END OF THE YEAR SERIES: My Favorite Reads of 2025

Hi everyone. Welcome (back) to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. This post is the beginning of my end of the year series, which is usually divided into my favorite reads of the year, the most disappointing books I read this year and the books that I didn’t expect to like but did. Before, I also included a list of the books I DNF’d throughout the year, but I already mention those on a monthly basis on my Best and Worst Book of the Month posts at the end of each month so I will not repeat them in this series. I will, however, review the series I completed this year and rate them as a whole.

Let’s start with my favorite reads of 2025:

1. City of Thieves by David Benioff

Set in the siege of Leningrad during WWII, this historical novel is a character-driven story of two uncommonly likeable young men, Lev and Kolya, a teenager and a young soldier, who set out on an absurd quest to save their lives. The first, because he is caught pilfering the body of a German soldier and the second because is a deserter of the Red Army. During their six-day odyssey “looking for a dozen eggs in a city under siege”, both Lev and Kolya experience first hand the atrocities of war and the hardships people have to go through because of it. This classic coming-of-age novel is highly popular and a modern favorite, with the potential of becoming a classic over time.

2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Centered on José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, the founders of Macondo, and their numerous descendants, this book explores themes such as solitude, cyclical history, memory and fate both by blending fantastical events with reality and by relating the loves, wars and political upheavals of the Buendías throughout seven generations of their family. These events highlight the “inescapable patterns of their lives, often repeating names and mistakes, as they are doomed by a curse to a century of isolation. That is, every generation repeats the same passions, obsessions, and tragic errors, because they are trapped in a loop and unable to escape their predetermined solitude.” This was one of the best books I read this year.  

3. Animal Farm by George Orwell

This novella is a political allegory of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism. It critiques totalitarianism, corruption, and the abuse of power. The plot is summarized as a story where the animals of Manor Farm rebel against their human farmer, Mr. Jones and establish their own society. This new society is Animal Farm, as opposed to Manor Farm. The pigs, the smartest animals in the farm, however, take control and start manipulating the other animals to rewrite the rules of their new society and consolidate their power.

There is a lot to unpack in this small book, and eighty years after its publication in 1945, three months after WWII ended, it is still relevant today.

4. The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark

In school, we are taught that the Great War began when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was killed in 1914. But the death of Franz Ferdinand, Christopher Clark says, is the culmination of the Balkan entanglements in the region caused by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary in 1908. And a key player in those entanglements, also known as The Balkan Wars, during 1912-1913, was Serbia. World War I was the Third Balkan War before it became the First World War (Clark 2012: 242) and to help us understand why Franz Ferdinand died in 1914, the author goes back in time to tell us about another gruesome royal murder, one that we’ve probably never even heard about, that of King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia. These deaths are important so we can understand what role Serbia played in the political scene that eventually led to the outbreak of war in 1914.  

5. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Orwell’s critique of totalitarianism continues in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Big Brother, the name of the all-pervading government in 1984, is the head of a totalitarian society that gains power from the complete and utter destruction of the self; from manipulating, torturing, and brainwashing its citizen into believing and conforming to every wish and desire of the government. The goal is to contort one’s mind to the extent that they trust Big Brother’s instinct over their own. It is about believing in Big Brother with every fiber of your being (Weingarten 2024). Totalitarianism is everywhere, but what is more disturbing is that the masses are not aware of what is going on and thus do not challenge it.

Today, this is still true. We are endlessly distracted by entertainment (videogames and TV) and by our phones, scrolling on our screens to kill time, unaware of what is going on around us, that we are becoming more and more detached from reality. We are glued to our screens and don’t see beyond that. Political engagement is increasing but political awareness is at its lowest. People protest and yell with genuine rage, but they do so based on misinformation and lies being fed to them from the “telescreens”. What is worse, though, is that they do not think it necessary to debunk that information. They earnestly believe, with every fiber of their being, what the propaganda or the modern goodthink says.  

6. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca, the titular character of this novel, is dead but she is not at rest. Her ghost is everywhere and the narrator, a young woman who has recently married Rebecca’s widowed husband, cannot help but be jealous of what her husband’s life must have been like with his first wife before she died. The book, the author said, is a “study in jealousy inspired by her own feelings toward her husband’s first fiancée.” The story was rooted in her experience of living with the influence of a previous wife and that the anonymous narrator’s reserved personality reflected parts of her own nature.

This book is a paragon of contemporary gothic literature and I highly recommend it.

7. Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn

This book is a retelling of the myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, which explains the changing of the seasons. It is a very popular myth to recount. And it is popular for a reason. It is one of the most important myths of Ancient Greece. At its core, this myth is about love. Love between Persephone and Hades, yes, but also between a mother and her daughter; between Demeter and Core, who changes her name to Persephone once she becomes the Queen of the Underworld. In Daughters of Olympus, the fourth installment of the Retold: The Grecian Women Series, both Demeter and Core have their own journey to traverse. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are all present, a source of grief and conflict for both of these goddesses, but they never take prominence in the story and we witness how both Demeter and Core grow up from young goddesses into strong and powerful goddesses of the harvest in their own right.   

That is everything for today. Thank you for sticking around. My next post will be my best and worst reads of the month of November and after that I will continue on with my most disappointing reads of 2025. Bye!