Books of 2025

For those who are really interested in what writers read. This year, I read a lot of somewhat random romances because I swung hard into audiobooks. My library generally has crummy waiting times for queer romances, but when I sorted by “available now,” I found a few interesting ones.

Organized by genre.

Romance

1. You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis). I don’t care about baseball but this was good. (Reread.)
2. The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis). I read the second one first, so I knew how this ended, which was good because it was very tense there for a moment.
3. The Sugared Game, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis). Love Will Darling. (Reread.)
4. Subtle Blood, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis) (Reread.)
5. True Pretenses, by Rose Lerner (m/f, both cis). I had a lot of problems with the use of some antisemitic tropes here. But the characters are compelling.
6. Hither, Page, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis). Another reread. Very lovely and quiet.
7. Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Look, MacLean writes very particular stuff. I wish this one specifically had allowed the FMC to be less gender? And the implicitly gay viscount should have gotten a happy ending.
8. Bombshell, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Early Victorian feminist revenge fantasy rather than actual historical romance, but not in a bad way.
9. Lord of Darkness, by Elizabeth Hoyt (m/f, both cis). A well-written excursion into definitely not my thing.
10. Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Also wish there had been a lot less gender in this one.
11. Sailor’s Delight, by Rose Lerner (m/m, both cis). Another Jewish character, and it’s really well done! Closed door, I wish it wasn’t, just for reasons of closure.
12. A Gentleman’s Gentleman, by TJ Alexander (m/m, both trans). There is one major historical…call it a choice that isn’t in accordance with reality, let’s say, and if you can get past that, I think you will enjoy it. More than that, I think it is worth trying to suspend your disbelief and getting to know this book, because there’s a lot of interesting stuff here (philosophically) and there’s a lot of fun stuff (the actual plot).
13. The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis, one of them is bi). The rare reread where I think I liked parts of it better and parts of it worse on the second go-round. It doesn’t really work on its own as well as I initially thought.
14. The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, by Cat Sebastian (m/ bi f, both cis). A reread where I came out loving it. Let Marian do crimes! She’s good at it. And she could use a treat.
15. Wilde in Love, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis). James doesn’t really care about historical accuracy, and no one has a problem that can’t be solved by having a lot of money and smiling winningly at people. This series would be better with a couple of queer characters in the mix to up the camp levels, but it’s already so silly and fluffy, I don’t know what to do.
16. Too Wilde to Wed, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis)
17. Born to be Wilde, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis)
18. A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, by Adriana Herrera (m/f, both cis). I wish she had subverted some of the more problematic tropes she’s playing with (like protective man/weak lady in need of protection–girl never even got to shoot anyone despite carrying a pistol the whole time!), but the way it addressed race, class, and colonialism was tremendous.
19. Mr. Collins in Love, by Lee Welch (m/m, both cis). Remember Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice? Remember hating him for proposing to Lizzy badly and being kind of a doofus? Turns out he’s an anxious wet cat. This is a really daring little novella, and Welch totally pulls it off.
20. Seducing the Sorcerer, by Lee Welch (m/m, both cis). Um…does what it says on the tin. Read it while I was sick and up nights, and it was great. There was a magic horse made of an old burlap sack. In the way that horses aren’t just a mode of transportation for a historical story but a character, it really becomes a character, and I loved it so much.
21. The Barkeep and the Bro, by AJ Truman (m/m, both cis). A contemporary romcom, which was always going to be a hard sell, and indeed it didn’t work for me. This is an age gap, forbidden boss/employee, daughter’s ex-boyfriend, gay-or-possibly-bi-for-you book, and the tropes kind of took over. But because I read it and mentioned it to a friend, I was given a felted zucchini. (There is a scene in the novel in which a zucchini figures prominently.) So. Take that as you will.
22. Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). These books (yeah, I read all four) are all so fun and funny. The world reminds me a bit of Terry Pratchett.
23. Paladin’s Strength, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). I liked this one the best. 
24. Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher (m/m, both cis). I was disappointed that this is the shortest of the books.
25. Paladin’s Faith, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). Probably the best plot of the four books in the series but my least favorite romance. Honestly I’m not sure these actually qualify as romances? They might be fantasy novels with romantic elements. 
26. Husband of the Year, by MA Wardell (m/m, both cis). I still don’t really read contemporary, but this was nice–Jewish guy in interracial relationship gets married and adopts his husband’s nephew. More serious stuff than I expected from a romcom, but it tends to flinch away from any kind of real conflict; either you will like that or you won’t.
27. Breakout Year, by KD Casey (m/m, both cis). A sweet Jew4Jew sports romance that was somewhat oddly shaped, story-wise. A little squishy in the middle, but Casey writes a delicious sentence, and ultimately it was enjoyable.
28. Home Ice Advantage, by Ari Baran (m/m, both cis). A former NHL star becomes the head coach of his hometown team and winds up falling for the (Jewish) assistant coach who got overlooked for the job. I know even less about hockey than I do about baseball, but the emotional arc here was delicious and subtle.

Scifi/Fantasy/Horror

1. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Lesbian space Jesus saves the planet with swords.
2. Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Ten thousand years is exactly the amount of time needed to develop the most toxic workplace in the universe.
3. Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. What if instead of gender, we had swords, ghosts, and spaceships?
4. System Collapse, by Martha Wells. I think this is the one I got hit by a car while I was listening to the audiobook. So, uh. Distracting.
5. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. Reread. If I had Kevin R. Free dollars, I’d hire him to do my audiobooks. I also read this aloud to my 8yo. I read this book probably too many times in a short period. It impressed me more after having read through all the other books.
6. Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Reread.
7. Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells. Reread.
8. “Home, Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory,” by Martha Wells. Technically a short story. Also a reread?
9. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. Masterful. More queer than I remembered. Technically this was a reread but I read it the first time when I was maybe 20.
10. The Masquerades of Spring, by Ben Aaronovich. I want to recommend this to everyone. Delightful and funny. Like Wodehouse but add Americans, race, queerness, magic, and jazz.
11. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. Look, Merricat should be allowed to murder all those dreadful people. As a treat.

Plays

1. The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, by Wole Soyinka. He really gets Dionysus and creates a great, very dark, comedy.
2. The Bakkhai, by Euripides, trans. by Anne Carson. Not as good as Soyinka’s. Sorry, tumblr. Get your “not for me…not if it’s you” out of here, Anne Carson.
3. Father Comes Home from the War, by Suzan-Lori Parks. She’s one of the top playwrights of our modern times and this is a banger.
4. We Bombed in New Haven, by Joseph Heller. Not famous for a reason.

Mysteries

1. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Is it a mystery? There’s a detective. But it’s a wonderful portrait of a time and place he clearly loved.
2. Fer-de-lance, by Rex Stout. Very clever, a little racist and sexist.
3. Fadeout, by Joseph Hansen. When I was getting sick in August, I spent a lovely rainy morning reading this in my brother’s sunroom while the kids ran around playing. Also it’s a nice California noir.
4. Lavender House, by Lev AC Rosen. Rosen is way more about vibes than about creating a mystery that wraps up well. And the vibes are good! I was just left with a lot of questions.

Nonfiction

1. Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, by Colin Dickey. Very interesting. 
2. Hi Honey, I’m Homo: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture, by Matt Baume. I had a lot of thoughts about how you get to see what they want you to see. But mostly I was left imagining showing Bewitched to Ulysses, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
   • No, okay, I guess I am going to talk about this. When you watch TV (and this is still true even with streaming), what you see is the shows they decided to make. Obviously. But why do they decide to make a show? It’s because they (they being network executives) do a complex calculation that boils down to “what will catch the public’s imagination such that we can make a boatload of dollars from this?”
   • And a lot of this is predicated on this idea of what “middle America” wants. (What is “middle America”? I feel like I live there? But also where I live, I have a lesbian mayor, a lesbian senator, and a gay congressperson.)
   • Anyway, whenever you’re asking, “Why weren’t there any gay main characters on TV before Will and Grace?” the answer is basically an exec thought that “middle America” wouldn’t like it. Even getting queer recurring characters or story lines that painted queer guest stars as sympathetic could be a stretch during some periods.
   • And now we have had a mainstream sitcom with a married gay couple who adopts a child and they’re main characters in the show, yay progress.
   • But if you think about this, and think about the world, and the vastness of the stories that are never being told because someone thinks they won’t be profitable stories, it gets very sad. I feel very tinfoil hat-y when I talk about it, but the censorship freaks me out. Not the “pulling your book out of a library” censorship, which is devastating, but the “we are going to ignore your ideas and not give you a chance” censorship.
   • Anyway, yay, self-publishing?
3. “Appropriating the Golem, Possessing the Dybbuk: Female Retellings of Jewish Tales,” by Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Modern Language Studies, vol. 31, no. 2 (Autumn 2001): pp. 39-55.
4. Alone, Unarmed, and Unafraid: Tales of Unarmed Reconnaissance During Vietnam, by Taylor Eubank. Engaging, but I don’t know if I recommend it.
5. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome. Is this nonfiction? I don’t know. I had an abridged audiobook narrated by Hugh Laurie. I wish he’d done the whole thing.
6. Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, by Alan Alda. I’m not big on celebrity memoirs but this was good. Alda is an old school, fought-for-the-ERA liberal, and I love him.
7. You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith. A divorce memoir. I…wish she’d just hate him. Or talk more about craft, because she obviously wants to. But as it stands, it was good but felt a little like Swiss cheese?
8. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I cried, even though I knew who died and when. For example, her husband Dick Goodwin was at the White House getting the East Room ready when they brought Kennedy’s body back from Dallas to lie in state. Everyone was so young and idealistic and they worked so hard. The audiobook has clips of the original deliveries of many of the speeches she talks about (including RFK [original recipe] talking about the death of MLK Jr. on the campaign trail in Indiana the night King died), which was amazing.
9. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders. Ultimately I disagree with him about the interpretations of the stories that he offers, and I only sort of like his ideas about how to write a story, but I liked the book. Make of that what you will.
10. Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon. An older volume of essays, but one I really enjoyed. Made me laugh aloud at times.
11. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake. Mushrooms are terrifying, and I’m 20 million microbes walking around in a human suit.
12. Reading Selfishly: A Craft Journal for Writers, by KD Casey. I don’t think this is officially out yet, but she dropped a link to the first public version on Bluesky, and I think I’m officially a fan.
13. Crochet Monsters: With more than 35 body patterns and options…, by Megan Lapp. I made four monsters out of this. All in all they were the biggest crochet projects I’ve finished to date. Even with a smallish hook (3.75-4mm), the monsters are all about 8″ tall or more. The book is well laid out, the instructions it offers are easy to parse even for a beginner-to-intermediate crocheter, and there are loads of photos. My kids liked flipping through it and coming up with new monsters, and I didn’t hate making them.

YA Novels I Read Aloud to My Children

1. Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett. It was good. I have no notes except that it felt like the main character has out-aged the kid I was reading this to a bit and I want to wait before I read him the next one.
2. Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper. Not as good as The Dark Is Rising. The child still really liked it.
3. Greenwitch, by Susan Cooper. Very good.
4. The Grey King, by Susan Cooper. Cooper is a powerhouse. I don’t know what to say. More creepy poems in fantasy novels! (Content warning! There’s a dog that gets shot in this one. I was a little shocked.)
5. The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien. Reads aloud well. (Not only was this a reread, this wasn’t even the first time I’d read this aloud.)
6. The Halloween Moon, by Joseph Fink. If you want a middle-grade YA novel about a Jewish kid, you could do worse.