It took me longer than any other year before to compile my end-of-year-lists, and even so, they ended up looking a little different from previous years. 2025 has not been a good year for me. Apart from couple of significant changes in my personal- and professional life that posed challenges, I was visited by the Black Dog again about halfway through the year. If you’re unfamiliar with that metaphor, please feel free to google it… Where this beasty has been a small and well-behaved thing that lived I could navigate my life around, it seemed to remember its teeth and claws this year. Although I’m already doing better than I was a couple of months ago, this had a huge impact on my reading of the year. There was a significant period in the summer where I didn’t read at all, and overall my feelings on my reading were a lot more “muted” than normally.

Themes of grief were (even more) present throughout my “wins”, so be aware of that when considering which of these books you’d like to pick up for yourself. It doesn’t take away from the strength of my recommendations, but it’s worth considering that they might be colour-filtered through that lens.

Over the next couple of days, you can still expect my list of Favourites, Worst & Most Disappointing and Most Anticipated, but I decided to combine the rest of my Wrap-Up in this single post, going by different categories and superlatives. Without further ado, let’s get into my honourable mentions of 2025: genre-favourites, surprises, underrated gems and more.

Best Middle-grade

The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt is one of those middle-grade novels that I can wholeheartedly recommend to adults just as much as to kids. This is the story of 12-year old Hercules Beal, who is tasked by his eccentric school-teacher to complete the 12 labours of his Greek-Mythology-namesake, over the summer. A big and heroic task for a boy who feels anything but…This isn’t a fantasy novel though, and Hercules’ 12 labours are very much rooted in the reality of his life. Along the way he finds adventure, community and healing over the recent heartbreaking grief his family has suffered. Prepare to be equal parts endeared, entertained and emotionally touched by this gem. A full review can be found here.

Best Young Adult

There were very few serious contenders for this title, and so it goes – almost by default – to They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran. That doesn’t take away from how excellent I felt this book was, despite its very low average rating on Goodreads. Part coming-of-age story, part eco-horror, this follows a Vietnamese-American teen, living in the small coastal town of Mercer, Louisiana, which has been overtaken by a toxic algal bloom that drifted in from the ocean. Noon and her mother, fisherfolk by trade, must navigate not only the fallout of this ecological disaster, but their personal grief and an ever-present sense of displacement. Thematically and prose-wise, this was an easy five-star for me. Beautifully written, tensely atmospheric, and packed to the brim with briny metaphors and layers. 

Best Short-fiction

A last-minute addition to this list (I read this over Christmas!) is my favourite novella of 2025; Good Boy by Neil McRobert. In only 150 pages, this story took me on an emotional horror-journey that reminded me of the best parts of Stephen King’s IT. After a boy vanishes on the outskirts of a small Northern town, a woman spies from her window a mysterious man digging a grave in the exact spot of the disappearance. She confronts him, she doesn’t find a cold-blooded killer, but a grief-stricken old man, attempting to bury the body of his beloved dog. When she invites him in for a cup of tea, he tells her his life-story; one far more chilling and intertwined with the villages’ past than she could’ve anticipated.

It's not a spoiler to warn you that there is a dog-death in this story. The dog’s burial is literally the opening-page of the book. It’s a deeply sensitive and integral exploration of grief though, and at no point is harm to animals or children used for shock-value. I loved everything about this story, from its nostalgic small-town-cosmic-horror vibes, to its bittersweet depiction of the companionship between a lonely man and his loyal dog. If I did a category for “best fictional dogs”, Riot would take the spot easily.

Best Non-Fiction or Memoir

I read 2 standout memoirs this year; one of which made it to my top-10 of the year. The honourable mention goes to Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones; a disability memoir by an author with sacral agenesis, which focuses on navigating visible disability and chronic pain in spaces of motherhood and academia. It reminded me very much of some of my other favourites in the genre, such as Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig, Handicap: Een Bevrijding by Anaïs van Ertvelde and Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin.

Best Sequel

I’m keeping this one short, because (spoiler alert); my favourite sequel was great enough to make my top 10. A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett is the sequel to The Tainted Cup, and the second book in the Leviathan Wakes series. In this genre blend of high-fantasy and murder-mystery, we follow an eccentric detective duo solving crimes among the high political spheres of a fantasy-world full of alchemical and botanical magic.

Although I think I loved book 1 and 2 equally, I loved  how book 2 allowed us a little more insight into the background of our strange detective-duo, which really made me love them even more. I cannot recommend this series enough.  

Favourite Reread

Easily This Appearing House by Ally Malinenko. This middle-grade novel about a 12-year old cancer-survivor explores the experience of childhood-cancer-survivorship through the metaphor of a haunted house, and has its narrative written all across my heart. It more than held up upon reread, and still stands within my top 5 favourite novels of all time.  

A book I can’t stop thinking about

 Two books share this spot on the list, because they had very similar vibes, and it’s those vibes more so than anything else that have made them so memorable to me. State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg and Pink Slime by Fernanda Trias share quite a few themes and stylistic choices. Both are in that strange subgenre of literary-weird-eco-fiction with a very inward and personal perspective. Both are written in stunning prose with an incredible eye for details that might seem mundane, but gain great significance in the right context. Both are also quite divisive and I realize they won’t work as “broad recommendations”, but their vibes literally haunt me, in the best way possible.

Pink Slime follows a coastal city has been all but abandoned after a toxic algal bloom made living conditions unsafe. The only people left are those without the means to evacuate. Among them is our protagonist: a woman working as a care-giver for a rich family’s disabled child. It’s standout – apart from the atmosphere – is in its explorations of caregiving and what remains after what seems like total collapse. State of Paradise is about a female ghostwriter who returns to her Floridian childhood home, where she finds herself disorientated by the wildness of the landscape, strange (un)natural weather-events and old family-dynamics that take on new forms. This one is even more fever-dreamy, and less plot-heavy, but Laura van der Berg’s prose is impeccable.

A book that made me happy

I desperately needed this category in my life, and where quite a few books made me gave me that “bitter-sweet” fuzzy feeling, I wanted to dedicate this shoutout to books that brought me pure fun. First is The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst, the second book in the Spellshop series, which is more of a companion-series than a strict “sequel”. This is a cozy-fantasy/romance series, and perhaps the only one in its genre that has worked for me so far. I read this in the beginning of December, and its wintery-setting and Hallmark-vibes made for the perfect holiday-read for me. You don’t have to have read The Spellshop, although you might miss out on some cute cameo’s if you read them out of order. The Enchanted Greenhouse follows a twenty-something government librarian, who broke the law by practicing illegal magic when she brought a spider-plant to life to keep her company during her lonely archival work. Made an example to deter the public from the use of illegal magic, she’s turned into a statue, supposedly for eternity. That is until she wakes years later, in a snowy landscape of a remote island full of wintery-greenhouses, managed by a grumpy but handsome gardener. Soon she finds herself wrapped up in a plot involving a botanical magic, a sentient rose and the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer, that sets her off on a journey to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Second, I have Snake-eater by T. Kingfisher, her latest standalone horror(?) novel. In the afterword, the author herself describes this as “The platonic ideal of a Kingfisher horror novel”, and honestly, that was all I asked for. Very much like her debut The Twisted Ones, this follows a woman and her dog arriving in a small-town, where they investigate a folklorish haunting, with the help of a colourful cast of characters – specifically an eccentric trigger-happy elderly grandma… Highly specific, and yet it still works like a charm. Blending humor and horror is something that rarely hits for me, but Kingfisher hits that sweet spot. I will read anything this author puts out. Dedicated reviews for both are up on my blog.

Most Surprising

I have three picks for this category, all for very different reasons.

It’s only fitting to start off with the very first novel I read this year: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk. This feminist retelling of Tomas Mann’s Magic Mountain gathered a lot of praise in 2024, when it was first translated into English. I was hesitant to read it, as I don’t only hate Magic Mountain, but I had just put Tokarczuk’s Flights on my worst-books-list the previous year. Imagine my surprise when this was an amazing book. Smart, predictable where it wants to be, but subversive where it needs to be, and very intentional with its depiction of its characters, I see why this got the praise it did. Although it wasn’t a perfect book for me, I’m very happy I picked it up despite my reservations. Full review can be found here.

My second surprise is The Great Work by Sheldon Costa. I am not a western-girl, and usually avoid western-films and books like the plague. I don’t know therefore what possessed me to pick up a Western-fantasy, but I’m glad I did. This offers a fantastic story with strong themes of friendship, about an alchemist and his nephew hunting down a legendary giant salamander, that drives men mad, to avenge the alchemist’s best friend. A full review can be found here. With only 200 ratings on Goodreads at the time of writing this, I could’ve easily featured this one for my underrated gems too. I wish more people would find their way to this book.

 Last but not least is my second mention of Laura van den Berg with The Third Hotel. This is probably the book with the lowest average rating I have on my shelves (3.21 stars based off around 5000 ratings), so I was surprised to find a 4-star read for myself. Like with State of Paradise, I can very much see why many people dislike this book. It’s quite stream-of-consciousness, meandering and introspective and has very little plot to it. That being said, it (either purposefully or completely by accident) captured a very niche feeling perfectly, and I loved it for that. The story follows a recently widowed woman on a trip to Havana, Cuba. Here she plans to visit the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, as a tribute to her husband, who had an almost obsessive love for an indie-zombie-film that will be featured there. Once in Havana, through a haze of grief and (literal) displacement, she spots her husband wearing an unfamiliar white linen suit on the streets. His “ghost” leads her on a journey through the unfamiliar streets. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. That hazy feeling of grief, where you almost feel like you’re a ghost yourself, exacerbated by being in an unfamiliar place; I’ve felt that feeling before and have never encountered a book that captured it the way Laura van den Berg did here. I plan on writing a full review for this one, but I might need some time to fully digest it before I do so.

Underrated gems

Sunbirth by An Yu was one of my most anticipated releases of this year, simply by virtue of the authors previous works. I was intrigued by Braised Pork, despite having some issues with its execution, and adore Ghost Music. I was over the moon when I read and reviewed my ARC of Sunbirth (5/5 stars), only to see it currently sits at a mere 600 ratings, with an average of 3.54 on Goodreads.

In this magical realist tale we follow a small-town community over the course of 12 years, as an agonizingly slow apocalypse takes place overhead; the sun has been vanishing gradually from the sky. It’s character study, more so than apocalypse-novel, with a tight focus on the characters in this isolated town, and their response to the events unfolding. Again, I can see why this isn’t a crowd-pleaser, I still think this book deserves more recognition than it did. It’s a safe recommendation to fans of the authors previous works, as their style and signature striking prose is very consistent. I also hesitatingly recommend it to Emily St. John Mandel-fans for its introspective quiet-apocalypse-vibes. A full review can be found here.

Finally for underrated gems, I want to recommend two horror novels that I feel would have wider appeal, if only they’d been marketed a bit more heavily. First is The Sundowners Dance by Todd Keisling. This April-release sits at <500 ratings on Goodreads, but would work perfectly for fans of Iain Reid's We Spread. It follows an elderly man, who moves into a seemingly idyllic retirement community in the Poconos, following the death of his wife. He soon finds himself on the trial of some cult-like-activities and secret kept hidden behind the closed doors and picked fences of the community. This has cult- and supernatural- vibes mixed with the true cosmic terror of an aging- and ailing body. Highly recommend! Read my full review here.

If you like your horror-protagonists a bit less geriatric, and your settings a bit more isolated and windswept, allow me to introduce you to The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson. Sitting at only 700 ratings, this is an underrated folk-horror that takes heavy inspiration from Irish mythology. I personally went into this fairly blind, and highly recommend that experience. If you do want a little more information, you can find my review here.

That brings us to the end of the first of my Year-In-Review posts. Stay tuned during this week for part two, featuring my worst and most disappointing books of 2025.