You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Overview
According to Penguin Random Housse
From captivating novels to insightful nonfiction, these are the books that are making the biggest splash in 2025! Add these to your TBR list and don’t miss out on the books everyone — from readers to critics — is talking about.
The Must-Read Books of 2025 (So Far)
4 participants (43 books)
Overview
According to Penguin Random Housse
From captivating novels to insightful nonfiction, these are the books that are making the biggest splash in 2025! Add these to your TBR list and don’t miss out on the books everyone — from readers to critics — is talking about.
Challenge Books
One Good Thing
Georgia Hunter
From the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones, a propulsive and heart-wrenching story of a young woman entrusted with a boy’s life as WWII rages in Italy. A remarkable tale of friendship, romance, motherhood, and survival, One Good Thing reminds us what is worth fighting for — and that love, even amidst a world in ruins, can triumph.
The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource
Chris Hayes
From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.
Great Big Beautiful Life
Emily Henry
Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry.
Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories
Torrey Peters
In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the strongest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition. Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.
Dream State
Eric Puchner
Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws’ lake house in Montana to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can’t imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future and must decide between the life she’s dreamed of and a life she’s never imagined. The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents’ story. Written with humor, precision, and enormous heart, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.
The Dream Hotel
Laila Lalami
From Laila Lalami — the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Gardiner Harris
An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies — from an award-winning investigative journalist. Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.
The Girls Who Grew Big
Leila Mottley
From the author of Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle. The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: Looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood. Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.
Memorial Days
Geraldine Brooks
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse. “Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most … Her memoir is certainly a testament to her own unique loss, but it’s moreover a lifeline to others who will find themselves in this familiar, shattered landscape of grief” (Los Angeles Times).
Dead Money: A Novel
Jakob Kerr
In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets. But this time, she’s in way over her head — or so it seems. The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line — and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast. Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous — and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.
Atmosphere
Taylor Jenkins Reid
From the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: Transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love — this time among the stars.
Matriarch: A Memoir
Tina Knowles
A revealing personal life story like no other — enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering — and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America — and the wisdom that women pass on to one another, mothers to daughters, across generations.