Year in review 2025

Good riddance to 2025, it was an awful year in so many ways. I don't like having to wake up every morning thinking "Is he dead yet?" and "What other horrible thing has happened now"? Although the world is becoming more of a very poorly plotted dystopian novel every day, means that reading becomes a coping strategy, and I did a LOT of it.

I mostly did mood reading and some reading challenges, mainly to help me pick which books to read every month. I also managed to review almost all the NetGalley ARCs I received, which is a new record. I did the Goodreads and StoryGraph challenges, as always. I also completed the Nowhere Bookshop Bingo, both of the Buzzwords challenges (Title and Cover), the CBR 17 Pie Chart Challenge, and the CBR17 Bingo Challenge. Without being signed up for any formal challenges about it, I've tried to be good about reading diverse books (82 that qualified, in the end) and from my TBR list (68 in total). I also listened to 28 audio books. 

Total books started: 147

DNF-d: 4

New to Me books: 18

Re-reads: 129

Average rating: 4.0

My best reading month was December, because I was off sick from work for most of the month, followed by a two-week vacation, so I managed to finish 18 whole books, six more than in May and November, when I managed 13. April and June were the months I read the fewest books, but even those months, I managed ten, so I am generally very happy with how much reading I got done this year.

My top ten books from 2025:

The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson (I didn't have the words, so this is a friend's review)

The Undercutting of Rosie & Adam - Megan Bannen

In a Rush - Kate Canterbary

Along Came Amor - Alexis Daria

Deep End - Ali Hazelwood

The River Has Roots - Amal El-Mohtar

These Summer Storms - Sarah Maclean

Great Big Beautiful Life - Emily Henry

Mate - Ali Hazelwood (Another well-written review by a friend)

Zomromcom - Olivia Dade (Yet again, saved by the reviewing skills of my friends)

Four books in my top ten were ARCs, so I've been really lucky with those this year, but then again, my worst book of the year was also an ARC. 

My top ten books from before 2025 (in the order they were read):

• The True Love Experience - Christina Lauren
• Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson
• The Change - Kristen Miller
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, vol 3 - Kanehito Yamada and Tsutsaka Abe
• The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Mandanna
• The Warm Hands of Ghosts - Katherine Arden
• Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
• Den fantastiske bussen (The fantastic bus) - Jakob Martin Strid
• The Long Game - Rachel Reid

My worst books of 2025:

Third worst: Stargate: En julefortelling/Brightly Shining - Ingvild H. Rishøi

Second worst: The Love Haters - Katherine Center (this author's previous novel was in my top 10 for 2024 - how does that even happen?)

Absolute Worst: To Steal from Thieves - M.K. Lobb (didn't even finish it, had to DNF @ 35%)