Tag: book-review

Best of 2025

As readers we love these posts because we can look at what other readers loved, compare notes, and possibly add on to our large TBR piles (to-be-read) which could be actual stacks in your house or lists upon lists. Reading is still a very good escape from what’s happening around us. And yet we cannot dig our head in the sand, we have to stay aware of the atrocities happening now. Many of these titles help to understand the human experience which is one of the many reasons I read.

I want to emphasize a variety of unique authors that I discovered this year.

Books:

⭐️Moon of the Turning Leaves (#2) by Waubgishig Rice: This dystopian sequel was just as good as the first. Evan Whitesky and a scouting party hike out onto the territory to find out what is happening in the world. This takes place ten years after a blackout that left them without resources. 

⭐️The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhorn: I read this for book club and Martha Ballard has stayed with me. She was a midwife and healer in 1789 and her diary notes become integral to solving a murder after a woman is raped in the community. I started a daily journal after I read this. Mine is much more mundane than hers but I like the practice. 

⭐️When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash: I don’t know where I heard about this book but I really enjoyed the mystery. Sheriff Winston Barnes investigates a death at their small airfield in North Carolina and finds more than he can handle. I really connected with this story and the characters. 

⭐️There, There by Tommy Orange: he’s been on my list to read for years and I finally picked it up and was moved by this story of the Big Oakland Powwow. Old friends are connecting and trouble is brewing underneath it all. 

⭐️Caucasia by Danzy Senna: in this debut novel Senna tells the story of Birdie and Cole, raised  by their white mother and black father in 1970’s Boston. Birdie can pass as white while Cole is Black like her father who ends up separating the sisters, taking Cole to Brazil with his new Black wife.  This was such an interesting well-written story! She’s the wife of Percival Everett, another author I admire.

⭐️Kindred by Octavia E. Butler: this is another book I’ve meant to read for years and I finally did. I was swept away with Dana as she finds herself transported to the antebellum South where she interacts with the plantation owners son, Rufus. Butler is a master storyteller. 

⭐️Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller: small town Troy, Georgia is home to two very different women, Beverly Underwood and Lula Dean. Lula embarks on a journey to rid the local library of “unfit” books and she starts a lending library with more “appropriate” books. One teenager takes on the challenge to help in a very unique way. I loved all the quirky community members in this story. Perfect for what we are experiencing now with the banning of ideas and morals. 

⭐️The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner: this is a YA novel that has a message for everyone. Dill’s dad, a Pentecostal minister, is in prisoner and his friends Lydia and Travis are his sole support system. The three of them are bonded together because of family troubles and their outcast school status. I cried at the end because I fell in love with their friendship and their struggles. 

⭐️Soundtrack by Jason Reynolds: written years ago and left in a drawer by this rock star author, he eventually published as only an audiobook. I listened to it on @Libby after hearing him speak about it at the AASL library conference this fall. It’s a riveting tale of Stuy, his mom, and an unruly cast of friends and family. It’s like listening to a play with music and sound effects throughout. 

⭐️I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys: this is historical fiction at its best! This story takes place during the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 Romania. The story is told by 17 yo Cristian Florescu who dreams of being a writer. I remember when this was taking place but the details in this book made the era come alive. I’ve read three of her books and have her on my top list for middle grade fiction books as well. 

My top book of the year was :

⭐️A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza, a novel focused on an Indian-American Muslim family with three unique siblings, Hadia, Huda, and Amar. The story takes place throughout their childhood as they grow up, make mistakes, and lose faith in each other. I loved Mirza’s writing. 

I also read some more well-known and current reads like The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein, James by Percival Everett, The Wedding People by Alison Espach, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, Evie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Kline, The Women by Kristin Hannah, and Broken Country by Leslie Clare Hall; all of which I highly recommend.

I also read eight Elin Hilderbrand and two Annabel Monaghan, which are great palate cleansers for heavier reading and emotions.

Stay safe out there. Make daily phone calls (5 Calls) to your representatives. I have a list of middle grade and nonfiction to follow.

Fall Books

I love when you finish a book and you hug it and want to start over again. When this happens I go through the rolodex in my brain and imagine who would also love this story. Recently this happened when I finished read Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King, a story about three teenagers struggling to survive in their small Tennessee town. Zentner created such interesting characters in Dill, Lydia, and Travis with their own idiosyncrasies and some very unfortunate family situations. It was an amazing read.

Jason Reynolds was at the library conference in St Louis last month and he was a great speaker. He mentioned two things about his life that stuck with me. 1. He takes a bath everyday to relax and soak away all his anxiety/troubles. He holds a lot of heartfelt energy from writing and the kids that he meets in school visits. 2. He wrote something years ago that later was produced into Soundtrack, an only-audio book that is scripted. I put it on hold while I was sitting in the conference and was it arrived I was amazed at the brilliant writing; it was a great listening experience. Listen to this NPR interview with Jason. He is so open and honest. Love his books.

High Tide in Tucson : Essays from Now or Never by Barbara Kingsolver was such an interesting read. It was written in 1996 and talks a lot about George Bush and the Iraqi war. Her essays are vibrant and I was happy to learn more about her life. So much of what she talks about is still very relevant today.

The Anxious Generation : How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt took me a long time to read because I’m not a strong nonfiction reader BUT I powered through. One of my big complaints about nonfiction or books with studies/graphs, etc is that they are too long and that is true of this one. I did learn a great deal and was already in the “computers are not helping us as much as we think” camp especially where social media is concerned. We spend far much time buried into technology. Last night my husband and I went out to dinner and we sat near a table of 6 college aged females and until their food arrived their faces were glued to their phones; no chatting or sharing going on.

I’m headed off on a fun vacation to San Diego with my daughter over the next week and I’m very much looking forward to the sun. I had two books packed and two books ready on my kindle and I realized that might be overkill so I unpacked The Seven Year Slip and will read that later.