“The river may conjugate everything it touches, but the willows translate its grammar into their growth, and hold it slow and steady in their bark.”
Spring is the perfect time to refresh your reading list with the best new fiction books of 2025. Whether it’s a gripping thriller, a sweeping historical saga or a poignant contemporary story, these spring 2025 book releases offer something for every reader. With new fiction books arriving in March, April and May 2025, this season is packed with exciting reads that guarantee to keep you turning the pages. Here at What We Reading, we’ve pulled together our best new books for spring 2025, from highly anticipated novels by serial bestselling authors to fresh debuts already making waves. Whether you’re looking for the best novels of spring 2025 or simply wondering what to read this season, these picks are perfect for your spring reading list. Get ready to discover must-read new books for spring – because there’s nothing better than discovering a new story as the seasons change!
I Leave It Up To You – Jinwoo Chong
First up on our list of new spring 2025 books is Jinwoo Chong’s I Leave It Up To You. After being in a coma for two years, Jack Jr awakens to a world he barely recognises. His job, apartment and love life have all gone. With nowhere else to go, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey. He went back into the welcoming arms of his family and their ever-floundering sushi restaurant, which Jack was set to inherit before running away a decade ago.
As he steps back into the life he had abandoned, he slowly learns to embrace new roles, including that of the romantic attention from the male nurse who took care of him, and that of an unqualified uncle to his teenage nephew. Yet, second chances can sometimes be even messier than the restaurant business, and the lure of a self-determined path may just be too hard to resist again. Entertaining and poignant, I Leave It Up To You is a story about loss, love and the absurdity of finding one’s footing even after the ground gives way.
Release Date: 4 March 2025
The Man Made Of Smoke – Alex North
The latest gripping serial killer thriller from New York Times bestseller Alex North, The Man Made of Smoke follows Dan Garvie, a man whose life has been plagued by the crime he witnessed as a child – narrowly escaping the clutches of an infamous serial killer. He has since dedicated his life to becoming a criminal profiler, finding justice for innocent victims. Naturally, when his father dies in suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to discover the truth about his death.
Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has found a way to return after all these years? Delivered with his trademark shock and suspense, The Man Made of Smoke promises one of the most emotional, introspective and addictively terrifying new books for spring 2025 about fathers and sons, secrets and shadows, and the fight we all face in escaping the trauma of the past.
Release Date: 13 May 2025
Check Out The Best New Thriller Books From 2025
Great Big Beautiful Life – Emily Henry
Alice Scott is an eternal optimist who still dreams about her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize-winning human thundercloud. They both 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 the person claiming to be Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the last century. Margaret invites the pair of them for a one-month trial period, after which one of them will get the opportunity to reveal her story.
However, Margaret only dishes out pieces of her story at a time. They can’t swap pieces to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between Hayden and Alice every time they’re in the same room. The latest romance novel by global bestseller Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life is a story with the potential of becoming a mystery, tragedy or love ballad, depending on who’s telling it.
Release Date: 22 April 2025
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Watch Me (Shatter Me: The New Republic #1) – Tahereh Mafi
One of the most hyped new YA books for spring 2025, Tahereh Mafi marks her return to the dystopian genre with Watch Me, a new chapter in her Shatter Me universe. James Anderson has done something that no one else, not even his legendary brother, Aaron Warner Anderson, has ever accomplished. In the past ten years, no outsider has breached the stronghold of The Reestablishment, but James is in. In a prison cell, granted, but James considers a win a win.
Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions have to be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence – and, when she’s given an order to kill, she never waivers. Brimming with high-octane action and torturous romance Watch Me is an explosive journey through a new dystopian world where enemies-to-lovers have never felt more impossible.
Release Date: 15 April 2025
The Dream Hotel – Laila Lalami
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has flagged her as a high risk to the person she loves more than anyone else: her husband. For his safety, she must be put under strict observation for the next twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a detention centre where she is kept alongside other dreamers, all of them women attempting to prove their innocence of different crimes. With every deviation from the strict rules of the facility, their stays are extended. Then, one day, a new arrival collides with Sara, upending the order of the facility in the process. Eerie and urgent, The Dream Hotel is a new sci-fi book for spring 2025 that explores the seductive promise of technology and asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free.
Release Date: 4 March 2025
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One Golden Summer (Barry’s Bay #2) – Carley Fortune
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by the likes of The New York Post, Today, Buzzfeed and SheReads, Carley Fortune’s One Golden Summer centres around photographer Alice, a woman content with living on the sidelines and allowing others to shine. Lately, though, she’s been itching for something more. When her nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice senses an opportunity. But, as she and her nan settle back in Barry’s Bay, a magical destination where they spent one glorious summer years ago, their plans are disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow speed boat, and the man driving it.
Charlie Florek knew Alice as a teenager, a time when life felt so much simpler. But has since grown up into a shameless flirt who makes Nan laugh and Alice longs to be seventeen again. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul; however, when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart. A perfect warm book for spring reading, Carley Fortune whisks readers back to Barry’s Bay for a radiant escape to the lake in her new novel, One Golden Summer.
Release Date: 6 May 2025
The Staircase In The Woods – Chuck Wendig
Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase in the Woods orbits around five high school friends who are bonded by an oath to protect one another, no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find a mysterious staircase leading to nowhere.
One friend walks up the stairs and never comes back down again. Then, the staircase vanishes. Two decades later, it reappears. Now, the group returns to find the lost boy and discover what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. Eerie, suspenseful, and mesmerising, The Staircase in the Woods is a new spring 2025 horror book by the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.
Release Date: 29 April 2025
The River Has Roots – Amal El-Mohtar
In the quaint town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to them in thanks for their magic. None of them are as devoted to this as the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabei, who cherish each other almost as much as they do the ancient trees.
But, when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favour of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only will the sister’s previously inseparable bond be put in jeopardy, but also their lives. From Hugo, Nebula and Locus award winner Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots is a new fantasy novel about enchanted willows, ancient magical compacts and two sisters who live on the edge of Faerie, perfect for some warm springtime reading.
Release Date: 4 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 away from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. When the news of the shocking deaths of three girls in Delphine, Idaho, takes the world by storm, Jane and her new internet friends are determined to be the first ones to solve the crime. But the case soon turns out to be much stranger than anyone expected.
When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only leads to more questions. Something doesn’t add up, and they soon suspect this killer might be more smarter and prolific than anything they’ve faced before. Told one year on from the astounding events that brought the case to a close, Ashley Winstead’s new novel, This Book Will Bury Me, is one of the most gripping spring 2025 books that promises to shock even the most seasoned true crime fan.
Release Date: 25 March 2025
When The Moon Hits Your Eye – John Scalzi
One day soon into the future, 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 an entire lunar cycle, from a new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, John Scalzi introduces a cast of electric characters in his new science fiction story, When the Moon Hits Your Eye.
From schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians, these characters are forced to contend with this strange new reality they’re living in and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives. From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain, this is an entirely serious and distinctly unserious tale about what would really happen if the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese.
Release Date: 25 March 2025
The Love Haters – Katherine Center
Katie Vaughan has had her share of bad love experiences in the past – now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two options: wait to be laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom ‘Hutch’ Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The only problem? Katie can’t swim – but fakes that she can.
Paradise soon becomes messier than it appears. As Katie becomes entangled with Hutch, his colourful Aunt Rue and his rescued Great Dane, she finds herself caught in a lie. Or two. Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes and stolen kisses all follow in Katherine Center’s latest romance book, The Love Haters. With chances to tell the truth, face old fears and truly be brave at long last, is the perfect new spring book for anyone looking for a cutesy, warm escape read.
Release Date: 20 May 2025
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The Emperor Of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
One late summer in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in the pelting rain, prepared to jump, when he hears someone shouting from across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another course. He soon becomes her carer. Over the span of a year, the unlikely pair develop a life-altering bond built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and the potential for Hai to rebuild his relationship with himself, his family and his community on the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory and time, Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labour and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. With Vuong’s ability to pair grit and grace through tenderness, this new 2025 literary fiction novel is all about chosen family, unexpected friendships, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
Release Date: 13 May 2025
Heartwood – Amity Gaige
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker disappears. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has gone missing two hundred miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep her hope alive.
Leading the investigation into Valerie’s disappearance is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden. Meanwhile, seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher Lena unexpectedly becomes an armchair detective from her Connecticut retirement home. Switching between these three compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges which only heightens the tension as Valerie’s disappearance is revealed to be far less accidental than first assumed. Bold and poignant, Amity Gaige’s Heartwood is a 2025 spring mystery book that is a tale about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found again.
Release Date: 1 April 2025
Awake In The Floating City – Susanna Kwan
In Awake in the Floating City, Susanna Kwan tells the story of a San Francisco that has been flooded, and the unexpected relationship between the last people living there. Bo knows that she should leave. Her mother was carried away by a storm surge, but she is unable to move on and give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. When she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman living in her building, requesting that she become her caregiver, she finds herself with a reason to stay put.
Mia can be prickly, but she and Bo soon forge a connection that is deeper than either of them have experienced in years. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, a practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. As Mia’s health turns, Bo becomes determined to honour their disappearing world and the woman who has brought her back to it. It soon becomes a project that teaches her how to care, to be present and how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
Release Date: 13 May 2025
The Incandescent – Emily Tesh
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most adept magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth-form students, more meetings, and ensuring that the school’s boundaries are protected against demonic incursions.
Walden isn’t just good at her job. Walden is excellent at it. But demons are masters of manipulation. It is her responsibility to keep her school and its six hundred students and centuries of legacy safe. And it is just possible that the entity Walden most needs to protect the school from is herself. Another one of the most absorbing new spring 2025 books, The Incandescent is a sapphic dark academic novel by Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner, Emily Tesch.
Release Date: 13 May 2025
Say You’ll Remember Me – Abby Jimenez
There might not be such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. That is until the gorgeous veterinarian opens his mouth and proves that even those with Greek god vibes have the ability to say the absolute wrong thing. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha likes more than proving someone wrong.
After one incredible and seemingly endless date – possibly the best in living memory – Samantha is forced to admit the truth. Her family is in crisis, and any sort of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to move on and forget her. Only no amount of distance is nearly enough to forget that there is something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life – and even love – worth remembering.
Release Date: 1 April 2025
My Friends – Fredrik Backman
Most people don’t even notice them – three small figures sitting at the edge of a long pier in the corner of one of the most iconic paintings in the world. Most people assume it is just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is hellbent on discovering the story behind these enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers found refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and sharing stories out on a pier. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get out of bed in the morning, face each day, and hold on to their dreams. Over the course of a summer, a transcendent work of art will come about, one that will end up in the hands of eighteen-year-old Louisa. Fredrik Backman’s new book My Friends is an unforgettably funny and deeply moving tale that is perfect for anyone looking for a book for spring all about the transformative power of friendship and art.
Release Date: 6 May 2025
Aftertaste – Daria Lavelle
Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was just ten, and ghosts have been swirling around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he is able to taste their favourite foods. Flavours of meals he has never eaten will flood his mouth, signalling that a spirit is present. He discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones – at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared.
Believing this to be his true calling in life, he immerses himself in the New York culinary scene. But, as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to spot the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one who knows Kostya must be stopped also just happens to be the one person in love with him. Brimming with New York restaurants and mouth-watering food writing, Daria Lavelle’s debut novel, Aftertaste, is a whirlwind romance, an exploration of love and loss, and a ghost story about the ways we hunger – and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.
Release Date: 20 May 2025
When The Wolf Comes Home – Nat Cassidy
One night, Jess, a struggling actor, happens upon a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.
As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow in their wake. At first, Jess believes she understands what the pair of them are up against. But, she’s about to learn that there’s far more to these surreal and grisly events than she could have ever imagined. And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.
Release Date: 22 April 2025
Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt and his three children are the caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island close to Antarctica. Home to the largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But, with sea levels rising, the Salts are now among the final residents, packing the seeds before they are taken to safer grounds. Despite the rugged beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever experienced, a woman washes on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to health, their initial suspicion gives way to affection and they soon begin to feel like a family again. But Rowan isn’t about to say what led her to Shearwater in the first place. When she discovers the sabotaged radios and freshly dug grave, she learns that Dominic and his children have secrets of their own. Another one of the most absorbing spring 2025 books, Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore is a mystery-thriller where each character must grapple with who they’re willing to trust before it is too late.
Release Date: 4 March 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).
