The books we couldn’t stop reading in 2025 | The Excerpt
- - The books we couldn’t stop reading in 2025 | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAYDecember 11, 2025 at 4:11 AM
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On the Thursday, December 11, 2025 episode of The Excerpt podcast: From AI thrillers to found-family favorites, 2025 gave us stories that hit hard. USA TODAY Books Reporter Clare Mulroy joins The Excerpt to share the books still living rent-free in our heads.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
We traveled across centuries, stepped into dystopian arenas, sailed on survival rafts, and even made space for a little found family magic. The books of 2025 didn't just entertain us. They became cultural touchstones, sparking conversations about identity, grief, love, and the world we want to build.
Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, December 11th, 2025. USA TODAY books reporter Clare Mulroy shares her picks for the best books of the year and the stories still lingering with readers.
Clare, it's always good to have you on.
Clare Mulroy:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Dana Taylor:
This year felt huge for community around reading with midnight release parties, author tours, adaptations. When you look back at 2025, what defined the reading culture for you?
Clare Mulroy:
I think it was a really fun year to be a books reporter, to be getting to see the way that we connect with each other in person. I think in the years since the pandemic, we're all increasingly hungry for that in-person community, even around something that can be so solitary as reading. I think the publishers are feeling this too, bringing back those midnight launch parties, going all in on book influencer events and big, splashy releases.
This year we went to a silent book club, and for me, I think that showed me the power of reading with others in person. It was just a group of people who were quiet and maybe had a little bit of social time at the beginning, but just really wanted to read their favorite books and talk about them with people in a really low-stake social environment. So I think it's a good year for both extroverts and introverts to find some community around reading.
Dana Taylor:
Your list spans everything from romantasy to horror to memoir. What trends stood out this year in terms of what readers were craving?
Clare Mulroy:
I think we saw a lot of tried and true paranormal stories, like werewolves and vampire books. I feel like it's very in line with the 20th anniversary of Twilight that happened this fall. Books like Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, even on the romance side, Bride and Mate by Ali Hazelwood.
And then I think on the other side of things, what I saw was a lot of dystopian this year. When 2025 began with the LA wildfires, a lot of readers pointed out similarities between this point in time and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which was a 1993 novel set in 2025. Then 1984 started climbing the bestseller lists and it was even the theme of this year's Banned Books Week. I think that set the tone really well for readers to go all in on dystopian this year.
And I predicted at the beginning of 2025 that we would see the split of readers into camps of either leaning all in on dystopian and these high-tech features and climate change-ravaged worlds, or people would be looking toward healing fiction, something a little bit more comforting and hopeful. And I felt like that was pretty spot-on for this year.
Dana Taylor:
You wrote that the best book of the year is deeply personal. What do you think makes a book stick with someone months after they've closed it, and which book is that one for you this year?
Clare Mulroy:
Ooh, I mean, tough question to answer because it is so personal. I think it depends on where a reader is in their personal life. I keep coming back to this concept of a book needing to meet you where you are. So a story needs to resonate with you, and something that might resonate with me could be completely different for you. It could be a book that you DNF or do not finish because it just didn't hit with you in the moment. That's why it's so hard to come up with these lists.
But for me, I'm a reader who gravitates toward stories with strong character development, characters that stick with me months after. I think Ocean Vuong's latest, The Emperor of Gladness, was one that I read earlier this year, and I still think about pretty much daily because of how real those characters felt to me. I mean, I felt like I joined their little community and became friends with them as they strengthened it in the book and they feel like people that I know personally.
Dana Taylor:
Clare, a lot of the top picks deal with survival, emotional, physical, existential. Did you notice a theme of resilience or reckoning in 2025 standout books?
Clare Mulroy:
Yeah, I mean, it was a big year for cli-fi, which is climate fiction. It's a sci-fi subgenre that I think is entering the mainstream more and more. A Guardian and a Thief, Wild Dark Shore, both of those books tested the limits of where we'd go for the people that we love when the world is crumbling around us.
I think there was also a lot of reckoning with artificial intelligence and with big tech this year. Think back to My Documents by Kevin Nguyen and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami. Both of them used dystopian, highly evolved tech to discriminate and incarcerate marginalized groups. That was the plot of both of those stories. I think also Culpability by Bruce Holsinger, that was another standout this year, and it explored the human consequences of a fatal car accident perpetrated by a self-driving car.
A lot of these are dystopians that grapple with potential pitfalls of AI and tech. I think that'll probably only continue in 2026.
Dana Taylor:
We could have a whole conversation just about subgenres. Romantasy, found family, and character-driven stories felt especially big this year. Why do you think those genres resonated so widely?
Clare Mulroy:
I think people also needed a little bit of comfort this year. I mean, we did this story earlier about books that felt like a hug to read, that felt hopeful and comforting, and that was a really big hit with our readers. Going back to what I said earlier about the two camps of the dystopian and the comfort readers, I think some people didn't want to run headfirst into future dangers. They wanted something more peaceful, more comforting.
Dana Taylor:
Several books on your list revisit familiar worlds, such as The Hunger Games Panem, while others push into totally new territory. Why do you think nostalgia and reinvention both thrived this year?
Clare Mulroy:
I mean, to be honest, I think nostalgia is another comfort mechanism. Reading dystopian that feels so scary and poignant is often easier to do in a world that you already know, like The Hunger Games, even if it's not really one you want to be in yourself.
And also, book-to-screen adaptations were big this year. They're only getting bigger. Spotify, their top audiobook data showed that some of the biggest listens this year were books that have been made into movies and TV shows, and I think an adaptation is ripe territory for revisiting old favorites. But then on the other hand, I think we've got an overpopulation of sequels and remakes in the current media landscape, and I think some people are just hungry for something new.
Dana Taylor:
Many of your selections highlight marginalized voices or tackle grief, identity, and trauma with real vulnerability. Were you seeing a shift in how authors approached heavy themes in 2025?
Clare Mulroy:
This is a good question. I think there's more space to hold grief and trauma at the same time as joy for those really complex stories about identity and experience to thrive. I'm reminded of a conversation I had earlier this year with V.E. Schwab who wrote Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, and she was really yearning for queer characters who were messy and imperfect, and the villains sometimes, not just polished and palatable characters. And I think that resonated with a lot of readers this year.
Dana Taylor:
Well, that book and books like Wild Dark Shore have such a strong sense of place. How important was worldbuilding and atmosphere in this year's strongest releases?
Clare Mulroy:
I think I can speak for a lot of readers when I say this, that place is so, so important to me when I'm reading a book. When I'm reading, I want to be in a new world, even if it's one that I wouldn't necessarily want to live with or even spend a day in. I think that's why romantasy is so big and it's why it's the genre that's getting people back into a regular reading routine is you get to step inside this fantastical world that's so built-out, it plays out like it's a movie in your head.
Dana Taylor:
You included both blockbuster authors like Suzanne Collins and quieter literary works like Yiyun Li's latest. How did you strike the balance between commercial hits and books that flew under the radar?
Clare Mulroy:
Gosh, I mean, this is the hardest part of being a books reporter is this list was a year in the making. And as a books reporter, it's my job to keep an eye on the stories that are influencing and reflecting our culture. And that means that I often have to consider books that are outside of my personal taste, but really hit and resonate from a literary standpoint. It's great to stretch and diversify my own reading because this isn't Clare's favorite books of 2025. This is USA TODAY's best books of the year, and I hope that this list has something for every reader, and we're really proud of the 15 books that we have chosen.
Dana Taylor:
Looking ahead to 2026, do you anticipate any emerging genres or storytelling trends based on what captured readers' attention this year?
Clare Mulroy:
I feel like we're going to see similarly zeitgeisty plots ripped from the headlines, but in a pop culture way. We saw ripplings of this this year, books that play on reality TV shows that we love, like Love Island or K-pop idols or tradwives. I think tradwife thrillers could be really big in 2026, and I think that's something that will continue. I think we really want to read fictional accounts of the media that we're loving so much on social media, on TV, in podcasts, things like that.
Dana Taylor:
Clare Mulroy is a USA TODAY books reporter. Thanks for sharing your personal favorite, and then of course, this list of books that we should all go back and read.
Clare Mulroy:
Thank you so much for having me. I hope that everyone finds a little something to read on this list.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected] for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2025’s biggest book trends, from dystopia to romantasy | The Excerpt
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