Between Kindle Unlimited and Audible’s three month trial, five of these books can be snapped up for under £1
This year I’ve read 138 books so far, and with a little time off over Christmas, I’m expecting to hit at least 150 for the final count. It’s been an incredible year for new releases, with one of the books on this list already being turned into a movie that releases next November.
I read across multiple formats, never leaving the house without my Kindle and always completing chores with an audiobook in my ears. Fortunately for those who aren’t already on Audible, they’re offering a three-month trial for 99p, giving members three books for under £1.
In no particular order, these are the top 10 books of 2025. Some of them are even included in the Kindle Unlimited Library.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
I read this book twice in the space of a month after it was released, which is quite rare for me to do but sometimes a story requires attention. This story is said to be ‘grown from the same garden’ as The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which is currently included on Kindle Unlimited. While Addie’s tale is that of a girl who makes a deal with the devil and ends up wandering through time trying to test the edges of it, Bury Our Bones follows three very different women.
Maria is a hungry girl who grew up in Spain in the 1500s, Charlotte is lovesick in the 1800s and Alice is angry in 2019. They’ve all met and while Alice can’t strictly remember how or why, they’re all vampires. Over the course of 12 hours, Alice goes from hyping herself up in a bathroom mirror to have fun at a college party to waking up without a pulse in denial of her new vampire reality. It’s a story of hunger, love and revenge littered with Easter eggs for fans of V. E. Schwab. Months after reading a line about why people don’t leave a house on fire has stuck with me.
This is the book for those who enjoy complex characters, unreliable narrators and toxic lesbian vampires.
Available on Amazon (£13), Audible, Kindle (£11.99) and Waterstones (£17.99).
*Mayluna by Kelley McNeil
Technically Mayluna was released last year*. However, the release was done fairly quietly and this year is where it started to really gain traction. I first read this on Kindle Unlimited after a friend messaged me in the middle of the night saying that I had to. She was right. We meet a quiet Evie who is watching her kids, who have deemed her boring, snoop through an old box of magazines before flipping to Carter, a rockstar with fame of the dizzying heights of The Beatles, doing an interview on his private plane about the girl who his hit album was all about. Of course the girl in question is Evie.
We listen to them both talking through their love story from the day they met through to the present day. Throughout it I had questions, all of which were answered, and it was one of those rare reads I was unable to put down. I fell in love with the magnetism of Carter and Evie. I found myself cursing the little moments and by the time I’d finished it I was placing an order for a paperback. I’ve read this twice and honestly there might be a third read before the year is out. This is one of the best love stories I’ve ever read. I’ve never wanted someone to have a second chance so badly. I laughed, I cried and I’ve since been begging all of my friends to read it.
This is the book for those who fate, soulmates and the inevitability of unlimited chances when you find The One.
Available on Amazon (£8.27), Audible, Kindle Unlimited with free audio included and Waterstones (£8.99).
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins is back with games that are ‘going to be different’. There’s a massive buzz online now that filming has reportedly wrapped ahead of the film’s release next year. While most of us are aware of what happens after the 75th Hunger Games, the games that came before are something of a mystery.
Sunrise on the Reaping introduces us to a sober Haymitch Abernathy who doesn’t see the appeal of drinking, which is the first of unlimited heartbreaks in this book. While some of us may have felt that we knew what happened with the 50th Hunger Games based on Haymitch’s prominent place in the series over two decades later, it turns out there was a lot more to know.
This is the book for fans of The Hunger Games. We’d advise keeping hold of a box of tissues.
Available on Amazon (£9.99), Audible, Kindle (£9.49) and Waterstones (£16.99). There’s also a Collector’s Edition available on Amazon (£23.91) and Waterstones (£25.99).
Rewind It Back by Liz Tomforde
Liz Tomforde has shot to fame with her Windy City series, following a friendship group made up of sports stars as they find love in Chicago. Since the 2023 release of Mile High, fans have been following the unlucky in love Rio desperately yearn for his other half while he watches all of his friends find theirs.
It was something as a surprise then that Hallie, his first ever love from back in Boston, moves in next door and is assigned to his house as an interior designer. This was a beautiful conclusion to one of the best sports romance series out there, with a satisfying ending for all involved. This whole series is included on Kindle Unlimited.
This is the book for fans of second chances, found family and sports romances.
Available on Amazon (£8.99), Audible, Kindle Unlimited, The Works (£5) and Waterstones (£7.49).
What If I Never Get Over You by Paige Toon
It can be hard to make a summer fling last a life time, but Paige Toon manages it. Ellie and Ash meet on vacation in Lisbon, it’s a trip she’d planned with her best friend who tragically passed away prior to the trip taking place. Three days is all it takes to fall in love but when circumstances pull them apart she never really expects to see him again. Until she does.
Ash crashes back into her life and six years is all it took for everything to change. Beautiful gardens, found family and a lot of time in the woods make this love story that I think is Paige Toon’s best yet.
This is the book for lovers of second, and third, chances.
Available on Amazon (£6), Audible, Kindle (£3.99) and Waterstones (£7.49).
The Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber
Stephanie Garber became an instant buy author for me with her second series Once Upon a Broken Heart, although Caraval put her on the map. While this book takes place in Los Angeles this year, the whimsical magic system has made its way over. We jump between a hidden university class taught by the Professor in an old movie theatre.
Folklore 517: Local Legends and Urban Myths deals with tales that Holland St James needs to be true. When she scratches the surface it becomes clear that she might have bitten off more than she can chew. There’s a ticking time bomb with her life on the line and she’s going to need some of those myths to make it past Halloween.
This is the book for fans of old Hollywood, mysteries and deals with the devil.
Available on Amazon (£11), Audible, Kindle (£9.99) and Waterstones (£18.99). For those who are a fan of sprayed edges, Waterstones appears to still have some special editions available for £22.
Pitcher Perfect by Tessa Bailey
Tessa Bailey is known as the Michaelangelo of Smut for good reason, she really knows how to pile on the spice after delicious chapters of tension. Pitcher Perfect is the fourth book in her Big Shots series, which is an intertangled web of athletes love stories. It picks up with baseball pitcher Skylar Paige, who we met in Dream Girl Drama for an ill-advised baseball game, and hockey player Robbie Corrigan who is so proudly an ‘orgasm donor’ he made shirts with his best friend declaring it so.
Skylar has been in love with her brother’s best friend for as long as she can remember, and when the opportunity arises Robbie is happy to fake date her in order to win her over. The unlikely pair team up in her family home to take part in an annual contest and work through a wish list of acts Skylar wants to experience. This is a classic Tessa romance that had me giggling, guessing who would come next and wondering where I can get my hands on Stouffer’s frozen lasagne.
This is the book for rom-com lovers who like lasagne and taming the bad boy.
Available on Amazon (£5.21), Audible, Kindle (£0.99), Kobo (£2.99) Waterstones (£8.49) and directly from the publisher with sprayed edges (£9.99).
The Rabbit Club by Christopher J. Yates
This book has stuck with me long after I finished it. I went into it not knowing a lot which is my preferred route to reading. We follow two different timelines. One is with the most bizarre man I’d ever encountered in a book, a professor hailing from England and living in New York who feels undeniably like a caricature of an intelligent English man. The other follows Ali McCain, the estranged eighteen-year-old son of a British rockstar, who has been accepted into Oxford and is desperate to gain entry into one of Oxford’s oldest and most selective secret societies, the Saracens.
The chapters alternate, and for a significant portion of time I found the Professor’s perspective irksome, impatient to see what was happening with Ali and his unlikely band of friends. It was worth every second of it for the twist which had my jaw dropping. I read this over the summer and have been thinking of it ever since.
This is the book for those enjoy a twisty dark academic story threaded with mystery.
Available on Amazon (£15.39), Audible, Kindle (£9.99), Waterstones (£20) and directly from the publisher with sprayed edges (£20).
People Watching by Hannah Bonam Young
Hannah Bonam Young shot to fame with Out on a Limb, an unexpected pregnancy book that managed to be a hit with those who famously hate the trope. People Watching follows Prudence, a small town girl who acts as her mother’s carer, and Milo, an impulsive jet-setting artist who has been summoned to town by his older brother who needs help opening a brewery.
Prudence’s dad gives her an ultimatum; she needs to start living more or her mother is going to have to go into an assisted living facility. When Milo practically lands in her lap, on a day Prue’s mother is insisting is her wedding day again, it seems like fate that he would help her live a little.
This is the book for those who love small towns, tattooed love interests and can handle the miscommunication trope.
Available on Amazon (£5), Audible, Kindle (£1.99), Kobo (£5.99), Waterstones (£8.49), The Works (£5) and HMV (£9.99).
Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven
Much like Mayluna, Our Infinite Fates ended up in my hands because a friend told me I absolutely had to read it. My friends don’t often pull this card, so when they do I know I’m in for a treat. My friend had hyped up this book to an extent I didn’t believe it could live up to. Evelyn – or Branwen Blythe – can remember all her past lives. One thing that sticks out by them is that every single time she’s murdered before her 18th birthday, by the same person.
This time round she needs a little more time as her latest younger sister is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant to stay alive. Evelyn just has to do a couple of things to make sure she can: find her murderer and get them first, figure out why she’s even been hunted through the centuries, avoid falling in love with them. We get an insight into Evelyn’s many past lives, and deaths. This was a brilliant read, had it not been up against Sunrise on the Reaping I think it would’ve raked in awards.
Available on Amazon (£8.98), Audible, Kindle (£6.99), Kobo (£6.99) and Waterstones (£16.99).
There have been many incredible releases this year that are still on my to-be-read list. I’m hoping to get to John Green’s nonfiction Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, of which a not so subtle request has been sent to my brother, Liv Lowry’s psychological thriller Pretty Dead Things, available on Kindle Unlimited, and a stack of Christmas reads that has been building in my living room. 12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas by Natasha Bach (available on Kindle Unlimited), BK Borison’s Good Spirits and Lindsey Kelk’s Christmas Fling being at the top of that stack.
