My favorite reads of 2025.

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
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Swordheart follows Halla, a 35 year old widow, as she goes on an unexpected adventure after inheriting an unusual sword with an immortal warrior magically trapped inside it.

Will Halla escape her scheming relatives and secure the fortune that is rightfully hers? Will the mysterious man in the sword ever reveal his secret past? Will they meet a quirky and delightful cast of characters during their journey? You’ll have to read it to find out.

It’s a standalone, but the author has written other books in this world and I intend to read them all.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
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(This one’s for you, my fellow Heated Rivalry fans!)

Set in 1960’s NYC, this beautiful queer love story about a sardonic reporter falling in love with a professional baseball player was the best romance I read in 2025.

Mark Bailey isn’t a sports reporter, but he’s spiraling after losing the man he expected to spend his life with when his boss assigns him to cover some baseball games. Mark finds himself assigned to a day-in-the-life diary feature intended to rehabilitate the image of the local team’s newest player, hotshot-in-a-slump Eddie O’Leary.

Grumpy/sunshine with delicious yearning, this book acknowledges the existence of homophobia in a general way, but like all Romance novels, it has a happy ending.

The God and the Gumiho by Sophie Kim
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The God and the Gumiho is a bright and enthralling fantasy story inspired by Korean mythology. First in a series, but works as a standalone.

Kim Hani is a Gumiho (mythical nine tailed fox demon), but she doesn’t eat souls anymore – she’s a barista now and nobody knows she was once the Scarlet Fox, the most infamous Gumiho of all time.

Seokga the Fallen, an exiled god trying to earn his way free from the mortal realm by fighting demons with the local police force, always bickers with Kim when he comes into her coffee shop. It’s all very routine until one day when Kim discovers that a rash of local murders are being blamed on her alter ego, the Scarlet Fox, and she is Seokga’s next target.

Kim joins the investigation by taking a job as the fallen god’s assistant. Will she be able to protect her secrets, avoid capture, find the real culprit, and resist falling for Seokga’s smolderingly sardonic charm?

The Glimmer Falls series by Sarah Hawley
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This Contemporary Romance series is set in Glimmer Falls, a city where magical folks don’t need to hide their powers. There are part-pixie influencers, social climbing witches, magic users vying for the town mayor position, and a sweet, shy werewolf who runs the garden center.

The Glimmer Falls series follows a group of friends in this unusual town as they all find love through unexpected adventures. Expect wayward demons trapped by bargains gone awry, immortal assassins captured in plastic, a werewolf rugby team, and more.

These books are over the top on the most entertaining way. And these are proper Romance books, so expect on-page spice.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
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Bookish Dryadology Professor Emily Wilde plans to keep her head down and hopefully make tenure at her university back home by doing field research on some unusual faeries…but somehow she ends up much more involved than she intended.

This book was absorbing from the first sentence but unfurled at a leisurely pace that invited me to read slower than usual and take everything in. I absolutely loved it and cannot wait to read the next in the series.

Highly recommended if you like a practical, no-nonsense heroine who prioritizes her passion for her vocation above social niceties. This book contains some romance, but it’s not a Romance – the love story is a very, very small part of the book.

Lady Derring Takes a Lover (The Palace of Rogues #1) by Julie Anne Long
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Lady Derring isn’t too heartbroken when her husband unexpectedly expires, but she is distressed to discover that he left her with nothing but a dilapidated building on the docks. While looking for answers from her husband’s solicitor, she bumps into another woman in a similar situation who turns out to be her late husband’s mistress.

The two women realize that they both have nowhere else to turn, and decide to rely on each other: they pool their meager resources and open a boarding house.

The rest of the series follows the various residents and guests of the boarding house as one couple after another finds their happily ever after.

The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik
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A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) is set in a magical boarding school, but it’s no Hogwarts. Students master their powers and defends themselves from mals – evil creatures attracted to magic – or they die. There are no teachers and a high death rate.

The main character, El, is an outsider with no useful alliances in a world where your connections are everything. Her affinity for destructive magic makes her powerful, but she needs to prove that in the right way so that she’ll have opportunities after graduation without making everyone think she’s evil.

I already know I will reread this series again, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is dark and a bit strange, but it was just right for me.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
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Mika Moon is an obedient witch: always following her guardian’s rules to keep her magic and their community a secret. It’s a lonely life, so she decides to take a risk and start a TikTok account for making real potions that she pretends are fake.

When her TikTok catches the attention of an unusual household looking for someone to help three young witches, she starts to realize that everything she thought was settled about her life might actually be due for a change.

I wish I could put this book in a blender and drink it. It’s so warm and full of love! Cozy fantasy with a sprinkle of romance.

Godkiller (Fallen Gods #1) by Hannah Kaner
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Godkiller is set in a kingdom where gods are outlawed and Godkillers like main character Kissen make a living hunting down and destroying any small gods that pop up or older ones that have been in hiding.

Kissen may only have one leg but she’s an incredibly badass woman with a knack for killing things that are nearly invulnerable, which is why she’s so surprised when she finds herself joining forces with a very unusual child who has a specific god-related problem. Soon they meet a baker/ex-soldier with a royal connection and the three of them join forces on a dangerous journey…which spirals into a much bigger adventure than any of the three could have imagined.

Expect gods, kings, betrayals, queer love stories, and excellent disability representation. If you like good fantasy, put this one on your library hold list now and you’ll thank me later.