best of 2025: fiction

Somehow, it's December, so it's time for my "best of" lists!  A few notes before I begin:

- It was an unusually lackluster reading year for me, so this list doesn't go up to 10.

- These are in random order, though I did make note of my absolute favorite.  

- Not all of these were or will be first published in 2025, but that's when I read them. Numbers 6 and 7 on this list were advanced reader copies (thank you to NetGalley and the publishers!) and don't come out until next year.

- Obviously the year isn't over yet, but if I read something between now and the end of the month that belongs here, I'll update accordingly.

- And, as always, your mileage may vary.

1. Blob by Maggie Su:  Vi finds a blob of unknown origin in the alley behind a bar and impulsively takes it home.  As it starts to become more sentient, she decides to mold it into her dream man, which doesn't quite go to plan.  Original and weirdly touching.

2. Soft Core by Brittany Newell:  Ruth is a stripper and dominatrix whose life is disrupted when her boyfriend Dino mysteriously vanishes.  She struggles to hold herself together while she tries to figure out what happened.  Beautifully written and propulsive.  

3. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker:  After her sister's horrific death during the height of the pandemic, crime scene cleaner Cora Zeng starts to notice a pattern of Asian women being murdered.  Gory, tense, and compelling, with one of the best opening chapters I've read in a long time.

4. Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin:  In an Irish shopping mall on its last legs both financially and physically, a sentient orchid controls a young florist.  Think Little Shop of Horrors but played completely serious, with the added bonus of nasty body horror.  

5. We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter:  Small town sheriff Emmy Lou Clifton investigates the disappearance of two local girls, one of whom is her best friend's  stepdaughter.  This book was really good until about the last fifty pages, at which point it became gasp out loud great.  As with almost everything Karin Slaughter writes, though, it has a LOT of potentially triggering content, so read with care.

6. Whidbey by T Kira Madden:  Told from different perspectives, this novel is about the wake of destruction left by a serial sexual predator and how the effects ripple across years with unexpected results.  Beautiful and devastating; I'll happily read anything T Kira Madden writes in the future.  This was the best novel I read in 2025.

7. The Keeper by Tana French:  When the suicide of a well-liked young woman rocks her small Irish town, former Chicago cop Cal Hooper smells a rat.  It's a bit of a slow burn, but Tana French's writing is so rich and atmospheric that I knew I'd enjoy the ride.  And, as ever, she completely sticks the landing.