 1920s.
• Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. This one will probably be in my top 10 overall reads of the year. A contemporary woman goes back to the South to visit her grandmother and learns more than she bargained for about her family’s history and her connection to the land. Inspired by historic events about a group of Black people, some formerly enslaved, who moved away from escalating racial violence in South Carolina to North Carolina, not long after the Civil War.
• The El by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. The story of a Native gang leader in 1990s Chicago trying to get his guys to a big meeting via the El. They go through enemy territory, find common ground with rivals, then shit hits the fan, and they scramble to make it home alive. Based on Van Alst Jr’s experience of growing up in Chicago. It made me think about the Indigenous past and present of the city in a new way.

Classics

• Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. A short, lovely story about faithful Agnes, who serves two very different families as a governess.
• A New Home, Who’ll Follow by Caroline Kirkland. I buddy read this with a friend and initially thought it was nonfiction. The novel is based on Kirkland’s real-life experiences in the 1840s Midwest, and the voice of her narrator is so fresh and lively that I forgot at times that I was reading something written in the early 19th century.
• Old New York by Edith Wharton. This is a collection of four novellas set in New York in different decades, 1840, 1850, 1860, and 1870. I loved it! Two of these stories make good companion reads with Natalie Dykstra’s Chasing Beauty, her biography of Isabella Stuart Gardner. I plan to read more Wharton in 2026.
• Silas Marner by George Eliot. Silas was alone, until he wasn’t. As his story unfolds, you can’t help but fall in love with Silas, who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and lives his life in a way that contracts until it suddenly begins to expand.
• A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton. Read for Shawn Breathes Books’ conversation with Dorian and James, and a book club sponsored by The Mount that read this novel alongside Willa Cather’s One of Ours. Based on Wharton’s own wartime experience in France during World War I.
• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. This is the first volume of his longer work, In Search of Lost Time. I buddy-read this with a group who will be reading the second installment of Proust’s classic in early 2026. The title of the second volume is In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Eew.
• Willa Cather’s novels — I also reread or at least heavily skimmed all twelve of Cather’s novels for my friend Colleen’s year of reading Cather. She gathered a group of Cather enthusiasts, and we met monthly via Zoom to talk about that month’s book. It was great to discuss these novels with a group. Although I’ve read a few of them dozens of times, discussing them with others always brings new things to light. I’ve already written about Cather’s novels on this blog, so I won’t go into detail on each one here.

Mystery/Thriller

• The Award by Matthew Pearl. This is another novel that could be my favorite of the year if forced to pick just one. Pearl is another writer known for his historical fiction, and, like Katsu, this is his first foray into contemporary fiction. The Award is a funny yet deadly serious story of a young writer who makes a series of bad decisions, all of which highlight the horribleness of the literary world at its loftier levels, in Boston. Of course, it is fictional, but many of the elements are from Pearl’s own experience in the business. Hank Phillip Ryan recently interviewed Pearl on A Mighty Blaze for her Crime Time show. It’s a great conversation.
• To Catch a Thief by David Dodge. We named our new puppy, Robie, after John Robie The Cat, played by Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of the same name. I didn’t realize the film was based on a novel until we re-watched it before officially naming Robie. We’ve watched the movie multiple times, but wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything yucky about the character that we’d forgotten. The film is a faithful adaptation of the plot, though in the novel Robie dons a disguise. Covering up Cary Grant would have been sacrilegious.
• The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny. I had some catching up to do with Chief Inspector Gamache and his crew! Penny never disappoints. Her 2025 release, The Black Wolf, is patiently waiting for me to read sometime soon.
• The Last Room on the Left by Leah Konen. This was a good thriller about a young woman, a struggling writer, who takes a job as a caretaker of a motel over the winter. She is struggling with alcoholism and relationship problems on several fronts. As in The Shining, things don’t go well.
• Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell. This is the last novel I read in 2025. I’m embarking on a re-read of Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series with my friend John Valeri. When we met some years ago, we bonded over our mutual admiration, dare I say love, for this series. We are planning to read one a month. There are currently 29 books in the series, so it will take us over two years to complete the project. Wish us luck! Postmortem was published in 1990, and I’m happy to report it holds up. The sexism and racism as presented in the novel are still sadly the same, but it was fun to read about early computer usage and DNA as evidence. The bad guy’s reveal may not be exactly “fair” to the reader, but the reason the serial killer chooses his victims is fascinating. Cornwell’s series is credited with kicking off the forensic mystery/thriller subgenre.

There’s one book I couldn’t fit into a category: The Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley. This is a heartwarming tale of a man who goes to Venice on the Christmas vacation he had planned with his husband. Instead of a romantic getaway, they have split up. The heartbroken protagonist finds inspiration in a confident Venetian street dog and begins to regain his confidence. This is an updated print version of an Audible Original Rowley put out a couple of years ago.

Phew! Okay, I think I am forgetting a few titles. I didn’t do a great job of tracking my reading on Goodreads or StoryGraph this year, but I plan to do better with that in 2026. I upgraded my StoryGraph to the paid version and have already been more diligent on both platforms. I’ll also get back to recording what I read in a notebook.

What were some of your favorite novels read in 2025? Please feel free to share them in the comments or drop a link if you’re a blogger.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!