NB: This week, we’re taking a look back at 2025. We’ve got a week of best-of posts to share, with reviews, cover snark, sales, and more. We hope you enjoy revisiting our archives, and most of all, we wish you and yours a wonderful holiday and a happy new year – with all the very best of reading.
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We’re counting down the best of our 2025 reviews, which I’m sure you’re all curious about. Counting down from ten, these are the first five reviews in terms of page views.
Let’s get into it!
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10. Honeysuckle and Bone by Trisha Tobias (February 1)
Review by Elyse
Grade: A
Maybe the best way to summarize how much I loved Honeysuckle and Bone is to say that once I finished it, I immediately started searching for more books by the author and was immensely disappointed there weren’t any. This is a classic Gothic thriller, but it does so much more with the tropes and themes of that genre that it stands out and makes for a truly memorable reading experience.
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9. Left of Forever by Tarah Dewitt (June 26)
Review by PamG
Grade: Squee
I don’t ever remember giving a Squee grade before, but nothing else will adequately express my desire to evangelize this book. I want to praise it, but I NEED to share it. The voices in my head are whispering that no book is capable of making every reader happy, but my head just don’t care. It’s convinced that everyone should read this book.
I think the best books, the books that absolutely blow my mind, are the rare ones that startle me and show me things I’ve never seen before. Such books are grounded in the minutiae of real, ordinary life, but something in the writing is gloriously transformative.
Left of Forever is one of these.
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8. Swordheart by T. Kingfisher (December 7)
Review by Carrie
Grade: B-
I went into this book blind and didn’t realize that it is part of a larger series. I thought it worked fine as a stand-alone, although I can see that some additional world-building would have been useful. For T. Kingfisher completists, it sits between the Clockwork Boys Duology and the Paladin series in the world of the Temple of the White Rat. Whether you enjoy this as an audio, an ebook, or a shiny new copy with pretty edges, I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. I try not to guess at the author’s motives when writing on this site, but perhaps I can get away with it just once. I like to think that the book is too long simply because the author enjoyed the characters as much as I did and did not want to say goodbye.
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7. Heir by Sabaa Tahir (December 19, 2024) *I usually cutoff “best of” posts by early to mid December, so this snuck in for this year.*
Review by Crystal Anne
Grade: A
I think that is one of the most important elements of this book. It tells us that anger can be valid and still not make it okay to perpetuate further suffering. I think that it is an extremely important statement for a book to make, especially right now.
This book is excellent, which is not a surprise, given that Tahir is an excellent writer. It would have been more surprising if it wasn’t.
But the more important thing to me is that this book was the right book at the right time, and it was there when I needed it to be. I dearly hope it could be that for others, because I know that right now, a lot of us need that, and we’re going to need it for a long time to come.
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6. Fan Service by Rosie Danan (March 13)
Review by Lara
Grade: A
I am typing this review in bits and pieces, one-handed at times, because I’m on maternity leave with my infant. Through sleepless nights, tummy time and cleaning up various poop-apocalypses, I have devoured this book. That I am making time to write this review now speaks of how desperately I want people to read this book.
If you’re in the mood for some giddy happiness, then I humbly put forward Fan Service as a plentiful source of it.
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What are your predictions for the top five? Let us know in the comments!
