Here are my favorite books of 2025:
There’s No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone
I’m very interested in reading about poverty by journalists who are immersed in the day-to-day lives of people experiencing it. Evicted by Matthew Desmond is the first type of book I read in this genre and it’s phenomenal. Even the footnotes are engaging. I’ve sent it to many friends and continue to order it for people to read. Next I loved Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott, which follows just one family and was even more heartbreaking than Evicted. In 2025 I read There’s No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone, which follows the lives of five families in Atlanta as they struggle to remain housed. It’s the same type of deep, immersive and personal reporting as Evicted and Invisible Child, and it really shows the depth and magnitude of the issue of homelessness and housing insecurity.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
This book made me so angry. It was so shocking. The word careless is so fitting for the behavior and attitudes of the people running one of the most influential apps in the world. On a personal level, it made me more grateful than ever to live and work in Canada for a great company where I am currently on an 18-month maternity leave.
This was actually my first Sally Rooney book and I started it on a flight to Tokyo. It hooked me in a way her other books didn’t in the past, and I thought, ahh, this is why people love Sally Rooney. I thought the dialogue was excellent. It was also heartfelt, sexy, and very smart.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
I am not a science fiction person at all, so I was as surprised as anyone at how much I absolutely loved this book. There was a lot of science and physics, but at a level that I could understand, and just enough of it to be interesting without getting too technical. To be fair, I do have a degree in mechanical engineering, but my non-engineering friends found it enjoyable without being science-y. By contrast, I read the Martian after this and found it way too technical.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
How was this book ever out of print? I have to thank The Paper Hound for introducing me to this book. I would describe this book as short and powerful, and bleak but beautiful.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
A fun, female-empowerment, feel-good book.
Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju
Another short but powerful book. An all too relatable story about gender imbalance and everyday misogyny in South Korea.
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings
I love well-written first-person accounts of women leaving deeply religious and patriarchal communities.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
As a mom of a little girl, this was heartbreaking. Jennette McCurdy writes beautifully and openly about how she spent most of her life trying to please her controlling mother and about her eating disorder.
I couldn’t get into this book the year it first came out, but I gave it another try after loving Intermezzo. Second time was a charm because I loved it. It’s so sad and beautifully written.
A beautiful memoir that requires a trigger warning because it covers a difficult topic about childhood abuse.
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
Vancouver novelist Page Getz of A Town with Half the Lights On recommended this book to me. It’s a funny and feel-good memoir written from the perspective of the author as a young child. The style reminded me a little of Fight Night by Miriam Toews.