2025’S MOST COMPELLING READS

Every year, as days lengthen and the world stirs from its winter slumber, we gather the books that have kept us awake far too late into the night. These are stories of complicated families we root for against all odds, non-fiction that reshapes how we understand the world, and fictional universes so real they feel familiar. After months of spirited debate, countless cups of coffee, and impassioned arguments, we finally come together to vote for our — TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2025 …

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Author: Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny tells a profound story about love and isolation. Sonia moves from India to the cold of Vermont to write, but feels unmoored after a difficult relationship with an older artist. Sunny travels from Delhi to bustling Brooklyn as a reporter, struggling with his American girlfriend and his new life. The novel explores loneliness in deeply relatable ways: it can wound, but it can also lead to growth, creativity, and self-discovery.

Abundance

Author: Ezra Klein and Derek

ThompsonAbundance by Ezra Klein of The New York Times and Derek Thompson of The Atlantic argues that America’s “big problems”—from soaring housing prices to dirty energy and sluggish infrastructure—stem not from natural limits but from policies that create shortages. The authors propose a new paradigm in which affordable housing, clean energy, faster governance, and breakthrough science are produced in abundance through technology and smarter policymaking, growing the economy while safeguarding the planet.

Marble Hall Murders

Author: Anthony Horowitz

The action-packed 2025 instalment in the Susan Ryeland series, Marble Hall Murders blends real crime with a fictional mystery embedded within the novel. Susan becomes entangled in editing the next Atticus Pünd book when author Eliot Grace brings her cryptic notes about the 20-year-old poisoning of his grandmother at the Marble Hall estate. As family secrets emerge—adultery, bullying, buried motives—Eliot spirals and is killed in a hit-and-run. Susan herself becomes the prime suspect, even as she races to solve both the old poisoning and the new murder.

Audition

Author: Katie KitamuraIn

Audition (2025), Katie Kitamura explores a woman’s emotional unraveling in New York City as she auditions for a new role. She encounters a young man, Xavier, who mistakenly believes she is his long-lost mother after misinterpreting an interview. At the same time, her marriage to Tomas is strained by revelations of past infidelities and a miscarriage. The two-part narrative blurs reality and performance, transforming the characters’ lives into a volatile stage where the illusion of family takes centre stage.

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Author: Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, reveals the complex and often painful relationship between the author and her mother, Mary Roy—a fierce educationist and women’s rights activist in India. Mary leaves her abusive husband, raises her children alone, builds her own school, and wins a landmark legal battle for daughters’ inheritance rights. Yet, she also inflicts emotional wounds on young Arundhati through harsh words and actions, creating a portrait that is both inspiring and deeply unsettling.

What We Can Know

Author: Ian McEwanIan

McEwan’s What We Can Know moves between a flooded future in 2119—where rising seas and nuclear fallout have turned Britain into scattered islands—and the secrets of our own time. Scholar Thomas searches for a lost poem from a 2014 dinner party, pulling him away from his partner, Rose. As they dig through old emails, diaries, and clues, they uncover a hidden memoir filled with lies, revenge, and buried guilt. The novel questions what we truly know about history, love, and our damaged planet.

Flashlight

Author: Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s Flashlight (2025) centres on the disappearance of 10-year-old Louisa, who is found hypothermic near the shore, unable to recall what happened. Her father, Serk, is lost at sea, never to be found, leaving her American mother, Anne, detached and grieving. Years later, buried family secrets resurface, linking Anne’s former lover, Serk’s lost relatives in North Korea, and fractured connections across Japan, Korea, and the US in a haunting web of memory and loss.

A Guardian and a Thief

Author: Megha Majumdar

Set in a near-future, flooded and collapsing Kolkata, A Guardian and a Thief follows Ma, her toddler, and her elderly father as they prepare to leave for America on hard-won visas. When Boomba, a desperate thief, steals their bag containing passports and food, Ma is forced into a frantic search amid severe shortages. Over one tense week, both sides blur into guardians and thieves, driven by love for their children and the instinct to survive.

Dream Count

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published in 2025, Dream Count follows a Nigerian family’s unraveling when their teenage daughter begins sharing prophetic “dream counts” that predict disasters and personal betrayals. As her visions come true—from floods to hidden affairs—family members clash over belief, control, and fear. Adichie blends domestic realism with supernatural tension, creating a powerful meditation on truth, power, and the cost of being seen.

A Marriage at Sea

Author: Sophie Elmhirst

A Marriage at Sea (2025) tells the true story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a young British couple who set sail in 1972 from Britain to New Zealand. When a whale strikes their yacht, they are stranded on a rubber raft for over three months with minimal supplies. Maralyn becomes the driving force of survival, while Maurice battles doubt and emotional fragility. Even after their rescue, their lives never fully recover—revealing how extreme adventure exposes both the strengths and limits of love.