It’s almost the end of the year, and we asked library staff what’s the best book they read in 2025. I know what you’re probably thinking. That’s a tough question because it’s like asking someone to name the best band ever or best movie of the year or best dessert in the world. To pick only one best book for the entire year is kind of hard! A year is a long time—that’s 365 days, 52 weeks, 8,760 hours, or 525,600 minutes! That’s a lot of time to read a ton of books. And surely there’s more than just one “best book”!
Yet despite the challenge, our resident readers and connoisseurs of fine books answered the call and shared their best reads of 2025. Speaking of which, there are 17 days left before the year ends. Check out our catalog and e-book collection—it’s not too late to find your next best book of 2025!
Christine ~ The English Problem by Beena Kamlani
Also available on Libby
Set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement, with appearances by historical figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Mahatma Gandhi, The English Problem is so self-assured and ambitious, it is hard to believe it is a debut.
Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their laws, and then return home and help drive the British out of India.
Another best read for 2025 was Culpability by Bruce Holsinger. It explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative. A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.
Adry ~ Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
Also available on Libby
I’m not a big reader of fiction but this year I tackled all four books by Andrew Joseph White that are in our collection and the standout, to me, was Compound Fracture.
It’s about a trans, autistic teenager and his fraught journey to reveal the secrets of a long-standing generational feud between coal mining families and local law enforcement in rural West Virginia.
The author is autistic and trans himself and writes books that ALL feature autistic trans men as leads, but he avoids feeling repetitive by writing each book in a very different setting, time period, and style.
My close second best read for the year was White’s 2022 release, Hell Followed with Us, as its flavor (post-apocalyptic fundamentalist cults! LGBTQ+ young adults finding community and fighting back! Body horror/monster—angels, demons?) transformations are more up my alley, but I felt that the writing and story structure in Compound Fracture was better done and really showcased the author’s growth in storytelling and writing skills.
Suzanne ~ A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
I recommend A Marriage at Sea because I enjoy survival stories that highlight human ingenuity and the will to endure in any circumstance, and this book deepens that appeal through its powerful portrait of partnership. The wife’s steady, unwavering support of her husband adds a moving layer to the narrative, showing how resilience is often strengthened by standing together.
Kevin ~ Here Comes the Sun by Bill Mckibben
Also available on Libby
My fave book of 2025 is this book by Bill Mckibben (yes, we have a few print copies plus eBook/eAudio).
Many people are saying that we are going through some very dark times. Mckibben thoroughly and convincingly offers us a big, beautiful shining ray of hope for a solar-powered future with Here Comes the Sun. Feel good book of the decade. Also, it mentions Altadena!
Christina ~ Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
An innovative work coming out of the horror genre, Hidden Pictures creates a fresh take on a classic tale; small child (Teddy) draws creepy drawings on the wall and denies it—making the nanny (Mallory) looking for a fresh start look like the perpetrator. The writing is fresh and fun which stands in contrast to the increasingly horrific drawings and events taking place in Teddy and Mallory’s life. Horror can be a difficult genre to get right to make it feel inventive, but I never knew where the plot was going next and the last few hours for me, an audiobook lover, had me taken for a ride. If you’re into supernatural horrors like me, pick this one up and see if it’s your horror genre cup of tea.
Matthew ~ Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
If you like fantasy that feels like sci-fi, this might be for you. Yes, there’s magic (called “allomancy”), but the rules it must follow are so specific and well-thought out it almost feels like a real science. Tied to specific metals that must be “burned” to produce different effects, most allomancers are “mistings” with access to only a single metal. But some rare individuals, such as the main character of Kelsier, are “Mistborn” who have the ability to use all of them. Together with Vin, an orphan girl who becomes his apprentice (as well as the audience point-of-view character), they put together a team of thieves, mistings, and revolutionaries and plan an elaborate heist to topple the thousand-year reign of “The Final Empire,” along with its immortal Lord Ruler.
John ~ The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Also available on Libby and Cloud Library
A novel that is part crime-drama, part family saga, this book held my interest from beginning to end. Covering a timespan between the 1950s through the mid-1970s, the book’s narrative perspective changes among various characters and time periods within these years, as we follow the development of one missing persons police investigation, and the memory of another past one. The author provides a critical observation of the values and behaviors of Northeastern old-money WASP families and their benevolent but sometimes feudal relationship to the less privileged and economically dependent townspeople who serve them. Simultaneously we are reminded of the changing norms of American society in general that were happening during this same time period.
This book kept me engaged with its well-written characters and intriguing plot and its strong sense of time and place; this is why I recommend it.
Magela ~ Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Also available on Libby and hoopla
One of my all time favorite books for 2025 is Braiding Sweetgrass. I truly was touched by the immense knowledge she shares on the natural world and the important responsibility we have in maintaining harmony with mother earth and each other. I had the chance to read and also listen to the audiobook, which I highly recommend because it is narrated by the author. She has a gentle comforting voice that makes you want to listen. Her love for the land is evident and powerful and has deepened my appreciation for the indigenous knowledge and teachings of plants and all that it has to offer us and the many generations to come. It is a book rooted in connecting people with the land and each other.
From Braiding Sweetgrass, “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
Karla ~ The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-year-old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida
Also available on hoopla
The best book I read and listened to in 2025 was written when the author was 13 years old, published in 2007, and translated in English in 2013. Naoki Higashida’s memoir is a nicely organized list of questions and answers that give readers an idea of what it’s like to be him and think like him. I found myself crying and having to text my friends and family page after page of this book until they essentially read the whole thing along with me.
His 13-year-old-self put into words so many of the things I have felt, experienced, thought, fought with, discovered about myself, and have come to terms with. Some, different flavors of the same concepts, others identical to my own experience, all of them impactful and incredibly painful and cathartic for me. So much of what he perceived in certain ways is what I perceive in the same way. Small complexities that I have found that others don’t understand about me—he explained so simply or in an even more complicated way than anyone might’ve expected. Higashida sometimes uses metaphors that make less sense than the concept that he is trying to get across—which, to me, was so pleasantly satisfying and made me feel less alone. I, too, love to use an obscure, specific, and visual metaphor for ideas that I want people to understand exactly the same way I understand them. There’s just something about wanting others to see the thing that you are seeing or experiencing to the same extent that you are. I related very much; and I highly recommend for anyone who struggles to make eye contact, has many thoughts, but trouble expressing themselves out loud, is neurodivergent, or is just curious about human thought and way of being. It’s also such a short read!
Asbed ~ Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Also available on Libby
Another great Sci Fi novel by the same author of The Martian. A former scientist turned teacher finds himself marooned in space trying to save mankind. And he has no idea how he’s going to do it or how he even ended up in another star system to begin with. Funnier (and occasionally darker) than it sounds. And he gets a cute sidekick you can’t help but love. Movie starring Ryan Gosling comes out March 2026!
Priscilla ~ My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
I found this book to be a very interesting take on grief. The narrator finds herself in a position to be able to quite literally sleep the year away—sort of like a medically induced coma. It begs us to ask the question do we heal grief by facing it or by running?
AnnMarie ~ Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
Astounding evidence-based scientific arguments that completely overturn the idea that humans (and other animals) are selfish and that evolution is only survival of the fittest. We actually evolved to be caring, community-focused beings and at our core, that’s what we are. And society has changed that, but it can be re-engineered to promote our core goodness once more.
Young ~ The Fifteen by William Geroux
I think very few people know that nearly 400,000 German POWs were sent to America during WWII and even fewer are aware that the U.S. held secret trials for fanatical Nazi prisoners who killed their imprisoned comrades for being disloyal to the Nazi cause. This book is about the fifteen German prisoners who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a U.S. military tribunal. When the German authorities were informed of these convictions, they retaliated by convicting fifteen American POWs and sentenced them to the same fate based on exaggerated and trumped-up charges. This book talks about the criminal prosecution of German soldiers who murdered their own on American soil and the legal and diplomatic complexities of their cases. But in essence it’s about the lives and the predicaments of the American POWs who were sentenced to death for petty offences by the German Wehrmacht through its own military court the Reichskriegsgericht.
What fascinated me the most about this book was the formal and legal steps the U.S. took to prosecute the killers and provide some justice to the Germans who were murdered while in American POW camps. All this was done amidst the chaos and confusion of war. While it wasn’t about military operations and campaigns that I normally like reading when it comes to WWII history, the book’s legal drama and high-stakes diplomacy made it a page-turner. The fact that the lives of the fifteen Americans depended on the decision of whether the U.S. would carry out the death sentence of the fifteen German soldiers made for a suspenseful read.