25 books publishing in 2025 that we can’t wait to read

When it comes to book releases, 2025 is pretty stacked (🥁). Whether you’re looking for something BookTok approved or you want to support marginalized authors during a time of increased book bans, there are plenty of titles to choose from across a variety of genres. 

As someone who has always been a mood reader, I usually choose my next book based on how I’m feeling, or whatever random topic I’m into. Recently, I was interested in how we experience time, so I read “The Order of Time” by Carlo Rovelli and “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Right now, I’m reading “The Boston Strangler” by Gerold Frank and Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie & Gennaro series. Next week it’ll probably change, though.

All that being said, I tried to put myself in other people’s shoes when making my selections for this list. I pulled titles based on a few factors, such as popularity, books I kept seeing over and over in my research, and my desire to highlight authors (and topics) that cover a wide range of lived experiences.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a solid jumping off point if you want to add to your TBR list in the new year.

BookTok & Goodreads 

“Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales” by Heather Fawcett (Jan. 12, 2025)

According to Bookshop.org, this is “The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves.”

“Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” by Grady Hendrix (Jan. 14, 2025)

15-year-old Fern arrives at the Wellwood House for wayward girls in St. Augustine, Florida in the summer of 1970, “pregnant, terrified and alone.” While there, she meets a group of girls in similar situations who are introduced to witchcraft by a librarian. Chaos ensues.

“Onyx Storm” by Rebecca Yarros (Jan. 21, 2025)

Book three in The Empyrean series is one of the most anticipated titles in many circles, including Booktok. I don’t want to give away any descriptive spoilers here, but if you know, you know.

“We All Live Here” by Jojo Moyes (Feb. 11, 2025)

“Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in…So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood 35 years ago–suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. 

But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.”

“Wild Dark Shore” by Charlotte McConaghy (Mar. 4, 2025)

This book is one of my personal selections. I fell in love with Charlotte McConaghy’s two previous novels, “Migrations” and “Once There Were Wolves,” and immediately added “Wild Dark Shore” to my TBR the second it was announced.

The tagline for the book piqued my interest, too: “A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.”

“Sunrise on the Reaping” by Suzanne Collins (Mar. 18, 2025)

This book covers the events of Haymitch Abernathy’s experience in the 50th annual Hunger Games, and serves as a prequel to Collins’ original “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

“Great Big Beautiful Life” by Emily Henry (Apr. 22, 2025)

“Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry,” per Bookshop.org.

“Say You’ll Remember Me” by Abby Jimenez  Hardcover (Apr. 1, 2025)

Abby Jimenez is a popular romance author (Booktok generally speaks highly of her novels “Yours Truly” and “Just For The Summer,” among others). In her forthcoming book, she details the love story between two characters, Samantha and Xavier.

“Atmosphere: A Love Story” by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Jun. 3, 2025)

This is another pick that’s slightly skewed by my own preferences, but in all fairness, Taylor Jenkins Reid has reached critical acclaim on the internet for her beloved books “Daisy Jones & The Six” and “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” both of which I read and adored. I’m a bigger fan of “Daisy Jones,” for what it’s worth, but they’re both excellent. 

“Atmopshere” is described by Bookshop.org as “an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.”

“Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil” by V.E. Schwab (Jun. 10, 2025)

“Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1837. Boston, 2019. Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.”

“With a Vengeance” by Riley Sager (Jun. 10, 2025)

Riley Sager is popular on both Goodreads and BookTok (for the most part), and his forthcoming novel, “With a Vengeance” is about “One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.”

Additional recommendations

Goodreads put together a list of Readers’ Most Anticipated Books of 2025, which you can check out here. If you want to know which books a few bestselling authors are most looking forward to, click here.

And for even more popular recommended reads, click here and here.

Books from marginalized authors, or about marginalized people

The following books include verbatim descriptions from Bookshop.org. Full details about the stories can be found by clicking the link embedded in the book titles on the page.

“Immortal” by Sue Lynn Tan (Jan. 7, 2025)

“A young ruler must forge a delicate alliance with the untrustworthy yet magnetic God of War to protect her kingdom in this stunning romantic fantasy filled with dangerous secrets, forbidden magic, and passion, from Sue Lynn Tan, bestselling author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess.”

“Brewed with Love” by Shelly Page (Jan. 14, 2025)

“A cozy, contemporary romantasy about a teen witch who wants to keep her family’s apothecary from falling to the competition but can only do so with assistance from her first crush.”

“Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People” by Imani Perry (Jan. 28, 2025)

“A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue–and its fascinating role in Black history and culture–from National Book Award winner Imani Perry.”

“Oathbound” by Tracy Deonn (Mar. 4, 2025)

“Tracy Deonn’s #1 New York Times bestselling Legendborn Cycle continues in the sensational third book about a dazzling contemporary fantasy world that blends Southern Black Girl Magic with secret societies and the legend of King Arthur!”

“Fable for the End of the World” by Ava Reid (Mar. 4, 2025)

“The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this stand-alone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.”

“They Bloom At Night” by Trang Thanh Tran (Mar. 4, 2025)

“The author of the New York Times bestselling horror phenomenon She Is a Haunting is back with a novel about the monsters that swim beneath us . . . and live within us.”

“The River Has Roots” by Amal El-Mohtar (Mar. 4, 2025)

“The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.”

“What Wakes the Bells” by Elle Tesch (Mar. 11, 2025)

“Inspired by an ominous Prague legend, What Wakes the Bells is a lavish gothic fantasy by debut author Elle Tesch that is perfect for fans of Adalyn Grace, Margaret Rogerson, and V.E. Schwab.”

“The Emperor of Gladness” by Ocean Vuong (May 13, 2025)

“Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.”

“The Duke Steals Hearts & Other Body Parts” by Elias Cold (May 13, 2025)

“Wielding a magic that allows him to pop off limbs, con-artist Phyllis ransoms body parts to make a living. At least until his cold heart is moved when a mark claims his sister, Adeline, was taken.”

“And They Were Roommates” by (May 27, 2025)

“A hilarious, unputdownable second-chance-romance about the most unlikely, gay roommate mishap. Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Gwen & Art Are Not in Love.”

“Black Salt Queen (Letters from Maynara, 1)” by Samantha Bansil (Jun. 3, 2025)

“There can be no victory without betrayal.

Hara Duja Gatdula, queen of the island nation of Maynara, holds the divine power to move the earth. But her strength is failing and the line of succession gives her little comfort. 

Filled with passion, romance, betrayal, and divine magic, Black Salt Queen journeys to a gorgeous precolonial island nation where women—and secrets—reign.”

“A Treachery of Swans” by A.B. Poranek (Jun. 24, 2025)

“From the New York Times bestselling author of Where the Dark Stands Still comes an atmospheric fantasy based on Swan Lake, following Odile as her plan to restore magic to her kingdom gets disrupted by a murder—forcing her to beg for help from the young woman whose identity she stole.”

“Katabasis” by R.F. Kuang (Aug. 2025)

“Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul–perhaps at the cost of their own.”

Additional recommendations

Lavender Books posted a more comprehensive list of anticipated 2025 queer releases over on Medium, which you can check out here.

Goodreads’ list of Trans & Nonbinary fiction titles set to be published in 2025 can be found here.

Happy reading!