Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Reads of 2025

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is the Best Books I Read in 2025.  I decided to go with ten plus a few runners-up:

Miss Pettigrew Lives for the Day by Winifred Watson (1938). Why did I wait so long to read this delightful book? It starts out with the stark reality that an unemployed governess needs employment urgently or she will have to go to the poorhouse. However, when Miss Pettigrew arrives at the home of Miss Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous nightclub singer, it is the beginning of an incredible day of adventure and unexpected friendship.  I later watched the movie which was not nearly as good as the book; a miniseries would have done it better.  My review.

Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett (1986 ). The unexpected hero of this eight-book series is Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, a good-natured dyer’s apprentice who finds friends and enemies as he surprises readers by accumulating a mercantile empire. This is why my mother and I went to Bruges in May - I wish we had spent more time there! My review (this was my most-read review of the year).

Dear Miss Lake by AJ Pearce (2025). In the fourth and final entry in the Emmy Lake series, set in 1944, the end of WWII is drawing near for Emmy and the staff of Woman’s Friend magazine. Emmy continues as an advice columnist but gets an opportunity for war correspondent work she has always dreamed off, while worrying about her husband’s safety and the wellbeing of those around her. A very satisfying conclusion - I really loved all four books! My review.

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan (2021). Four women from different backgrounds - a widow, a kitchen maid, her employer, and a trained chef - decide to compete in a BBC radio cooking contest for a co-host position, offering them a chance to change their lives amidst wartime rationing. Rivalry develops into unexpected friendships but not without accompanying angst. Another unusual WWII novel from a talented writer. My review.

Know Your Newlywed by Heather Taylor and Hillary Nussbaum (2024)(audiobook performed by Tyler Posey and Mary Mouser). Cleo is a researcher with big dreams of a PhD in anthrozoology, and a guilty pleasure obsession with Know Your Newlywed, a decades-old game show where married couples compete by answering obscure questions about each other. She’s more invested in her career than in finding a relationship of her own, though—that is, until she comes across Javi’s dating app profile, which says he’s “looking for someone to win Know Your Newlywed with.” Soon they decided to apply to the show, pretending to be newlyweds, so they can win the prize and subsidize their careers. Their instant chemistry captures the attention of the world - can they pull off a win without becoming emotionally involved?

The Wedding People by Alison Espach (2024). Phoebe is desperate when she checks into a Newport, RI resort where she had planned to vacation with her husband until he dumped her. She thinks she has nothing left to live for but is distracted from her misery by learning she is the only person at the hotel who is not a guest at a fancy destination wedding. Unexpectedly drawn into the problems of the bride, Phoebe starts saying what she thinks instead of being a doormat and finds surprising friendships from this odd situation. Despite what seems like a dark theme, this is a very funny and unusual book. My review.

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn (2025). Elinor Hayward is the intelligent daughter of a mill owner who thinks she has met the man of her dreams, Frederick, the future Lord Storton. When she learns he married her for her money and his parents despise her, she is trapped, especially when she produces a son. A gift from her father to travel to America seems like a wonderful opportunity to get Frederick and her son away from his rigid upbringing/family - what bad luck that the ship is the Titanic - but don’t think Elinor’s adventures end in the Atlantic.  My review.

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen (2023). Retired CIA operative Maggie Bird moved to Maine for peace and anonymity, and it helped that she had a few friends already living there. But when a dead body turns up in her driveway, she realizes that something or someone from her past is coming after her. She has to decide to what extent she wants to involve her friends as she revisits an agonizing past. Great fast-paced action and even made me cry at one point! I enjoyed meeting the author later in the year at the Westwood Library. My review.

Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure by Rhys Bowen (2025). After her husband stuns her by asking for a divorce, Ellie Endicott wants to get as far away as possible and heads for the South of France with her housekeeper and a friend for a new beginning. When the car breaks down in a small fishing village, Ellie rents an abandoned villa in the hills and turns it into a home, but it is 1938 and the Nazis are coming. This is a great story about friendship and second chances, even if it seems improbable at some points. My review.

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall (2025). In this debut, a police procedural set in the British countryside, Detective Sergeant Nicola Bridge has returned to her childhood hometown on the Dorset coast, after marital issues and family strife forced her to resign her much more high-profile position in the Liverpool police department. She does not expect a gruesome murder her first week on the job and it requires her to quickly develop rapport with her new team to solve the murder. I thought the characters and their interaction were outstanding and look forward to more from this author, who was the creator of Broadchurch. My review.

Runners-Up

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (2024). When Valentine Vere-Thissett survives WWII, he returns to England to inherit the debt-ridden Dimperley Manor, where he must navigate family, finances, and romance as well as societal changes. Evans’ humor makes all her books very enjoyable.  It is disappointing this book hasn't been published in the US (I had to ask my sister to bring it back from London).  My review.

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (2024). Larson uses primary sources to examine the hectic five months between Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 and the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in April 1861, exploring the political and personal chaos. I didn’t read much nonfiction in 2025 but this was completely absorbing. My review.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (2025) (audiobook by various performers). When Rowan washes up on the shore of a remote island in the Antarctic, half-dead, she does not explain to the family that saves her why she is there or what she is looking for. Her rescuers are caretakers of a seed bank and have dangerous secrets of their own they are unwilling to share with their uninvited guest but then they become close, which causes its own problems. My review.

Lost Lorrenden by Mabel Esther Allan (1956). For years, Phoebe has been fascinated by a painting of a country manor she saw at the National Gallery in London. She is convinced the family depicted having tea outdoors and the house really exists in Buckinghamshire and when she is forced to stay with cousins nearby, she is determined to find it. But no one knows what she is talking about, and the old map she finds takes her to a farm where she is told the manor is gone. Shy Phoebe has to make new friends and overcome her diffidence to solve the mystery.  My review.

The Eights by Joanna Miller (2025). Four young women from different backgrounds are part of the first class of women undergraduates at Oxford University in 1920, developing a wary friendship as they navigate new freedoms, lingering trauma from WWI, and the resentment of Oxford men who disapprove of coeducation. I love books about the early days of women at Oxford and am hoping for a sequel to this book! My review.

The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley (2024). After James I’s eldest son and heir, the Prince of Wales, dies unexpectedly in 1613, the King summons one of his Messengers, Andrew Logan, and sends him north to Scotland to arrest a key witness. Logan is accompanied by a scribe, Laurence Westaway, and Westaway’s daughter Phoebe (this makes three Phoebes in one post!) comes along to care for her father, although she despises Logan. Their travel (and the growing friendship between Andrew and Phoebe) is entertaining and Kearsley’s research is always exactly right - interesting to the reader, meticulous, but not overly intrusive.  Definitely the prettiest cover but I did not like this Phoebe enough to put it in my top ten!  My review.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (2023) (audiobook performed by Gerry O’Brien). On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist, and soon he has been arrested and she is left to cope alone. I don’t know if I would have liked this dystopian novel in the unconventional book format Lynch used but as an audiobook it was captivating. Of course, my own country is also sliding into authoritarianism, which made it twice as unnerving. This won the Booker Prize in 2023.

Have you read any of these? Did any make your Best of 2025?

My Goodreads Year in Books for 2025

Lists from Previous Years