Life was dynamic and vast, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to experience enough of it to feel satisfied.
As we step into 2025, it’s time to refresh your reading list with the most captivating new books. Whether you’re a fan of thrilling mysteries, heartwarming romances or poignant historical fiction, this year promises something special for every genre. Which is why we here at What We Reading thought we would pull together the must-read books of 2025, including the best new releases that are already making waves. From highly anticipated novels by serial bestselling authors to stunning debuts, these are page-turners to keep an eye out for. Perfect for anyone searching for the best books of 2025 or just trying to stay ahead of the latest literary trends, this guide will help you find stories worth savouring. Get stuck in and discover which books deserve a spot on your shelf this year!
The Stolen Queen – Fiona Davis
Kicking off our list of the best new books of 2025 is Fiona Davis’ The Stolen Queen. Egypt, 1936: anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a highly sought-after position on an archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings. But, after a gut-wrenching tragedy hits, she realises that her life will never be the same again.
New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is overjoyed when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic Vogue fashion editor, Diana Vreeland, who is in the middle of organising the famous Met Gala at the Department of Egyptian Art. However, on the night of the gala, one of the department’s most valuable artefacts goes missing. Charlotte and Annie find themselves teaming up in the hunt for the missing antiquity in a pulsating tour from the glamorous streets of the Big Apple to dusty labyrinths of Cairo, grappling with an ancient Pharoah’s curse and the demons from Charlotte’s past.
Release date: 7 January 2025
Onyx Storm (The Empyrean #3) – Rebecca Yarros
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros, Onyx Storm is the hyped sequel to Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows that there is no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun; and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and from within their ranks, it’s truly impossible to know who to trust. Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to find allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The journey will test every last scrap of wit, luck and strength. However, she is determined to do whatever it takes to save what she loves – her dragons, her family, her home and him. Even if it means keeping a secret so big it could destroy everything.
Release date: 21 January 2025
The Devils (The Devils #1) – Joe Abercrombie
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is adamant a commendation and grand holy assignment is awaiting him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic and outright monsters. What’s more, the mission he is tasked with fulfilling will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at the edges of our borders and are hungry for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing besides their own comfort and ambitions. With a hellish journey ahead of him, it’s lucky Brother Diaz has the devils on his side. One of the best books from 2025, Joe Abercrombie kicks off his The Devils with his newest story.
Release date: 6 May 2025
Great Big Beautiful Life – Emily Henry
Alice Scott is a complete optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning human thundercloud. Both of them find themselves on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years – or at least meet with the octogenarian who claims to be Margaret Ives, tragic heiress and daughter of one of the most scandalous families of the twentieth century.
When Margaret invites the pair for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, Alice is prepared to stick out the competition. The problem is Margaret is only giving them each tidbit of her story. And it soon becomes clear that Alice and Hayden’s own stories – just like Margaret’s – could be a mystery, tragedy or a love ballad, depending on who’s telling it. Undoubtedly one of the most hyped new romance books of 2025, Great Big Beautiful Life is the latest story by BookTok icon Emily Henry.
Release date: 22 April 2025
Check Out All The Best Emily Henry Books
Three Days In June – Anne Tyler
Gail Baines is having a rough day. To start, she’s lost her job. Tomorrow, her daughter, Debbie, is getting married and Gail hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organised by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives without warning on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit.
However, the true crisis kicks off when Debbie shares with her parents a secret that she has only just unearthed about her husband-to-be. It’s a secret that will not only stir up the wedding but also throw into question Gail and Max’s complicated past. Delivered with deep sensitivity and brimming with heart, Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June is one of the best new books from 2025 about the joys and heartbreaks of love, marriage and family life.
Release date: 11 February 2025
The Dream Hotel – Laila Lalami
Sara has just landed at LAX when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration take her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at a critical risk of harming the person she loves most, her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
Sara is transferred to a detention centre where she and other dreamers, all of them women, attempt to prove their innocence of different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara never feels close to her release day. Then, one day, a new arrival turns up at the centre and soon begins to disrupt the procedures in place, hauling Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom. Eerie, urgent and timely, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is undoubtedly one the most riveting and original upcoming novels for 2025.
Release date: 4 March 2025
King Of Ashes – S.A. Cosby
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he returns to find his younger brother, Dante, in serious debt to dangerous criminals, and his sister, Neveah, at breaking point after holding their family together. The family-run the Carruthers Crematorium in run-down central Virginia town Jefferson Run, and are used to seeing death up close daily. But, when it becomes clear that the accident that has left their father in a coma was no accident, the family realise Dante’s recklessness has put them all in grave danger.
In an effort to help his brother out, Roman finds himself working for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-buried mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were all teenagers. Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters and criminals realise, and he is prepared to do anything to save his family in S.A. Cosby’s pulsating new 2025 thriller, King of Ashes.
Release date: 10 June 2025
Say You’ll Remember Me – Abby Jimenez
There may be no such thing as the perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. He is a handsome veterinarian giving serious Greek god vibes but, after opening his mouth on one occasion, he proves that even sculpted gods are capable of saying the absolute wrong thing.
After one incredible and seemingly endless date, Samantha is forced to admit that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible to maintain right now. She begs Xavier to forget her, move on and remember their night together as a perfect moment, however crushing that may be. Only no amount of time or distance is enough to forget that there is something between them. In her 2025 romance book, Say You’ll Remember Me, Abby Jimenez shows how the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life – and even love – worth remembering.
Release date: 1 April 2025
Never Flinch (Holly Gibney #4) – Stephen King
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from an individual threatening to ‘kill thirteen innocents and one guilty’, Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen people about to be killed in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, and Izzy realises the letter is deadly serious, she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
Elsewhere, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed crowds of passionate fans and detractors. Holly is hired as Kate’s bodyguard as a stalker grows more confident in the shadows. Featuring a riveting set of characters and gripping mystery at the heart of its twin narratives, Stephen King’s latest 2025 novel, Never Flinch, is chilling, thrilling and a wildly fun page-turner that needs to be on your TBR list this year.
Release date: 27 May 2025
Deep End – Ali Hazelwood
Scarlett Vandermeer is a Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specialises in platform diving. Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, focusing on getting into med school and recovering from the injury that almost curtailed her career. She is constantly reminding herself that she has no time for relationships.
Swim captain, world champion and all-around aquatics golden boy Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he breaks records and claims so many medals. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have absolutely nothing in common. That is until a well-guarded secret slips out and the pair find themselves in an unexpected arrangement. As the pressure of the Olympics hots up, so too does their temporary fling. In Ali Hazelwood’s latest 2025 romance book, Deep End, Scarlett realises that her heart could finally be entering dangerous waters.
Release date: 4 February 2025
Check Out The Best Ali Hazelwood Books
When The Moon Hits Your Eye – John Scalzi
From elder statesman in the Sci-Fi world John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye offers an entirely serious and totally enthralling take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if a giant wheel of cheese suddenly replaced the moon.
One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of a whole lunar cycle, from a new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, readers follow multiple characters – schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians – as they confront the strange new time they find themselves in, and the bizarre, absurd moon that now hangs above all of their lives.
Release date: 25 March 2025
This Book Will Bury Me – Ashley Winstead
After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp is looking for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. When the gruesome deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho, rock the world, Jane and her friends are determined to solve the mystery first.
But the case soon reveals itself to be more bizarre than anyone expected. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Placing themselves in the centre of the story begins to feel more and more like walking into a trap. In one of the best books of 2025 for any mystery-thriller addict, Ashley Winstead’s This Book Will Bury Me is told one year on from the investigation, with Jane finally deciding to break her silence about what really happened. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fanatic.
Release date: 25 March 2025
Homeseeking – Karissa Chen
Haiwen is buying bananas in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees his Suchi for the first time in six decades. Suchi was just seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighbourhood, lulled in by the sound of him playing the violin. The friendship soon blossomed into a soul-deep love, but it was brought to a crashing end when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist Army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft. He left Suchi with his violin and a note saying: Forgive me.
In her 2025 historical fiction novel, Homeseeking, Karissa Chen charts sixty years of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine and opportunity follow Haiwen’s story across the song halls of Hong Kong, military encampments in Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York and sunny California. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close, whilst Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they have in their hearts.
Release date: 7 January 2025
Witchcraft For Wayward Girls – Grady Hendrix
Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida is a home where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have babies in secret, give them up for adoption and, crucially of all, forget any of it ever happened. Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eyes of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament as her.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their days, and everything they are permitted to talk about is intensely controlled by the adults who claim to know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. Yet, power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it is rarely ever given for free. There’s always a price to be paid and, in this case, it is usually paid for in blood.
Release date: 14 January 2025
We All Live Here – Jojo Moyes
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is breaking at its seams, and an elderly stepfather who appears to have quietly moved in with them all. Her career is in freefall and her love life is complicated, to say the least. So when her real dad – a man she has hardly seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago – suddenly turns up on her doorstep, it appears to be the final straw.
But, it soon turns out that even the family you believed you could never forgive may have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be a family. We All Live Here is a contemporary story by New York Times bestselling author Jojo Moyes about a woman and her unruly blended family.
Release date: 11 February 2025
Water Moon – Samantha Sotto Yambao
On the back street in Tokyo, there is a pawnshop, but not everyone is able to find it. Most will see a cosy ramen restaurant. And only a few chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner. The shop has been ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisitions stolen and her father is missing. And then a charming stranger stumbles through the door quite unlike its other customers.
Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon follows the pair as they journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds. In one of the most mystical and magical fantasy books in 2025, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a decision that she will never be able to go back on.
Release date: 14 January 2025
All The Water In The World – Eiren Caffall
In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister, her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in a near-deserted New York City, establishing a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The most important rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science.
When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood defences, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book holding their records of the collections lost behind them. Along the swollen river towards what may be their salvation, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes dangerous ways to their new reality. Inspired by true stories from the real world, Eiren Caffall’s new 2025 book, All the Water in the World, is a dystopian tale that follows Nonie and her family as they struggle finding a way to make a new world that honours all that they’ve saved.
Release date: 7 January 2025
You Are Fatally Invited – Ande Pliego
When renowned anonymous author J.R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angel to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the opportunity. The guest list consists of six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection and mayhem.
Alastor and Mila have orchestrated a week of games, trope-fueled riddles and perhaps even a jump scare or two – the perfect smokescreen for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead – and it’s not the murder she had planned – Mila finds herself trapped in a wholly different narrative altogether. With a storm cutting off the island from the rest of the world, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book in Ande Pliego’s suspenseful novel, You Are Fatally Invited, one of the best new 2025 books for any cosy crime or mystery-thriller readers.
Release date: 11 February 2025
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
