Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books I read in 2025
6 January 2026
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Best Books I read in 2025, book-blog, Bookish Highlights for 2025, Books, My Top Ten books for 2025, reading, TBR, That Artsy Reader Girl, the broke and bookish, Top Ten Tuesday
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic. Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here. This week’s prompt is:
Best Books I read in 2025
This is my first Top Ten Tuesday for 2026 so although I’ve actually already covered this topic (here) and also looked at my highlights for 2025 (here), I thought I might take a look at both posts and see if I could see which books coincide or not and maybe choose another ten books from my highlights. Here goes:
Grave Empire by Richard Swan
A Far Better Thing by HG Parry
My Ex, the AntiChrist by Craig DiLouie
Senseless by Ronald Malfi
It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest
No Women Were Harmed by Heather Mottershead
Paladins Grace by T Kingfisher
Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham
Paved With Good Intentions by Peter McLean
The Last Witch by CJ Cooke
Books and travelling with Lynn 
Love seeing My Ex, Senseless and It Was Her House First. They all made my list too😁
I have cheated of course by doing TTT – I’ve managed to wangle a second list! Yay.
Lynn 😀
Great list, I saw a quote from A Far Better Thing earlier today that has left me desperate to pick it up. Im very intrigued by Grave Empire and No Women Were Hard too, although they’re not the only ones on my TBR. I’ll go check out the other posts you’ve linked to now as well 🥰
A Far Better Thing is so good, so well written, just beautiful. I loved it.
I really like Richard Swan having read his Justice series so picking up Grave Empire was a no brainer and it turned out really good. No Women Were Harmed was a bit of an on the spur of the moment decision, I wasn’t sure what to expect and to be honest the cover really grabbed me first – I’m so glad I picked it up. It was very unique.
Lynn 😀
Do you advice reading his Justice series first or not? That’s one of the reasons I havent tried Grave Empire yet, I know its set in the same world as that one. But I believe its far enough into the future, from the previous one, to get away with reading the latter first 🤔sometimes those are the best kind of reads, you have no expectations to impact on your read and can go into it knowing as little as possible. The cover- and title – are what first caught my eye too
I think you could definitely read this new series with no problem. I loved the Justice series, it felt very original. But I don’t think it would affect your reading if you started with the latest series. You could return to the justice series at your leisure.
Lynn 😊
Thanks, thats good to know. I do plan to read both eventually. The characters in the newer one really appealed to me though so starting there sounded pretty fun. Plus there’s less catch up involved then 😂
Hello Lynn, I am pleased you loved reading all these books and I hope you will enjoy your reading 2026 just as much, if not more so! 📚
Blessings, Jessica 💌
That is my hope too. Also, I hope you also have many fantastic reads this year.
Lynn 😀
Thank you 😊
[…] posted a number of posts starting with my favourite books of 2025, my December round up, a Top Ten Tuesday post that gave me the opportunity to come up with another ten great books, my bookish resolutions […]
Excellent selections; I need to make time to read them!
Too many books, too little time – but good problems to have.
Lynn 😀