My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 2 days ago
- 12 min read
My very favorite reads of 2025!
It makes me so happy to survey the many books I've loved reading, thinking about, writing about, and talking about this year, and I adore highlighting my very favorite reads. Out of the 141 titles I read in 2025, these are the twelve I loved the most.
Every month I post my favorite reads, and last spring I posted Ten Bossy Spring Favorites (all recently published titles at that time). In the summer I posted My Six Favorite Reads of the First Half of 2025, and all six of those books appear on my final Favorites list here.
If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think!
To check out my favorite reads from prior years, please take a look at:
What were some of your favorite reads of the year? Let's do some Bossy book talking!
01 Time of the Child by Niall Williams
Time of the Child feels like poetry in prose form, and Williams richly shapes a small-town Irish community's everyday and extraordinary events in this poignant, gorgeous literary fiction novel.
In 1962 in the small Irish town of Faha, it's Christmastime, and Dr. Jack Troy and his oldest daughter Ronnie are coping with complicated family dynamics in their drafty, rural Irish home when an unexpected discovery turns everything upside down.
During the annual, chaotic community fair preceding this holidays, which this year is a rainy business full of haggling, disappointments, and triumphs, an infant is left by the church gates. Young Jude and Faha's grown twins, Tim and Tom, bring the baby girl to Dr. Troy and Ronnie, believing her dead but not sure what else to do. And she does seem to have passed on to another realm, until Dr. Troy is able to revive her. In an impulsive pact, the four men agree not to share the news of the baby with anyone.
What really shines in Time of the Child is the power of the small-town Faha community--gossipy and desperate for dirt as its citizens may largely be. The miracle of unity brought about by a baby's presence is poignant without feeling too easy. This story is beautiful and powerful.
Williams's writing feels like a poem in prose structure; no word is wasted, and I read this novel slowly in order to savor the world the author so gorgeously created.
For my full review, check out Time of the Child. You can find Bossy reviews of other novels set in Ireland here and more reviews of literary fiction titles here.
02 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
Green's book is about tuberculosis, but it's also a view of our deep global interconnectedness, gross healthcare inequalities, the TB devastation that is still prevalent, and the possibility of both simple and comprehensive approaches that could eradicate the disease.
In John Green's nonfiction book Everything Is Tuberculosis, he tells his story of befriending a young man, Henry, who was suffering from tuberculosis and living in a hospital in Sierra Leone.
Green uses his tender eye and piercing analysis to explore the health care inequalities that allow the world's poorest citizens to disproportionately contract the incurable disease tuberculosis and to advocate for greater access to quality care and a search for a cure.
John Green is also the author of the nonfiction collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed (which was one of my six favorite nonfiction reads the year I read it) as well as other novels.
For my full review, please see Everything Is Tuberculosis.
03 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Mysteries abound within McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore, but the story is largely an atmospheric story of isolation and loss set against the drama of climate change, tragedy, and finding the will to trust again.
The description of Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore immediately ticked several of my reading-interest boxes--the setting is an isolated island (Antarctica is the closest land mass), the climate is cold (check out these other Bossy reviews of titles with cold settings), and climate change and shifting weather patterns are bringing matters to a head.
When a mysterious woman washes up half-dead on the remote island of Shearwater, home of the world's largest seed bank and formerly a research hub, she finds only Dominic Salt and his three children manning the lighthouse. The lonely, broken characters reach out to each other. Although hesitant because of past hurts, they begin to form intense bonds.
There are mysteries at the center of the story, but for me this was a captivating, atmospheric dive into the pressures, pain, and hope within extreme isolation, the power of external forces, and the push to protect each other at all costs. I was intrigued throughout.
For my full review of Wild Dark Shore, please check out this link.
Charlotte McConaghy is also the author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves.
04 The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
The Everlasting involves jaunts through multiple versions of the same story, as our fantastic main protagonists shift and change, bravely outsmart those who would control them, dare to hope for a future together, and fight dark forces until the bitter end. This is adventure-heavy, sometimes tender, and always intriguing. I loved it.
Centuries after the death of the legendary Sir Una Everlasting, spindly, awkward, cowardly historian Owen Mallory unearths her story--and becomes inexorably intertwined with the events of Una's life as they occur in the past.
Harrow's tale involves multiple do-overs and attempts to shift events and alter reality--while the unlikely couple of Una and Owen fall in love again and again.
The Everlasting is filled with rich adventure; twisty jaunts through time; tragedy and loss; dark turns, boundless hope; messy, happy discoveries; outsmarting those in power; and noble victories. It ticked a million boxes for me as a reader.
This is the type of romantic fantasy I adore. No swooning, childish behavior, or foolishness, just hard-won connections, deep character development, bravely defying expectations, and absolutely lovely love. This broke my heart and mended it over and over, in the best ways possible.
For my full review, please check out The Everlasting.
05 This American Woman: A One-in-a-Million Memoir by Zarna Garg
Comedian Zarna Garg lived several lives before falling into comedy in midlife and realizing it was where she'd belonged all along. Her memoir is candid, poignant, funny, and always entertaining. I loved this peek into her fascinating life.
Zarna Garg fled her comfortable lifestyle and her widower father to avoid an unwanted arranged marriage at age 14. She begged places to stay from friends and acquaintances in Mumbai, homeless.
She was on the verge of agreeing to be married off when her long-hoped-for visa to the US came through. She ran from home and began a dramatically different new life in Akron, Ohio. In midlife, she reimagined her future again and became a hard-working comedian who opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and then warranted her own headliner spots.
At the very beginning the pacing felt a little uneven to me, but then Garg hit her stride, and I was taken with her frank narrative, her relentless optimism and drive, her self-deprecating accounts of her imperfections, and her poignant reflections..
I love an honest memoir that lets a reader into the author's inner world, and Zarna has lived a fascinating life that I wanted to learn more about. I laughed out loud repeatedly while I was reading this charming memoir by this strong, funny woman.
For more memoirs you might like, please check out these Bossy reviews as well as Greedy Reading Lists of my favorites.
For my full review of this book, please see This American Woman.
06 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
This quiet, epistolary novel witnesses the creaky, sometimes difficult shifts and realizations that a septuagenarian achieves around her health, children, past secrets, friendship, romantic relationships, and previously unknown blood relatives near the end of her life.
Sybil Van Antwerp has written letters her whole life--letters to dear friends and family, letters of complaint, letters of praise and wonder to authors of books she's loved, and more. She reflects, sorts out her thoughts and makes sense of the events of the world.
Now Sybil is in her late 70s, she's set in her ways, she's sometimes out of step and old-fashioned, often grumpy--and she's facing immense changes. We find out early on that she faces the impending loss of her sight, that she is somewhat estranged from her daughter, that deep tragedy has shaped her life and closed off her heart, and that she may be stumbling into information about her biological parents.
It's lovely to witness Sybil's slowly allowing herself to face the past, addressing difficult issues in the present, and allowing for surprising adventures in her life. The Correspondent offers messy, imperfect characters in often difficult situations, and they find their way through having changed and grown.
This was charming and I loved both reading this novel and listening to the audio version of this title. The Correspondent was the right book at the right time for me.
I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Crown Publishing.
I do love a novel in letters. To find Bossy reviews of other books I've read, please check out the titles at this link.
07 The Boy From the Sea by Garrett Carr
Carr's newest novel is a captivating series of character studies within a tightly knit Irish seaside community in the late 1900s. While characters struggle to make ends meet, support each other, and avoid giving in to the least generous parts of themselves, tragedies and wonders shape their community in this lovely, heartbreaking and heart-wrenching tale.
In a seaside Irish town in the 1970s, a baby is washed up on the shore. As the community wonders at his mysterious, whimsical appearance, they embrace Brendan, as he is ultimately named, as one of their own, yet hold him separate--and, for a time, credit him with the power of bestowing blessings upon them.
But the world of the story is grounded in day-to-day stressors and challenges. The country is reeling from economic troubles; Brendan's older adoptive brother deeply resents his presence; and conflicts and complicated dynamics underscore friendships, family relationships, and the community as a whole.
The story is a fascinating study of relationships, with heartwarming moments and heartbreaking developments alike. Brendan is not the main protagonist, despite the novel's title, yet he is central to the story in that his presence pushes others to determine what they're about. He remains steady in the face of external upheaval (and Declan's exceptionally poor treatment of him), until even Brendan begins to waver and to seem for a time unsure of who he is and what he is made of and made for.
When Carr offers various measures of character growth and resolutions toward the end of the book, they are reassuring and lovely, sometimes heart-wrenching, and fittingly complicated.
I listened to The Boy from the Sea as an audiobook. Click here for my full review of The Boy from the Sea.
08 Show Don't Tell: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld
In Curtis Sittenfeld's wonderful second short-story collection, we meet imperfect characters, often fortysomething women, in moments large and small that push them to determine what they're made of as they consider friendship, betrayal, fear of failure, the power of memory, art, parenthood, and more.
In Curtis Sittenfeld's first short-story collection, You Think It, I'll Say It, she offered ten stories of fully realized, fascinating characters that stuck with me. I loved it and rated the collection five stars.
In her second fantastic short-story collection, Curtis Sittenfeld explores middle age, fame, friendship, artistry--and "Lost but Not Forgotten" is a story featuring Lee Fiora, a character from Sittenfeld's novel Prep, in which Lee attends an alumni event at her boarding school.
My favorite writing often turns expectations on their heads, and In Show Don't Tell, Sittenfeld draws us into crucial stages of faulted characters' lives, in which they figure out what they're made of.
Throughout the book, characters, often middle-aged women, consider art, expression, love, respect, friendship, and limitations as they live their fascinatingly imperfect lives. This is more excellent Curtis Sittenfeld; I'm a forever fan.
You can click here for my review of Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, here for my Bossy take on American Wife, and here for You Think It, I'll Say It: Stories.
If you enjoy short story collections, you might like to check out Six Short Story Collections to Wow You and Six More Short Story Collections I Loved.
09 The Names by Florence Knapp
Knapp's novel explores alternate life paths for a set of characters, each set into motion by the name bestowed upon the family's youngest child--whether whimsical, Mom's choice, or named for his cruel father. The trauma was difficult to read, but the various timelines were fascinating, as were the intersections of events and characters among them.
In one timeline, an abused wife makes a stand for a whimsical name suggested by her daughter Maia, Bear; in a second, she makes a less aggressive but unsanctioned name choice that's her favorite, Julian; in a third, she registers her baby's name as "junior" to her brutal husband Gordon.
In this sliding-doors story, the three paths diverge dramatically, and the whole family's destiny is shaped in different ways for each option.
Each timeline produces a vastly different boy, a significantly shaped sister Maia, drastically different paths for mother Cora, and altered futures for father Gordon. Supporting characters make Easter-egg appearances in other timelines.
None of the paths are too easy or perfect, but each offers varied satisfaction and challenge in the form of justice, tragedy, self-realization, fulfillment, confidence, and hope.
The epilogue surprised me; I wasn't sure it was necessary or that I bought into the point of view and the version of a reckoning that it offered, but it was an interesting way to set up slight closure to the story.
I found this novel fascinating. Please click here for my full review of The Names.
10 Isola by Allegra Goodman
Isola, based upon the story of a real-life sixteenth-century woman, shifts between details of a life of moneyed ease and an abandonment on an unforgiving, uninhabited island after our main protagonist falls in love with the wrong person.
Marguerite is heir to a fortune, but after she is orphaned, she grows into a young lady while her guardian Roberval squanders her inheritance.
As Marguerite enters into her early teens, she begins to fear that her cousin views her as a creepy match for himself. At the very least it becomes clear that he will pay no dowry in order to make another match for her. Instead, in a somewhat shocking turn of events, he forces her to sail with him to New France. But on the way, Marguerite falls for her guardian's servant.
When their relationship is discovered, Roberval cruelly punishes them by abandoning them on an uninhabited island to perish. Marguerite, once a privileged, protected child of wealth and opportunity, must learn to survive in the wild.
I was fascinated by each aspect of this tale, and Goodman transported me into the details and (often infuriating) dynamics of life at the time.
Isola is inspired by the story of the real-life sixteenth-century heroine, Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval.
For my full review of this book please see Isola.
11 Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I love an astronaut story, and while Reid spent far more page time on relationships than on the astronaut or space aspects, there was plenty of each to go around in this novel that was the perfect book at the perfect time for me. I loved it.
Joan has always been fascinated by the stars, and as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, she teaches her passion to college students. On the side, she shows her beloved young niece the sky and serves as a second parent alongside her sometimes-trying single-mother sister.
When she sees an ad seeking for the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program, Joan becomes obsessed with being part of the 1980s training and with becoming one of the first women in space.
The complicated interpersonal situations added wonderful depth to the complexities of astronauts' training, stresses, competition, and life-and-death goals of entering space. The women's fights to fully be part of a traditionally male-dominated field and the various ways in which they navigated this were particularly captivating to me.
The carelessness that partially leads to the crisis in space felt unrealistic to me, and the high drama and gasping reveal regarding the pivotal space scene toward the end could have felt over the top, but as usual, I was putty in Taylor Jenkins Reid's hands, ready to embrace every bit of it.
This was exactly the right story for me at the right time, and I hugged it to my chest when I finished, then immediately began telling everyone how much I loved it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is also the author of Carrie Soto Is Back, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Daisy Jones & the Six. You might also want to check out these other Bossy reviews of books about astronauts and space.
12 What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan's literary fiction looks back upon our present with a cutting 2119 eye. An enthused future academic and a contemporary poet's put-upon wife trade points of view to illuminate across two timelines a calculated rewriting of history, our brave and hubristic present-day existence, and fictional yet hauntingly plausible dangers.
In What We Can Know, we're introduced to characters living in a 2119, post-global-warming, post-nuclear war existence in which the population has been cut by more than half, inland seas spread across the globe, and much of the world's variation, richness, and natural world no longer exist.
Within this timeline, Tom Metcalfe, one of our main protagonists, is an academic fascinated by the past (the years surrounding our present day). In particular, he is obsessed with a famous poet named Blundy's ambitious 2014 poem, the single copy of which was read aloud for the (obtuse, grumpy, belligerent) poet's wife's birthday, then lost to time.
Early on, I found the academic focus somewhat tedious, but then the story builds into unexpected, often dark layers. The tone of the book is quiet, shadowy, and reflective, but there are rich, sordid, often unexpected twists beneath the largely academic, intellectual exercises and discussions.
Affairs, theft, lies, murder, negligence leading to death, drug-addled decision-making, and terrible mistakes are all essential components of the novel, yet the pacing does not charge along; this is a slow creep through the surface to often-wretched underbellies.