My Top 10 Books of 2025 – Part Two

Here are my favourite ten books of 2025 Part Two, including audiobooks, as I haven’t listened to enough to have their own post this quarter. Again quite a disparate selection.

The Cure by Eve Smith

I’m so out of my comfort zone here. Firstly, I don’t usually read speculative fiction, sci-fi or dystopian future novels. And secondly, I don’t think this is entirely fiction, which is terrifying.

I remember reading some time ago (may have been Sir David Attenborough) that seven billion was the tipping point for our population. We’ve already passed that and those of us with half a brain know the earth is in trouble. But then we have another issue. We want to eradicate the diseases that mostly come with ageing, like cancer, heart disease and dementia. That would enable people to live to a ripe old age, and not merely ‘exist’. Because no-one wants to die, much less in pain and confusion. Much of this has to do with the demise of religion in the west, as we no longer believe we are going to a better place up there (hopefully up not down).

For my full review click here

Dangerous by Essie Fox

Once I’d finished the book and read the historical context at the end about the real characters and the fictional ones, I went online and did my own research. I never realised Byron was the father of Ada Lovelace or that Polidori’s sister was the mother of Christina and Dante Gabriele Rosetti (the latter of which I was a bit obsessed with after watching the TV programme Desperate Romantics in 2009). Polidori is also an interesting character, I’ve researched him as well. Polidori’s father worked as a secretary for the ‘tragic’ Italian playwright Count Vittorio Alfieri.

Dangerous is a very entertaining read, though Lord Byron is hard to like. He is ultimately a selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic philanderer. He spreads it about without consequence, but the one that upset me the most was his poor little daughter Allegra (her fate is well documented though I won’t print a ‘spoiler’ – you can look it up). And I did worry about the menagerie, especially Mutz the dog (again real and well documented).

For my full review click here

The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris by Evie Woods

I did French for O level (and almost A level but we won’t go there) and I found that I understood almost all the French in the book. Useful and surprising, but not essential. Mostly it’s translated or hinted at in the text.

I’m a huge fan of the author and this book was gorgeous, with a lot of love, a bit of ghostly haunting and old secrets. I adored the characters of Edith, Hugo, Madame Moreau, Nicole and all the others from Compiègne. Even the customers of the bakery are fascinating.

But this is not just a tale about an old bakery with a love element thrown in. It’s also a dual-timeline story about war and injustice, prejudice and hope.

For my full review click here

Sixty Is The New Assassin by Shesh

This was hilarious! I loved every minute. I did guess a couple of things, but I think I was supposed to.

Sixty-year-old Ishmael Dollah is an asshole. Not my words – he calls himself that all the time. He’s a retired CEO, the ruthless type that takes companies and breaks them apart, leaving people jobless and desperate, but he doesn’t care. His wife Nysa is a kind, creative, beautiful woman. Why they are together is anyone’s guess.

They have one son whose wife is like a daughter to them. Then one day at a company ‘do’, Ishmael hears a rumour that she is having an affair and he decides to interfere. NEVER interfere in your grown-up children’s lives. It can only end in disaster.

For my full review click here

Dead as Gold by Bonnie Burke-Patel

I can’t begin to express how much I loved this book. It’s not just the characters, especially Adam, it’s the exquisite writing, the main story and the way in which it’s interspersed with fairy tales that reflect what’s happening. I loved the fairy tales though they are crueller than the real life.

Then there’s the setting – I love anything to do with the seaside, and the way in which the sea becomes a character of its own, with its power and majesty.

While I loved Bonnie’s previous novel I Died At Fallow Hall (I was on the blog tour), it didn’t speak to my heart and soul in the same way as Dead As Gold. Sorry that sounds so pretentious.

For my full review click here

Boy With Wings by Mark Mustian

According to an article I just read, it is physically impossible for a human to be born with wings. “Humans have arms and legs, not the skeletal framework and bone structure necessary for wings.” And that doesn’t include the mutations necessary to allow flight.

But Johnny Cruel can’t fly. But he does have wings which he has to bind to his body so they can’t be seen. As a small child, his mother hid him in a tiny box, and pretended he had died, all to protect him. People thought he was a devil and that tragedies in their community were caused by his presence.

For my full review click here

The Library of Lost Dollhouses by Elise Hooper

I wasn’t too sure when I started this, but by the end I knew it would become one of my favourite books of the year.

It’s set over two timelines – Head Curator Tildy Barrows at the beautiful, archival Belva Curtis LeFarge Library (known as the ‘Bel’) in San Francisco, in 2024, and artist Cora Hale from her arrival in Paris before the Great War until her death in the 1970s. Seventeen-year-old Cora fled the United States to escape a possible scandal and criminal investigation. She knows she can never go back. But instead of painting portraits under commission as she intended, she finds herself creating a dollhouse for Belva LeFarge, as a testimonial to her life.

For my full review click here

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei

About three quarters of the way through this brilliant book, I was going to give it 4 stars. As a character-led story, it was starting to get overlong, and Genevieve was really getting on my nerves. I needed the story to move forward, and quickly. I wanted to tell her that not everything in the world revolves around her. She seems to think that Arin’s behaviour is all about being more successful than her. That her mother Su prefers Arin (I did), that she is not the centre of the universe.

But in the last part it all changed. We return to where we started in 2015, when we discovered that Su is terminally ill. Gen and Arin are still estranged, but Su wants to see Arin before she dies. At this point I could not believe Gen’s behaviour. I was angry. I cried. I pleaded.

For my full review click here

Kill Them With Kindness by Will Carver

Once the pandemic was over, I swore I would never read a book about Covid. But this is different. It’s Will Carver, so I made an exception. I’d read the telephone directory if he’d written it.

Not that this book is about Covid per se, but the parallels are there. Carver is obviously not a fan of politicians and is scathing about their greed and self-interest, particularly the prime minister Harris Jackson. Anyone who recognises themselves might be a bit worried. They should be.

For my full review click here

Murder At The Lunatic’s Ball by R S Leonard

I didn’t expect to love this as much as I did, but it was just brilliant. I loved every minute. It’s shocking to discover the things they did in the asylums in the late 1800s (and continued to do so for many years to come).

Women, of course had the worst of it. Any ‘issues’ and they were immediately considered neurotic, suffering from Ophelia syndrome (based on Hamlet’s Ophelia declining into madness when jilted) or from erotomania. The latter could, at the extreme, involve a ‘cure’ called a clitoridectomy that was similar to female genital mutilation – GFM – as we know it today. Oh yes, we did these things as well. Thank goodness it was rarely carried out.

For my full review click here