The Best Book Of Every Genre In 2025, According To Goodreads Users

Swedish author Fredrik Backman nearly took home a Goodreads Choice Award last year for Anxious People but came in second place by only five votes. In My Friends, he celebrates the redemptive power of art with this story of a remarkable painting that pictures three people sitting at the end of a long dock. This book is laced with the eternal ache of adolescence, as Goodreads puts it.

The people love a Taylor Jenkins Reid book. This is the author’s fourth GCA win, having taken home the honor in 2023 for Carrie Soto Is Back, 2021 for Malibu Rising, and 2019 for Daisy Jones & the Six. Atmosphere was also an Amazon’s best books of 2025 pick, in case you needed any more convincing to pick it up already.

How did I miss this book? The premise sounds so good: With her first adult mystery-thriller, YA specialist Holly Jackson assembles a scenario where our desperate heroine must solve her own murder. If the reviews are to be believed, there’s an impending aneurysm and things just get wild.

Emily Henry has quickly made herself First Lady of the romance genre, and readers say this is quite possibly her best book yet. When writers Alice and Hayden both vie to earn the honor of writing a mysterious woman’s biography, they wind up yearning for each other in the process.

Goodreads describes Schwab’s novel as “a sweeping sapphic vampire epic that moves from 16th-century Spain to 1827 London to contemporary Boston. Schwab folds in elements of horror, historical fiction, and gender politics, too.”

Whether or not you’ve read Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, you’ve definitely heard of them by now. This year the third installment hit shelves and Kindles, and fans devoured it in no time. This book follows Violet and Xaden as they travel to new lands in search of allies in the war that looms on their doorstep, and the ending is truly the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers.

This is Aisling Rawle’s debut novel, and already she’s raking in the readers’ love. The Compound follows Lily, a 20-something dropped into a reality TV show living in a desert compound with 19 other contestants. They must compete not just for personal luxuries but also for communal assets, like a literal front door to their house. The world outside is falling apart, and the game gets more dangerous as it wears on.

This description from Goodreads is just... yes. “Set in Florida circa 1970, Grady Hendrix’s old-school horror novel centers on a sinister group home for pregnant teens where shame has been weaponized. But when a friendly(?) librarian introduces the girls to witchcraft, the power balance shifts violently. Hendrix continues his impressive run as a modern horror master.”

SenLinYu’s Alchemised was a very hot topic on BookTok this year. It started out as a Harry Potter fan fiction about Draco and Hermione, and then was published under a new name with original characters and a general stripping of any HP intellectual property. People loved the fanfic and endlessly debated the ethics of having it traditionally published. Anyway, it is by no means a light read — like, seriously, check the content warnings before you dive in — but it had my full and rapt attention from start to finish.

Romantasy audiobooks have become a lot more theatrical in the last couple of years, with full casts and background sound — they’re way more of an immersive production. Reviewers loved the two leads who play Violet and Xaden in Onyx Storm’s audiobook format, saying they both absolutely nail the characters and their chemistry.

Suzanne Collins took home the award in this category by a landslide, according to Goodreads. Sunrise on the Reaping flashes back to 24 years before the events of the first novel to bring us the (sad, doomed) origin story of Haymitch Abernathy.

YA and romance specialist Lynn Painter takes us along as these childhood friends reunite as teenagers in their hockey-loving Minnesota hometown. It turns out that teenage relationships are a bit more complicated than the ones we have as kids, though. This is Painter’s first GCA win after several previous nominations in both the YA fiction and adult romance categories.

Beloved YA author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), who also happens to be a tireless public health advocate, won this year’s nonfiction category with Everything Is Tuberculosis. This is a deep dive into the world’s deadliest curable disease, in which Green blends personal narratives with science, history, and urgent questions concerning healthcare inequalities.

When revelations about Ruby Franke’s child abuse broke in 2023, the world was taken aback. This year’s highly anticipated memoir from the family’s eldest daughter, Shari, candidly reveals the awful truth behind the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, the potential toxicity of influencer culture, and the peril of cultish life-coaching programs.

In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the Witches of Scotland podcast, present a deeply researched investigation into actual witch trials and the systemic oppression of women throughout history. The book also draws a lot of persuasive parallels between yesterday’s tragedies and today’s imminent threats.