In this issue, we’re excited to announce our Top 20 Books of 2025 and the four Award Winners among them. We also have extensive coverage of write-in nominees this year, with seven new reviews to share. Thank you to everyone who voted!
The winner of our Best Fiction award is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, a charming story of aging and relationships told through the letters of its curmudgeonly main character.
Our award for Best Nonfiction goes to Geraldine Brooks’ poignant memoir Memorial Days, which explores her grief after the sudden loss of her husband, the writer Tony Horwitz.
Allen Levi’s bestselling Theo of Golden, an inspirational novel about a man who develops a connection with the townspeople of Golden, Georgia, takes this year’s honor for Best Debut.
And Best YA is awarded to Ann Bausum’s White Lies, a critically acclaimed examination of false narratives about the Civil War written for young people.
Newly reviewed titles in this issue include the first three books above, along with Niall Williams’ Time of the Child, the extraordinary tale of an infant’s mysterious arrival in a small Irish town, Wally Lamb’s The River Is Waiting, a tragic, intriciately drawn narrative of addiction, Clare Leslie Hall’s Broken Country, focusing on a fraught love triangle in rural England, and Everything Is Tuberculosis, popular YA author John Green’s account of the social factors contributing to the persistence of a curable disease.
The Top 20 also includes One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad’s National Book Award-winning work based on a tweet responding to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Maria Reva’s Booker-nominated Endling, a one-of-a-kind metafictional novel about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Princess Joy L. Perry’s impressive debut This Here Is Love, addressing slavery and indentured servitude in 17th-century Virginia, among other books.
The last issue of the year also means it’s Big Holiday Wordplay time! Try to solve the clues for a chance to win a one-year membership. Plus, enter our giveaway of Allegra Goodman’s historical novel Isola, see Our Best 2025 Discussions & First Impressions Features, and more.
Thanks for supporting BookBrowse this year. We look forward to bringing you more great books in 2026!
— The BookBrowse Team
