The best books of 2025

2025 has been a year of long books, which are often best saved for summer reading. Two are Booker-shortlisted finalists which explore diaspora: Susan Choi’s Flashlight (564p) is a family drama across the Koreas and USA, Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia & Sunny (656p) is a meaty, kitchen-sink tale set between India and USA.

Diaspora and identity are also thematic in the completely immersive The Sisters (656p), the first novel written in English by Swedish Tunisian author, Jonas Hassen Khemiri. Pulitzer Prize-winning Adam Johnson’s historical Pacific Island-based novel, The Wayfinder (736p) mesmerised international readers and I’m curious as to how this is received closer to home.

Finally, there's the treat of newly minted Baille Gifford non-fiction winner Helen Garner’s Collected Diaries 1978-1998 (800p) capturing two decades of the everyday. Compared to Virigina Woolf by The Guardian, Garner’s voice is unlike any other.

Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy unwinds a complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, in this extraordinary memoir.

Mary Roy, a single woman who fought for her rights and a much admired leader of a school, was as cold as ice towards her children.

Despite a traumatic childhood and years of living in political unrest in Kerala, Arudhadti was forced to forge her own path - in the worlds of architecture, film, activism, love and language.

You don’t need to have read Roy’s fiction to connect to this book, this is an often endearing and funny account of an incredible life alongside love and confrontation with both her Mother and country.

Meet the Gordon family, who have come together in small town Hoods Landing (think of the author’s hometown of Waiuku). As matriarchs, daughters, sisters, cousins, dogs and divorcees gather for Christmas, Rita, in her 50s, plans to announce her recent cancer diagnosis to her family.

From here, the narrative easily moves between the past, present and point of view of four generations of women threading connections, whakapapa, sickness and secrets.

Vignettes sit between the narrative telling of tales of cancer among other residents of Hoods Landing.

These snippets of sad gossip, sorrow and loss, give insight to the Gordon family’s place in their community. This book is funny and sad and joyous all at the same time. It is also the next to read for those who are searching for their next Greta & Valdin.

I love a picture book that is a call and response - a story that goes beyond the page in a shared experience, think of Mo Willem’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

This year, Pūkeko Who-keko fills this brief. A picture book of pūkeko themed play on words and jokes that will be repeated for years to come. Joyous and dynamic pūkekos continue the storytelling with their Klasson-like eyes.

There’s nothing better than a book that makes you laugh and even better, a story that could only be written in Aotearoa. This is the gift that keeps on giving.

From early this year, until its world-wide May release, customers were querying Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt for months This eerie tale of orphan triplets that is a ‘better the less you know’ narrative, proves that Chidgey continues to be an absolute power house of plotting and imagination.

I’m finding readers who have just discovered her writing are coming straight back for her rich backlist, how exciting for them!

An equally as anticipated novel was Dominic Hoey’s Grey Lynn-based 1985 (Penguin Books NZ). Released in the same week as The Book of Guilt, we had a huge amount of pre-orders both locally and internationally. 1985 has just been nominated for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award alongside Becky Manawatu, Tina Makereti and Damien Wilkins.

My three favourites from the Booker longlist didn’t make the finals: Endling by Maria Reva is a memorable shift in form and completely of this time. A lighthearted tale of the fate of Ukrainian snails, the author introduces herself into the narrative when in real life, Russia invades her home country Ukraine.

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood is a perfectly formed short book, set in a 1960s seaside English town, where two unlikely men come together to dream of creative pursuits.

Claire Adam’s Love Forms blew me away with the heartbreaking first-person narrative of Dawn, a divorced Trinidadian woman. who perhaps has never made her own decisions, wonders about the daughter she gave up for adoption as a teenager.

The ultimate Booker winner, David Szalay’s Flesh is polarising, spare and cold. It’s so compelling, you won’t be able to put it down.

While Mana is an excellent autobiography of an extraordinary life of art and activism, the visual kōrero He Puāwai is visually stunning and fascinating in its information. That would be enough on its own, however the addition of 3D glasses add a playful and innovative level of publishing.

I love the way Jane Ussher photographs an interior, her images of Olveston breathe life into Walsh’s tale of treasures, capturing Dunedin’s time as an economic powerhouse.

2025 has gifted us the first three books of a seven book series - Danish translated On the Calculation of Volume. Written over 30 years, this series follows a woman as she lives a groundhog day - 18 November - over and over.

Barely sci-fi and stubbornly domestic, these books are contemplative and philosophical. If this happened to you, how would you spend your time? Like Volume II, Volume III finished on an unreal cliffhanger and I already can’t wait for Volume IV, due in April 2026.

These books as well as Maria Reva’s Booker longlisted Endling are the most original books I’ve read this year.