Our 2025 survey results are in! And along with our readers’ favorite books of the year, we have a list of the most-read titles specifically from Reading Group Choices 2024-2025.
Has your group read all of these terrific books yet?
Most-Read of 2024-2025
1. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.
For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.
2. Weyward by Emilia Hart
A riveting debut that explores witchcraft and female intuitive powers, told over five centuries through three connected women, for fans of Kate Morton, Diane Setterfield, and Sarah Perry.
Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
3. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
“As you turn the pages of this novel and get lost in Dana’s story, allow yourself to relive the horrors of slavery. . . . Allow yourself to know the pain of our nation’s past.” —Tomi Adeyemi, from the new foreword
This young-adult edition includes a new foreword by Tomi Adeyemi, New York Times bestseller and Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of fantasy titles Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Adeyemi was also named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and was named one of Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in Media.
4. Mad Wife by Kate Hamilton
In this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslit victim to furious feminist with an urgent goal: to expose how women are pressured to uphold the institutions of marriage and family, no matter the cost.
Emotionally intense and timely, Mad Wife interrogates how marriage and the institutions that support it provide the perfect ecosystem for abuse of women and children, endangering their lives and denying them autonomy—all in the service of men’s desires.
5. The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
Minnesota Book Award Winner, Book Riot and Ms. Magazine Best Book of the Year
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, this is a story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.
6. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Now available in a deluxe paperback edition with gorgeous spray-painted and stenciled edges, Tomi Adeyemi’s groundbreaking West African-inspired fantasy debut, and instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, conjures a world of magic and danger, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir.
Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.
7. Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything.
Award-winning and bestselling “powerhouse” author Kennedy Ryan is at her absolute best in this compelling, scorching novel about hope and healing, and what it truly means to love for a lifetime (USA Today).
8. Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter
Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age online, having gone viral at five years old for a heart-tugging daddy-daughter dance. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family YouTube channel—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.
when Evie disappears one day—during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence—Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right. As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, podcast episodes, and scorn, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the threads of truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?
9. The Last Supper Club by Matthew Batt
Batt’s memoir conveys the challenge—and the satisfaction—of meeting the demands of a frenzied kitchen and an equally expectant crowd. Through training mishaps, disastrous encounters with confused diners, struggles to keep pace with far more experienced coworkers, mandatory memorizations of laundry lists of obscure ingredients, and the stress of balancing responsibilities at home and at work, The Last Supper Club reveals the ups and downs of a waiter’s workday and offers an insightful perspective on what makes a job good, bad, or great. For Batt, this job turns out to be considerably more fun, and possibly more rewarding, than his academic career, and his insider’s view of waiting tables extols the significance of our food and the places where we gather to enjoy it—or serve it.
10. The Woman in the Sable Coat by Elizabeth Brooks
At the height of the Second World War in England, twenty-two year old Nina Woodrow joins the British Royal Air Force and rebels against her careful upbringing by embarking on an illicit affair with an officer. She risks losing everything for Guy Nicholson: her comfortable home, her childhood friends, and, especially, the love of her father, an enigmatic widower.Meanwhile, in the sleepy village where Nina grew up, where the upheavals of war seem far away and divorce remains taboo, Kate Nicholson struggles to cope with her new role as the wronged wife. She finds an unlikely confidant in Nina’s father, Henry, and as they grow closer Kate finds that she’s embroiled in something much murkier, and more menacing, than a straightforward friendship.
11. The Miniaturist’s Assistant by Katherine Scott Crawford
When an art conservationist in historic Charleston unearths a familiar face in a 200 year-old miniature portrait and realizes she’s lived more than one life, she must fight to stay true to herself as she races to reconcile her complicated past, solve an art mystery, and save the people she loves across two different lifetimes. A romantic and brainy timeslip novel sure to appeal to fans of Diana Gabaldon and Deborah Harkness, The Miniaturist’s Assistant explores the mystery of time, how our choices ripple throughout history, and what it means to be a fully realized woman—in any century.
12. Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody
A page-turning debut mystery that’s as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge, about a grieving woman obsessed with solving her sister’s cold-case disappearance via the true crime fandom.
Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heart-wrenching character study of a mind twisted by grief, a biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, and an intriguing exploration of the blurry lines of female friendship.
13. Year of Plenty by B.J. Hollars
In November 2020, B.J. Hollars answered a call from his father-in-law while teaching. “When will you be home?” Steve asked. “I have news.” So began the Hollars family’s year of plenty—a cancer diagnosis on top of the ongoing COVID pandemic, then feelings of falling short as parents, partners, and people. While Hollars traces his family’s daily devastations alongside his father-in-law’s decline, he recounts the small mercies along the way: birthdays, campfires, fishing trips, kayaking, and fireflies. As he, his wife, Meredith, and their three young children grapple with how best to say goodbye to the person they love, they are forced to reassess their own lives. How can we make the most of our time, they wonder, when time feels so short?
14. Dust by Dusti Bowling
A girl who struggles to breathe befriends a boy who seems shrouded in dust, in this unmissable tour de force from bestselling and award-winning author Dusti Bowling.
Dusti Bowling delivers a page-turning, powerful, and poignant novel of friendship, courage, and healing, perfect for readers of Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Erin Entrada Kelly.
15. Stateless by Elizabeth Wein
Twelve competitors. One prize. Many reasons to kill.
When Stella North is chosen to represent Britain in Europe’s first air race for young people, she knows all too well how high the stakes are. As the only participating female pilot, it’ll be a constant challenge to prove she’s a worthy competitor. But promoting peace in Europe, the goal of the race, feels empty to Stella when civil war is raging in Spain and the Nazis are gaining power—and when, right from the start, someone resorts to cutthroat sabotage to get ahead of the competition.
The world is looking for inspiration in what’s meant to be a friendly sporting event. But each of the racers is hiding a turbulent and violent past, and any one of them might be capable of murder—including Stella herself.
16. All In Her Head by Elizabeth Comen, M.D.
A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining medical history that is both a collective narrative of women’s bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women’s health.
Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.
17. Conversations with Birds by Priyanka Kumar
“Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into myself.”
So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life, and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape — and in the cosmos — by way of watching birds.
18. Like the Appearances of Horses by Andrew Krivak
Rooted in the small, mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I, Like the Appearance of Horses immerses us in the intimate lives of a family whose fierce bonds have been shaped by the great conflicts of the past century. In spare, breathtaking prose, Andrew Krivak delivers a deeply compassionate story about three generations who built a new life in America, fought in the Romani resistance during World War II, suffered in Vietnamese POW camps, watched their children deploy to Iraq, and did everything they could to heal the wounds of war after the fighting was over.
19. Unfit Parent by Jessica Slice
Navigating the joys, stigma, and discrimination of disabled parenting—and how the solutions offered by disability culture can transform the way we all raise our kids.
In Unfit Parent, Slice debunks the exclusionary myths that deem disabled people “unfit” to care for their children, instead showing how disabled parents and disability culture provide valuable lessons for rejecting societal rules that encourage perfectionism and lead to isolation. Uplifting and powerful, it illuminates how disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a societal system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.
20. Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members—their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory—Coleman Hill is a penetrating multigenerational debut.
Coleman Hill draws from the author’s own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history. The result is a kaleidoscopic novel whose intergenerational arc emerges through a series of miniatures that contain worlds.
21. Emily Forver by Maria Navarro Skaranger
Emily Forever is a poignant, achingly hard-hitting book about class and about digging deep to find what it takes to get by. At the same time, it’s a deeply original exploration of how a girl like Emily is seen from the outside, by those who think they know who she is and how her life is supposed to pan out.
Empathetic and quizzical, and scathingly humorous, Emily Forever is a novel of unyielding solidarity and smoldering social dissent, by a new star of Scandinavian literature.
22. The Liberators by E.J. Koh
Daejeon, South Korea. 1980. At twenty-four, Insuk falls in love with her college classmate, Sungho, and with her father’s blessing, they marry. But then, as the military dictatorship, martial law, and nationwide protests bring the country precariously to the edge, Insuk’s father disappears.
Spanning two continents and four generations, E. J. Koh’s debut novel exquisitely captures two Korean families forever changed by fateful decisions made in love and war. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.
23. There But For Grace by Anne Whitney Pierce
Fifty-three-year-old Grace Winthrop Hobbes is newly divorced with two college-age kids, an eccentric octogenarian mother, a stalled novel-in-progress, and a sex drive that is coming out of hibernation with a vengeance. Refusing to go gently into the dark night of abstinence and retreat, and tired of sexual double standards, Grace makes a vow to seize life’s bull by the horns.
However, Grace’s year of re-liberation doesnt go quite as planned. As her empty house slowly fills with quirky, unexpected “guests,” she gains new insights into friendship, intimacy, happiness, and the notion of home. There but for Grace is a funny, earnest look at the modern “family,” nuclear and extended — sometimes way overextended.
Looking for more great reads? Don’t miss our most popular books from each month last year, and browse all of the themed reading lists on our blog!