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The Top 20 books of 2025 as rated by the BookBrowse community.

Top 20 Best Books of 2025

Recommended books found: 20

Each year, BookBrowse subscribers rate their favorite books of the year to choose our Top 20 Best of Year titles. More about how the books are selected.

The Original

A Novel

by Nell Stevens

Hardcover: Jul 2025 | Paperback: Jun 2026

Critics' Consensus:

In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

Angel Down

A Novel

by Daniel Kraus

Hardcover: Jul 2025 | Paperback: May 2026

Critics' Consensus:

The critically acclaimed author of the "crazily enjoyable" (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war.

Endling

A Novel

by Maria Reva

Hardcover: Jun 2025 | Paperback: May 2026

Critics' Consensus:

Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-...

The River Is Waiting

A Novel

by Wally Lamb

Hardcover: May 2025 | Paperback: May 2026

Critics' Consensus:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of two Oprah Book Club Picks—She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True—Wally Lamb comes the propulsive story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the ...

Memorial Days

A Memoir

by Geraldine Brooks

Hardcover: Feb 2025 | Paperback: Apr 2026

Critics' Consensus:

A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse.

Raising Hare

A Memoir

by Chloe Dalton

Hardcover: Mar 2025 | Paperback: Mar 2026

Critics' Consensus:

A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman's unlikely friendship with a wild hare.

Theo of Golden

by Allen Levi

Hardcover: Nov 2025 | Paperback: Oct 2025

Critics' Consensus:

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…

Heart the Lover

by Lily King

Hardcover: Sep 2025

Critics' Consensus:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love.

Buckeye

A Novel

by Patrick Ryan

Hardcover: Sep 2025

Critics' Consensus:

"A small-town novel of epic proportions" (Tom Perrotta), this captivating story weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.

White Lies

How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History

by Ann Bausum

Hardcover: Aug 2025

Critics' Consensus:

This powerful and unflinching examination of racism in America by award-winning historian Ann Bausum deconstructs the warped history of the Civil War for teen readers, perfect for fans of Stamped, Just Mercy, and Accountable.

This Here Is Love

A Novel

by Princess Joy L. Perry

Hardcover: Aug 2025 | Paperback: Aug 2026

Critics' Consensus:

Three people - two enslaved, one indentured - live beside each other, fighting, and sometimes failing, to be more than their pasts say they should be.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë

A New Life

by Graham Watson

Hardcover: Aug 2025

Critics' Consensus:

A profoundly moving, ground-breaking biography that challenges the established narrative to reveal the Brontë family as they've never been seen before.

The reviewer of each book decides which categories it belongs in - but we're only human, mistakes happen. If you see a book that you think is in the wrong place, tell us!

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