- - I read 115 books this year. These 10 were my favorites.

Kelsey WeekmanDecember 30, 2025 at 1:30 AM

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Hello, Yahoo readers! I’m Kelsey Weekman, a senior entertainment reporter, and I’ve been told I read kind of a lot.

I read 115 books this year — down from 410 in 2023 and 390 in 2022, but even Olympians have to slow their pace sometimes, right? I read trashy romance, speedy thrillers, complex fantasy and pretentious literary fiction. I read physical books while in coffee shops and on planes, audiobooks while on walks around my neighborhood and doing chores at home, and e-books on the Kindle app while on my phone at sporting events and in line for concerts.

To close out the year, I thought I’d round up my favorites and share the perfect circumstance under which to get wrapped up in these delicious tales. If you’ve resolved to scroll less and read more in the new year, why not start here?

And if you’re looking for your next great watch, check out our TV and movie recs over at Yahoo’s Trust Me, I Watch Everything.

1. When you need to get out of a slump: ‘King of Ashes’ by S.A. Cosby

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: People often ask me for advice on how to get back into reading, and it’s simple: Start with something fast-paced, and don’t stop zooming through it until you’re done. This one did the trick for me instantly, especially as an audiobook.

King of Ashes follows a man who returns to his hometown after his father is in an accident, and uncovers a stream of twisted and ruthless mysteries involving his family’s crematory business. The sometimes-gory Southern noir setting pulled me in after I watched Sinners, but this book felt more voyeuristic, like an antidote to salacious true crime stories rather than a typical thriller. Feel free to gawk at all the family drama and bad behavior; no one’s actually getting hurt.

If you liked this, you should: Read all of Cosby’s other work, starting with All the Sinners Bleed, which is reportedly being adapted into a series at Netflix.

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2. When you want to seem well-read in public, just like Jacob Elordi: ‘Flashlight’ by Susan Choi

Flashlight by Susan Choi (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: Much has been made about what it means to read performatively — signaling that you’re well-read rather than actually enjoying the ride — but I argue that if you’re reading, you’re reading. That being said, I didn’t mind that several people on the subway asked me what I thought about the new book from critically acclaimed author Susan Choi as I devoured it in public the week after it came out. I’m pleased to report that Choi is still in beast mode.

Flashlight is about a tragedy — a woman’s life is forever influenced by an incident from her youth that nearly killed her and led to her father’s disappearance. She becomes prickly and combative, fending off love at every turn and transforming into one of those unlikable protagonists that readers either identify with or hate. Her story is long and moves at the dreaded “glacial” pace, unpacking generational trauma along the way.

The factors that make it a bit of a slog at times are also what made it so appealing to me — it feels luxurious and adds to the glamour of reading it in public too. There are sentences so beautifully written that I underlined them with my fingernail when I didn’t have a pen. Like, “Love is, perhaps, the sensation of expertise that erupts out of nowhere, and as time goes on accumulates enough soil at its feet to be standing on something.” Hello?? Buy a physical copy and bring a highlighter.

If you liked this, you should: Read Trust Exercise, also by Choi. It’s about a complicated situation that unfolds among students at a competitive performing arts high school, and it has a legendary, National Book Award-winning twist.

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3. When you want a good hang: ‘The Wilderness’ by Angela Flournoy

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: Four is the perfect number of friends to bring together for a story — everyone gets to shine, but everyone’s different enough that it’s interesting. Just look at beloved shows like Sex and the City, Girls and Insecure. With The Wilderness, it felt like a book finally captured the magic of a hangout TV show.

The Wilderness is about four Black women whose friendships ebb and flow over 20 years, starting from the point of “the wilderness” in their early 20s, a “hard-to-navigate forest of decisions and failure and hurt,” as Angela Flournoy writes. The narrative is constantly shifting perspectives and jumping between timelines in a way that I found riveting. I’ve read a lot about “chosen family,” but this book refreshingly gets at the heart of what it means to keep choosing the same people, even when it’s hard and you disagree. Read it with your group chat, and make sure everyone gets a hard copy because the cover is a work of art.

If you liked this, you should: Read The Mothers by Brit Bennett, which was super trendy a few years ago but also digs into the generational ripples of early-life decisions and looks great on a bookshelf.

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4. When you need to bawl your eyes out, and fast: ‘Heart the Lover’ by Lily King

Heart the Lover by Lily King (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: It took one three-word Goodreads review to convince me to put a hold on Heart the Lover at the library: “I’m in agony.” The book follows a young woman, Jordan, through her college and postgraduate days, when everything feels like it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you. As a student, she grows close to two brilliant members of her 17th-century literature class, and as you can imagine, a slow burn of a love triangle emerges, rife with banter and literary references. Decades later, she’s still unraveling the mysteries and subtext of their entanglement, balancing love and ambition. It’s delicious, heartbreaking and a pretty quick story at 256 pages.

If you liked this, you should: Watch the movie Hamnet in theaters and let yourself keep crying. Then detox with a few episodes of the teen love triangle romance The Summer I Turned Pretty.

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5. When you want to low-key hate the main character: ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay

Flesh by David Szalay (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: I first picked up Flesh because I heard that it was making people angry and I wanted to be angry too. Flesh is about a relatively boring guy whose life includes some terrible experiences but also some inexplicably great ones. I wanted to let myself be annoyed with a whiny protagonist, as so many of us are with Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Instead, I had a sobering but freeing realization that both tragedy and good fortune are impossible to predict or deserve.

So much of culture in 2025 has been spent musing about male loneliness and what becomes of young men who feel slighted by the world, but refracted through the lens of blowhard podcasters and self-indulgent Reddit threads. This isn’t a story of radicalization as much as it is a tale of a half-hunk, half-dork who keeps failing up. It made me think a lot about the humanity with which we treat people, even when they’re annoying.

If you liked this, you should: Read that viral gooning article in Harper’s, then accept my sincerest apologies for recommending it.

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6. When you’ve had enough of romance tropes: ‘Sky Daddy’ by Kate Folk

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: This year, I took 28 flights and read 50 romance novels. I was feeling a little burnt out in both categories, so one doesn’t have to dig deep to determine why this coalesced into a memorable experience reading a bizarro novel about a woman who’s romantically interested in airplanes.

It’s about Linda, a woman with a wildly boring life who steps outside of her windowless San Francisco garage once a month to take a round-trip flight and indulge in her strangest desires. The premise sounds like an extended joke pitched on X and executed by ChatGPT, but it’s actually a poignant look at yearning, fate and self-acceptance. Long live the unhinged women of modern fiction!

If you liked this, you should: Begin your journey into the budding subgenre of non-sentient object romance, which is mostly ridiculous but incredibly fun.

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7. When you want to disappear into another world: ‘Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil’ by V.E. Schwab

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: It’s hard to wade into the book internet without coming across something written by V.E. Schwab. The fantasy novelist is really, really good at going viral. I was inclined to pick up this sprawling book, which tells three stories about hungry women in difficult situations and vastly different time periods, because of two words: “lesbian vampires.” It delivers.

Though one of the stories is set in 2019, the entire novel feels like an entirely different world, one that’s easy to get lost in. Each passage is atmospheric — almost indulgently so. The book’s slight corniness makes it so much more fun to submit to the literal and metaphorical magic. I need vampire books about desire and ambition like I need protein.

If you liked this, you should: Read Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, the OG horny vampire book.

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8. When you want to be terrified and also completely enthralled: ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ by Annie Jacobsen

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: The scariest thing about this book is the fact that it’s technically nonfiction. Annie Jacobsen has extensively researched the nuclear military establishment in the United States and knows exactly how fast things could go south if a beef with another country ever escalated to that level. Based on that research, she wrote this terrifying masterpiece, imagining, with great detail, what could happen if nuclear war started.

It’s existentially terrifying and viscerally gripping, visualizing exactly what these weapons do to human bodies and how governments will probably fail to save humanity. The best part? There’s not much you can even do with all this information besides be afraid and whip it out at parties to kill the vibe. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever read, and there’s not even a close second.

If you liked this, you should: Watch Oppenheimer, though you probably already have. Run it back.

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9. When you’re craving a thoroughly modern true crime story: ‘The House of My Mother’ by Shari Franke

The House of My Mother by Shari Franke (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: I’ve watched dozens of documentaries and lengthy YouTube videos about Ruby Franke, the mommy vlogger whose religious zealotry spiraled into abuse. None could measure up to the power and emotion of Ruby’s eldest daughter Shari Franke’s memoir about it.

Even if you’re not looped in on the original headline-making saga, the story has so many fascinating elements: strict religion, a family with six children, 2.5 million subscribers, a cultish relationship coach and a prison sentence. It also has an incredibly brave narrator. There’s a reason it’s one of the most popular books of the year — Shari sheds light on the darkness unfolding behind the scenes of influencer family videos, and uncovers the gripping ethical dilemmas of a world molded by content creators.

If you liked this, you should: Preorder my colleague Fortesa Latifi’s bookLike, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online.

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10. When you need to remember why you love reading: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)

Why I recommend it: My second-greatest tip for getting back into reading is to revisit the first book you ever loved, and I do that every year with Wuthering Heights. It’s a classic novel about — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — the toxic situationship between two monstrous people. Catherine and Heathcliff both suck, but they’re more than soulmates, and their impossible love, set against the gloomy backdrop of the English moors, never gets boring. It helps that Emily Brontë’s pen is unmatched: “Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad.” That’s the hottest line ever written. I’m so mad at her for dying before she could write anything else.

It is impossible to talk about Wuthering Heights without noting that there’s a new movie adaptation coming in February 2026 — your homework is to read this before then, and don’t fall for the rage-bait of whatever inevitable inconsistencies the Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi version has. They’re different media, for goodness’ sake! Let Emerald Fennell (the notoriously polarizing director) have a little fun with it!

If you liked this, you should: Read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley to complete the canon of gothic English class staples with modern movie adaptations starring Elordi.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”