My Year in Books: 2025

I use Goodreads to track my reading habits and, similar to Spotify, they do a year-end data wrap-up called My Year in Books: 2025.

I gave 4 books this year 5 out of 5 stars:

• Death in the Spires by KJ Charles - "dark academia" romance mystery set in 1905 around Oxford. I read this book based on Goodreads monthly challenge and I'm grateful. It was a lot of fun.

  
  

• The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett - "multimedia" contemporary mystery so it is told primarily through emails, text messages, and letters that reflects on true crime and journalism.

  
  

• Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green - part memoir, part literature analysis, part oral history, this is a short nonfiction book that provides an overview of this deadly, but preventable, disease

  
  

• Mate by Ali Hazelwood - paranormal romance involving werewolves, sequel to the previous year's Bride which featured a vampire and werewolf.

I finished 24 books and started and did not finish 83 books. Overall that is a completion rate of 22.42% of 107 books. I read fewer books than last year (29 books) but I did have a higher completion rate (last year was only 15.18%). For the books I finished, I had an average rating of 3.13 stars which is lower than last year's 3.27 out of 5 stars.

Average rating for books:

• 2025, 1.95 stars out of 5

• 2024, 1.9 stars out of 5

• 2023, 2.1 stars out of 5

I have been better at picking up books to finish based on the higher completion rate but not necessarily good books. I also gave 4 books full stars last year. However, I don't think there's a big conclusion to be drawn from this data. "DNFing" or abandoning a lot of books means I'm reading out of my comfort zone. I don't think there's anything wrong with a low completion rate. This shows I'm trying new authors and a wider variety. Also, I don't force myself to finish a book I'm not enjoying. Life is too short!

Last year, my highest-rated book was also my longest. I'm more likely to abandon a long book, longer chance for it to get boring or make me mad. My prediction for 2026 is the sequel of last year's winner, The Will of the Many, will be my longest read and either be a 4 or 5 star read.

Continuing last year's trend of 1-star review for the most popular book, I disliked Quicksilver by Callie Hart for a number of reasons. Besides poor set-up and world-building, it's a lot of bad gender politics. I gave a 1-star last year to the very popular The Midnight Library by Matt Haig because it had poor handling of mental health topics.

Also, continuing last year's trend with The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch, by newest book this year was Mate by Ali Hazelwood. Both books are paranormal romances published in October that I read at the same time as my friend Sarah.

My top book reviewers on Youtube:

• Gavin from Gavin Reads it All - https://www.youtube.com/@GavinReadsItAll

• Mara from Books Like Whoa - https://www.youtube.com/@bookslikewhoa

This is a little different from previous years as Youtube has started doing general year-end analytics! Of my top 5 watched channels #1 was Gavin and #5 was Mara, who have book dedicated channels. I like their videos as they both make book vlogs and, funnily enough, both went to Sleepy Hollow this year.

Ranking of finished books for 2025:

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What was the best book you read this year?