5 Books We Loved in 2025

2025 has been an incredible year for books! We’ve dug through the Better Reading Vault and pulled out five absolute must-reads. From heart-racing thrillers to sweeping life stories, these books lit up our year, and we can’t stop talking about them. If you haven’t picked them up yet, now’s the perfect time.

More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out student at NYU. Between exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always been the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on antidepressants. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

Buy a copy of More or Less Maddy here.

The Hidden Hand by Stella Rimington

The student. Li Min, a Chinese student, is forced by her government to transfer from Harvard to Oxford University, where she is recruited to an elite Chinese study centre based out of St Felix’s College. The scapegoat. Meanwhile, the centre’s newly recruited head stumbles on its more sinister purpose: recruiting Chinese and sympathetic British students to steal high-value research and intellectual property. Unsure who at the university he can trust, he turns to CIA agent Manon Tyler for help. The spy who might be their only hope… But as Li and another Chinese-American student are drawn deeper into a deadly game, will Manon be able to penetrate the heart of St Felix’s secrets in time to save them?

Buy a copy of The Hidden Hand here.

One Hundred Years of Betty by Debra Oswald

Born into poverty in pre-war London, and growing up fast during the Blitz, Betty grabs the chance at a bigger life by migrating to Australia. On board the SS Asturias she meets three people who will influence the course of her life—Pearl, a good-hearted party girl; Athena, a Greek woman on her way to marry a man she has never met; and Leo, a German Jew who lost his family in the war. In Sydney, Betty is making ends meet as a waitress at the famous Trocadero dance hall when she stumbles into a rushed courtship with Donald, a wealthy businessman, and dedicates herself to being the ideal 1950s suburban housewife. But life has other plans for Betty, and soon she must find a way to do more than survive. Set against a century of world events and social upheavals, Betty takes us to the frontlines of the anti-war protests and the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, to the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, to Mexico and eventually becomes a TV screenwriter. Even in her nineties, Betty is still passionately engaged with the world, still surprising us.

Buy a copy of One Hundred Years of Betty here.

Cold Truth by Ashley Kalagian Blunt

When you can fake anything, how do you know what’s real? Harlow Close has made a career as an influencer uncovering the secrets of Winnipeg, dubbed ‘North America’s strangest city’. The region is renowned for its sub-zero temperatures, dropping to minus 40 degrees – sometimes for months at a time. Yet, it’s not just the frigid winters and geographic seclusion that render Winnipeg peculiar. When Harlow’s father mysteriously disappears amid a brutal cold snap, suspicions of foul play arise. It’s not like Scott to miss phone calls – and he’s been even more cautious since that time he was catfished by a romance scammer. Unhappy with the pace of the police investigation, Harlow launches her own search, enlisting her sister Blaise’s reluctant help.

Buy a copy of Cold Truth here.

The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French

Nancy North and her boyfriend Felix are making the move across London to Harlesden. A new flat, a new area, a new start. Because while Nancy is fine now, she wasn’t fine before. But settling into the new flat and meeting the new neighbours isn’t helped by Felix’s hovering concern. She is all right. She is sticking to her breathing exercises and doctor-prescribed help. So, when their new neighbour Kira Mullan is found dead by suicide, Felix is understandably worried about Nancy’s frame of mind. But Nancy saw Kira the day before she died and she didn’t strike her as someone who was suicidal – she was upset and angry, yes, but was she upset and angry enough to take her own life? Nancy is the only one convinced that there’s more to Kira’s death than has been discovered. But all the police and the neighbours see is a vulnerable woman who isn’t sure of what she saw, and might even be imagining things…