The Best Books of 2025
Another year in publishing is officially in the books, and as December draws to a close, the industry engages in its time-honored tradition: proclaiming which titles deserve the honor of “best books of the year.”
2025 brought with it a slew of both expected and unexpected bestsellers; “mostly stable” print book sales; hundreds of new brick-and-mortar bookstores; and a fresh slate of titles competing for your sustained attention—no easy feat in this era.
In spite of the real headwinds that authors and publishers faced this year—not the least of which were the aforementioned attention deficit, as well as the rise of AI, the relentless crusade of book bans, and the turmoil of our general political reality—many of their books left a lasting impression on our editors, making it a significant challenge to whittle down the “best.”
Over the past 12 months, ELLE published nine best-of lists—not including this one—with each directing readers to our picks within a particular season, subject matter, or genre. Collectively, these lists cover dozens of books, some of them bestselling hits and others hidden gems. In an attempt to give readers the widest-possible glimpse at these recommendations, we’ve collected them here as, simply, ELLE’s best books of the year.
Below, you’ll find sections devoted to each of the nine individual lists, as well as highlights pulled from each round-up of titles. (If you’d like to read a full list, just click on the article linked in each section.) Furthermore, we’ve gathered other standout titles that might not have made the best-of cut, but are nevertheless worthy of praise.
We hope 2026 brings you ample reading time—and that, perhaps, you choose to spend it with some of ELLE’s recommendations.
The Best Literary Fiction of 2025
When best-of season comes around, literary fiction tends to gobble up much of the attention—and with books as remarkable as these, it’s no challenge to understand why. ELLE’s favorite 2025 literary novels included tales of Southern church communities and turn-of-the-century lumberjacks; septuagenarian letter-writers and dystopian reality TV sets; college love triangles and parent-child strife; young mothers banding together and families contending with climate change. Some were major book-club picks and prize winners; others gained an audience largely through word of mouth. All had something significant to articulate about the state of the world—and our confusing, sacred place within it.
The Best Nonfiction of 2025
Although it was a challenging year for nonfiction sales—with only one 2025 release cracking the New York Times list of top-10 bestselling titles in the genre—that should serve as no indication of the quality of the material. Dozens of excellent nonfiction books hit shelves in 2025. ELLE editors found particular appreciation for memoirs (and memoir hybrids) that took unorthodox approaches; topical histories that laid bare the violence deeply entrenched within American life; biographies of beloved figures, such as James Baldwin and Lorne Michaels; and essays that contextualized our modern moment.
Highlights from ELLE’s Nonfiction Picks
The Best Romance Novels of 2025
Romance, predictably, had a momentous 2025. The genre continues to expand its reign, both in book sales and in the pop-culture landscape, with book-to-screen adaptations such as Heated Rivalry capturing widespread viewership. Romance authors Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood both enjoyed a hugely successful year—and two of their books made the list of ELLE’s favorites. But alongside those mega-hits were tons of titles we loved just as much (if not even more), from historical romances to second-chance love affairs to ideal vacation reads.
The Best Fantasy and Science-Fiction of 2025
I’ve been a fantasy and science-fiction reader all my life, and what never fails to delight me about these genres is how often I encounter new, fresh, exciting ideas—even with so many obvious tropes to choose from! ELLE’s favorites of 2025 included stories of lady knights and magic scholars; brutal wars and robot restaurants; dystopian tech and drowned landscapes; sentient spaceships and dreams that can be turned against you. Some were simple, cozy stories and whimsical folktales, while others ballooned into immersive epics. Some were literary, others (proudly) commercial. Readers tore through them all.
The Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2025
Crime fiction, mysteries, and thrillers also had a dominant 2025, with several of our favorite reads coming from genre stalwarts such as Richard Osman (whose Thursday Murder Club was adapted into a Netflix film this year), Lisa Jewell, Karin Slaughter, S.A. Cosby, and Mick Herron. But several debuts also caught our eye, including Marisa Kashino’s Best Offer Wins and Jinwoo Park’s Oxford Soju Club.
The Best Queer Books of 2025
ELLE contributor Keely Weiss compiled this list of outstanding 2025 books by queer authors. The recommendations are a delightful blend of fiction and nonfiction, touching on nearly every genre, and as Weiss wrote, they each speak to a “queer literary landscape [that] is flourishing in spite of near-constant threats.”
The Best Books of Spring 2025
2025 kicked off with a strong showing in the spring, which—for ELLE’s purposes—we defined as books published within the months of March, April, and May. Suzanne Collins published her highly anticipated new installment in the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping; On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous author Ocean Vuong made a splash with his sophomore novel, The Emperor of Gladness; and Katie Kitamura released the beguiling Booker Prize nominee Audition. But for a fuller portrait of the spring’s offerings, peruse the list at the link below.
Highlights from ELLE’s Best Books of Spring
The Best Books of Summer 2025
With summer came dozens of titles jostling for a spot in readers’s beach bags (or, at least, the honor of being proclaimed a “beach read.”) ELLE defined the summer months as June, July, and August, and within that period our editors recommended 38 books, seven of which got a special spotlight in the magazine’s summer print issue: Susan Choi’s Flashlight, R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, Rob Franklin’s Great Black Hope, Ashley Poston’s Sounds Like Love, V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere, and Katie Yee’s Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar.
The Best Books of Fall 2025
In the fall—which ELLE defined as the months of September, October, and November—came, naturally, juicy thrillers and horror stories just in time for Halloween. But autumn is also a major season for literary fiction, and thus a number of our favorite novels (such as Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief, Lily King’s Heart the Lover, and Bryan Washington’s Palaver) all landed as the leaves began to change. I also must give a shoutout to the fall’s memoirs, such as Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me and Susan Orlean’s Joyride, the latter of which helped me break out of a creative rut I didn’t even know I was in.
Highlight’s from ELLE’s Best Books of Fall
Other Standouts From 2025
It’s impossible to give every deserving book the slot it merits on a best-of list—though we certainly endeavor to try!—and thus we wanted to reserve a space to call out other titles that appeared in ELLE’s 2025 coverage. Below, you’ll find a few spotlight-worthy selections from trend pieces, author interviews, and Shelf Life columns published throughout the year.
