It’s been another banger of a reading year for ol’ Jenny Trout. Not so much a banger of a writing year, but that’s a) obvious from the fact that I’ve barely posted anything here in months, and b) another post entirely. But I did do a lot of reading, and as always, I’m gonna talk about it at you.
Out of all the books I read in 2025 (and I’m not going to add them up), these were The Best:
Children of Fallen Gods, Carissa Broadbent The War of Lost Hearts is an incredible series, but the second book is really the best one. Book two sees Tisaanah, the heroine of the first novel, continuing to fight an inner demon, literally, but adds Aiofe, another strong female main character fighting a battle of her own. There is so little I can say about this book and this series without spoiling the fantastic plot twists, but as far as romantasy novels go, this series is top tier and I cannot recommend it enough. I read this series back-to-back-to-back in the beginning of January, and I’m still thinking about it at least once a week.
All Systems Red, Martha Welles I’ve been joking about this book ever since I read it, constantly comparing myself to the lead character, a genderless security droid who, upon gaining free will, names itself “Murderbot” and pirates thousands of hours of space television. I knew the show was coming out, and I wanted to read this novella before I watched the series. I’m really glad that I did; I liked being in a non-human character’s head, and I think I wouldn’t have felt that as strongly if I’d only watched the show. The book is clever and fun, it’s a quick read, and the pace is perfect.
Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins Either you love The Hunger Games universe or you don’t, and I love it. After DNFing The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I was so afraid to read Haymitch’s story, but I wasn’t disappointed at all. In fact, I enjoyed Sunrise on the Reaping more than I enjoyed Mockingjay, which I used to think was the strongest book in the series. I don’t know how or why Collins had me stunned at every grim turn of events, as if I’d never read her work before, but it was like rereading the original trilogy for the first time.
Spark of The Everflame, Penn Cole This was a big romantasy year for me, and Spark of The Everflame was a part of that. After a string of DNFs in the wake of The War of Lost Hearts, I thought maybe I’d burned myself out on the genre. I just needed to meet Diem, an FMC I will hear zero criticism of. I am rooting for her so impossibly hard, and I’m burning through this series (title pun intended). This book is on my list for being an MVP slump buster.
Rhapsodic, Laura Thalassa I had no idea how much I was missing good, old-fashioned, ’00s style urban fantasy. I gave Rhapsodic a chance out of morbid curiosity. I’d heard that it was a rip-off of A Court of Thorns and Roses (it shares exactly jack and dick in common with that crap). I’d heard it was trashy, turn-your-brain-off romantasy. Instead, it was a fun start to a great series with a compelling mystery and lots of romantic drama. It reminded me a lot of Lucifer or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Some people have said they felt there were elements of “grooming” between the MMC and the FMC. I can see where they’re coming from, but I also think a lot of online discourse glosses over the fact that this isn’t strictly a romance novel, and the characters do have to work past the toxic beginning to their relationship throughout the series.
Redacted, Redacted Unfortunately, two of the sweetest, most enjoyable contemporary novels I read this year were from an author who ended up promoting and supporting pulled-to-publish Harry Potter fanfic, so I can’t include them here. Please know that I am furious about this.
There are very few books that I re-read, but I thought I’d give The Parable of The Sower, Octavia Butler, another read-through, due to how the country where I live… is. It felt timely. I first read it in high school, probably in 1996 or 1997 (a very cool aunt always gave me challenging books for Christmas), so of course, I identified with Lauren and saw her as this super cool teen surviving in an unimaginable dystopia. It was just a science fiction adventure novel to me. Now, on second read through, living through the rapid dismantling of American society with a daughter Lauren’s age, it reads like a horror novel.
And finally, just like last year, I had a major surprise. This time, it was courtesy of the Kalamazoo Public Library’s Friends of the Library bookstore. Money has been tight, so any physical media I’ve bought this year has come from there, because paperbacks are fifty cents and hardbacks are a dollar. Splurging there means I’ve gotten to try some authors I never would have tried before. Fall of Giants, Ken Follett, snagged me on the very first page and kept me hooked for about fourteen hundred pages as I tore through the sequel, Winter of the World. They’re the first two books in his Century Trilogy, but I took a little break before the Cold War in book three. Now, when I see one of his books at Friends of the Library, I snatch it up. And then I have to carry the damn things all the way back to my car on level four of the parking garage. And I won’t use the elevators in the parking garage because people shit in there.
That’s love, Kenneth.
Anybody else have books they couldn’t stop thinking about this year?
I read parable of the talents thinking it was the first one for some reason? Haven’t stopped thinking about it, also it was very intense as someone also in the US.
I read almost the entirety of T. Kingfisher’s world of the white rat (Swordheart or Paladin’s Grace are good starting points) and could have read 10 more. They’re fun, light but creepy fantasy romance that made me cackle out loud.
Aaahh, a new post! And I haven’t been here in like two weeks – shame on me.
Your picks sound great, and I plan to grab some of them. I didn’t read a great deal this year (well, that was fiction, at least), but two of the ones I did were literal classics – ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and ‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens. They were both very good, though you can feel Dickens still finding his voice and sometimes playing to the papers with asides and diversions that are really just padding. (He didn’t plan out the novels beforehand, and published as series in newspapers, so I think that’s understandable.) It’s pretty disheartening to see the parallels between Victorian England and the present day, but I do love these stories. I think Dickens gets overlooked by a lot of readers for being too old and too serious, and that’s a real shame.
Happy New Year! So excited to see a new post from you, and to get some book recs to add to the pile 🙂
A couple of my favorite recent reads:
-“The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. Le Guin. I’ve loved Le Guin’s Earthsea series for decades, but I haven’t read as much of her sci-fi work. “Lathe” was a great place to start. This book is a quick read, but a deep one. It’s about a man whose dreams can shape reality, and the therapist who tries to get him to use that power to improve the world. Lots of mind-bending twists ensue. I happily re-read it all as soon as I’d finished it.
-“Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower” by Tamsyn Muir. I read Muir’s Locked Tomb series (“Gideon the Ninth” etc.) this year and really enjoyed that too, but “Floralinda” was just pure fun. It’s a sort of twisted fairy tale about a princess locked in a tower and what she has to go through once it becomes clear that no prince could possibly save her. It was full of surprises, and the ending was perfect.
I strongly recommend Holly Black’s adult urban fantasy two-part series, Book of Night (idk year) and Thief of Night (2025). I adore the romantic relationship because the leads are already boyfriend and girlfriend at the start of the first book. I don’t like will-they-or-won’t-they waffle, and I think it’s fantastic that the author shows that becoming bf and gf can be the beginning of a story instead of a happy ending.
The only other 2025 novel I read is very good, but it’s not the kind of thing I see you write about. I’ll still mention it: Manchukuo 1987, by Yoshimi, is an alternate history novel from a far-left-wing perspective.
CW: SA for both of these novels, but Thief of Night’s depiction is so dry, like the opposite of weepy, that YMMV but I did not find it difficult to get through. Conversely, the example in Manchukuo 1987, while very woke and necessary to the plot, is so graphic that only the literary merit of the work could get me to power through such an unpleasant read.