For many, autumn and winter are the most enjoyable seasons in which to hunker down at home with a good book. Whether you’re planning your cosy weekend reading material or have set yourself a 2025 reading challenge on Goodreads, you’re spoiled for choice with the best new book releases.
From romance books and historical fiction to cosy crime capers and fantasy novels, the test for a good book is simple: you won’t want to put it down. This year has seen plenty of acclaimed novels from esteemed authors, including Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in a decade, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s tear-jerker romance Atmosphere, Ian McEwan’s unsettling dystopian fiction What We Can Know, and David Szalay’s Booker-shortlisted novel Flesh.
As for debuts, Florence Knapp’s The Names is a searing family drama, Alison Espach's novel The Wedding People is a funny spin on the romcom genre, and Allison King’s novelThe Phoenix Pencil Company is a century-spanning, magical realism story. Bold and thought-provoking in different ways, Natasha Brown’s Universality and Saou Ichikawa’s Hunchback are both short reads that can occupy a rainy afternoon.
New paperback releases are equally worth diving into (and not just to save on shelf or hand luggage space) – think Kaliane Bradley’s charming time-travelling romance, The Ministry of Time, Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, James, and Miranda July’s cult novel All Fours. That’s all on top of the past year’s anticipated titles from acclaimed authors such as Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Coco Mellors.
The bookworms on the IndyBest team and I have read dozens of new releases over the past year, to bring you the best books for 2025.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews
Daisy Lester is a senior IndyBest writer at The Independent. She specialises in reviewing books, and has her finger on the pulse when it comes to new releases from both debut authors and acclaimed writers. Daisy knows what makes a gripping, moving or important story, whether it’s a romantic comedy or historical drama. She loves books of every genre, from satire to mystery and crime, so there will be a book for every taste in her roundups.
The best new books to read in 2025 are:
'The Names' by Florence Knapp, published by Phoenix
Best: Overall
Release date: 6 May 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
Florence Knapp’s debut novel revolves around nominative determinism – how someone’s name can set the trajectory of their life.
Set after the Great Storm in 1987, it begins with Cora setting out with her nine-year-old daughter to name her newborn baby boy. Her controlling and abusive husband wants him to be named Gordon, after himself. Her daughter has affectionately nicknamed him Bear, and Cora wants to name him Julian, believing this name will set him free of influence from his father.
The chapters are divided into three sections – Gordon, Bear and Julian – with each following the ramifications of his naming and the boy’s life as it unfolds over the decades. The novel is utterly original, profound and moving in its exploration of how tiny decisions can change the path of your life. Moments of tragedy will make you weep, but the family story of love and resilience is beautiful. It’s a surprising page-turner, too – I read this novel in two sittings.
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Buy now £12.99, Amazon.co.uk
'When The Going Was Good' by Graydon Carter, published by Grove Press
Best: Memoir
Release date: 27 March 2025
Genre: Memoir
A first-hand account from the golden age of magazines, Graydon Carter’s gossip-fuelled and engrossing memoir is a delight for fashion fans. The book traces his life from his younger age living in Canada, where he got a taste for magazines while working on a university rag, up to his 25-year editorship of Vanity Fair. During his time as editor, he launched the now-iconic Oscar’s party, identified the Watergate whistleblower ‘Deep Throat’ and edited a major exposé on the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky affair.
Beyond his role in major cultural moments, Carter is candid about everything from his opinion on Anna Wintour (he writes how she’s comical in her sunglasses), and his 30-year feud with Donald Trump.
What really shines through in the memoir is that, unlike many in the fashion world, he never took himself too seriously. And he always cast a wry eye on the glitz and glamour that surrounded him.
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Buy now £16.99, Amazon.co.uk
Dream State by Eric Puchner, published by Sceptre
Best: Love-triangle novel
Release date: 8 May 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
This decade-spanning novel is an utterly charming take on the age-old love triangle trope. It begins on the eve of a wedding, but the majority of the party have come down with norovirus. The nuptials are inevitably a disaster – but not in the way that the guests had imagined. The bride ends up leaving the groom for his best man, just days after exchanging vows.
What follows is the aftermath of Cece’s decision to leave Charlie for his lifelong friend Garrett. Puchner jumpers between the men’s university years – and the tragedy that shaped both their lives – the hazy days surrounding the wedding and the future. Each of the three characters, along with their children and friends, are richly drawn, so the reader never takes sides. Touching on everything from climate change to friendship, grief and addiction, it’s a sprawling novel that leaves you gripped to the very last page.
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Buy now £15.39, Amazon.co.uk
'Consider Yourself Kissed' by Jessica Stanley, published by Hutchinson Heinemann
Best: Literary rom-com
Release date: 8 May 2025
Genre: Literary romance
A romcom for people who don’t like romcoms, Jessica Stanley’s Consider Yourself Kissed is the perfect summer holiday read. It follows Coralie, an Australian in her late Twenties working at a copywriting agency in London. New to the country, she saves a single dad’s daughter from drowning (in true rom-com style), which soon leads to a relationship.
The romance is set against the turbulent political landscape between 2013 and 2023. During this time, the UK had five prime ministers, Brexit happened, and then a pandemic hit. While some might be wary of reliving such recent bleak times, the narrator’s hatred of certain political figures (Boris) and sympathy for others (Theresa May and her coughing fit) make for hilarious and relatable reading. The colourful cast of characters adds to the novel’s joyous appeal, from the stepdad called ‘Tory Tom’ to the lesbian grandmas (dubbed ‘GG’s’) and the endearing children. Stanley’s story is original, hugely clever and will make you happy cry.
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Buy now £11.99, Amazon.co.uk
'Flesh' by David Szalay, published by Jonathan Cape
Best: Portrait of masculinity
Release date: 3 March 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
David Szalay’s portrait of masculinity, money, sex and chance, Flesh, has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. It didn’t disappoint on reading, with the engrossing novel following Istvan from an apartment complex in Hungary to the upper echelons of London high society. We first meet the protagonist (a man of few words, we begin to find out) when he’s 15 years old, living with his mother in a quiet town in Hungary. He’s shy and isolated and becomes embroiled in a clandestine relationship with a lonely married woman next door, which soon sends his life spiralling out of control.
Fast forward decades later, and he’s served in the army and is suffering from PTSD. A series of chance encounters later, and he’s living among the super-rich, but his past has proven that everything could come crashing down in a split second. The moving and propulsive whole-life story is sparsely written with not a hint of the florid language often seen in prize-nominated tomes. It’s the kind of readable yet surprisingly profound story to get anyone out of a reading rut.
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Buy now £14.75, Amazon.co.uk
'Gunk' by Saba Sams, published by Bloomsbury
Best: About the complexities of families
Release date: 8 May 2025
Genre : Literary fiction
Following her acclaimed short story collection, Send Nudes, Saba Sams’s hotly anticipated debut novel has arrived. Gunk opens with Jules in a hospital holding a baby. But the child isn’t hers – the newborn’s mother, Nim, has disappeared. The novel uncovers how Jules ends up with the baby, exploring her time managing a seedy student nightclub on the Brighton seafront, Gunk.
It’s the perfect depiction of university nights out, complete with sours shots and sticky floors. The novel traces Jules’s relationship with her ex-husband Leon, a failed DJ and alcohol and drug addict, and the pair’s relationship with Nim, a new bartender. Sams’s characters are vividly drawn, from Nim’s tragic loneliness to Jules’s desire for motherhood. Parenthood is a running theme, from Leon’s overbearing matriarch to Jules’s parents' desperate desire to understand the path she’s taken. Though the plot is largely conventional, Gunk is a short and easily readable novel, with the structure of flashbacks keeping you engaged.
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Buy now £12.87, Amazon.co.uk
'Hunchback' by Saou Ichikawa, published by Penguin
Best: Translation
Release date: 6 March 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa is already a literary phenomenon in Japan, having won the country’s most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa, and been longlisted for the International Booker. Translated by Polly Barton – who translated last year’s hit novel Butter (£8.49, Amazon.co.uk) – this slender novel covers several heavy topics, from pornography to life with a disability, class and wealth.
The protagonist, Shaka, has myotubular myopathy, a neuromuscular disorder that causes weak muscles and breathing problems. Living in a care home founded by her well-off parents, Shaka has almost no contact with the outside world except studying for an online degree and writing anonymous erotic fiction and Tweets on the side. Longing for the sexual freedom she’s never had, an opportunity arises when a male care worker discovers her online identity and hints at his financial struggles. She offers sex in return for money, a transaction which explores what it means to be powerful (culturally, intellectually and financially) and powerless (physically and sexually). The author also has myotubular myopathy, which gives the book particular insight. Bold and thought-provoking, it deserves every accolade.
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Buy now £8.37, Amazon.co.uk
The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke, published by Little, Brown Book Group
Best: Non-fiction
Release date : 5 June 2025
Genre: Non-fiction/medical
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025, The Story of a Heart follows the journey of two children, nine-year-old Keira Ball and Max Johnson, whose lives become inextricably linked when Keira’s tragic death becomes Max’s chance of survival.
Dr Rachel Clarke begins by painting a tender portrait of the two children and their families before the unthinkable happens. In the summer of 2017, Keira suffers catastrophic injuries in a car accident, and while her heart keeps beating, the rest of her body, including her brain, shuts down. Meanwhile, Max faces an agonising wait on the organ donor register after he becomes hospitalised with a virus, leading to end-stage heart failure. When Keira’s family makes the brave decision to donate her organs, Clarke follows the journey of her heart to Max, where it eventually saves his life.
As well as crafting a deeply moving narrative of grief and loss, Clarke effortlessly weaves in the remarkable history of transplant medicine. You get a fascinating glimpse into the work of the extraordinary professionals – transplant surgeons, pediatric intensive care nurses, and transplant coordinators – who make these life-saving donations possible. It’s a story of how hope can arise from tragic circumstances, and one that will give you a great appreciation of the pioneering innovations that have made organ transplantation possible.
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Buy now £8.99, Amazon.co.uk
'All The Other Mothers Hate Me' by Sarah Harman, published by Fourth Estate
Best: Comedy
Release date: 10 April 2025
Genre: Comedy crime caper
Sarah Harman’s bitingly sharp debut, All The Other Mothers Hate Me, is a hugely enjoyable, addictive ride. It’s no surprise that it’s already been snapped up by Disney+ for a TV adaptation. Razor-sharp in its dissection of school gates culture (think Motherland in a £38k a term school), it follows single mum Florence, the ex-member of a successful girl band, whose 10-year-old son Dylan is the only thing keeping her afloat.
The novel is a crime thriller for those who don’t usually like Richard Osman-style crime thrillers. When Dylan’s rich classmate goes missing, Florence undertakes her own private investigation to try and clear her son’s name after he becomes one of the prime suspects. Funny and full of twists, it’s a real page-turner.
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Buy now £11.01, Amazon.co.uk
'Atmosphere' by Taylor Jenkins Reid, published by Hutchinson Heinemann
Best: Romance
Release date: 3 June 2025
Genre: Romance
Taylor Jenkins Reid – author of The Seven Husbands of Victor Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six - has returned with her latest love story, Atmosphere. Set in the Eighties, it’s part good old-fashioned romance and part period piece. The novel opens with a disaster while on a mission in space, with flashbacks detailing the astronaut team’s training on NASA’s US shuttle program. The cohort is the first to allow women into space, including the novel’s protagonists, Vanessa and Joan.
Reid’s intensive research shines through in the passages about NASA and the rigorous training program, but the heart of the novel is in Vanessa and Joan’s relationship. Tension mounts in the present disaster playing out in space, but a different kind of tension builds in the flashbacks, as the women grow closer while being forced to hide their romance. The writing can verge towards the cringeworthy, and the author largely glosses over the era’s pervasive homophobia. Nevertheless, if you love Reid’s previous novels, there’s no doubt you’ll enjoy the readable and romantic story in Atmosphere, too.
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Buy now £10.00, Amazon.co.uk
'The Phoenix Pencil Company' by Allison King, published by Fourth Estate
Best: Magical realist novel
Release date: 31 July 2025
Genre: Magical realism/literary fiction
A Reece Witherspoon Book Club pick, Allison King’s debut is a century-spanning story, from wartime China to present-day America. The thread of magical realism throughout nods to Gabriel García Márquez, but the novel is also enlightening on 20th-century Chinese and Taiwanese history.
It flits between the narratives of Monica and her grandma, Yun, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Monica is working on a new coding system at her university that connects strangers online, which she uses to find her grandma’s long-lost cousin, Meng. Successfully tracking her down in Shanghai, the elderly cousins begin a correspondence.
The story unravels through their secretive past living and working in their family's pencil factory in Shanghai during the Second World War under the Japanese occupation. King deftly paints a picture of the political tensions at the time and of the post-war immigrant experience in America. But at its heart, the Phoenix Pencil Company is an intimate story of familial love and connection throughout the generations. The magical elements also reveal themselves as a powerful plot device, so cast any realist cynicism aside. I did find the novel is a little slow at first, but rest assured, you’ll be gripped after the first few chapters.
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Buy now £14.19, Amazon.co.uk
'Slags' by Emma Jane Unsworth, published by The Borough Press
Best: About sisterhood
Release date : 8 May 2025
Genre: Comedy
Emma Jane Unsworth explored the chaos of your Twenties in Animals and the confusion of your Thirties in Adults. Now her latest novel, Slags, takes a look at midlife.
The book is set against the backdrop of a road trip between two sisters. Sarah is 41, single and child-free and is on a mission to eke out the last of her party years, dating a series of questionable men. Her younger sister Juliette is juggling children, a career and an unfulfilling marriage. To celebrate Juliette’s birthday, the two embark on a rare sisterly trip around the Highlands in a camper van. The sisters are fiercely loyal and comfortable with one another, but it’s obvious that they are holding back secrets and repressing moments in their shared history.
The chapters flit between the present day and Sarah’s angsty teenage years – at 15, she was madly in love with her English teacher and obsessed with boy bands, sex and the novelty of getting drunk. Juliette, on the other hand. was quiet and studious. Unsworth’s characters are as alive on the page as ever, with the themes of sexual identity, growing up, and sisterly love resonating with readers.
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Buy now £16.65, Amazon.co.uk
'All Fours' by Miranda July, published by Canongate Books
Best: Story about womanhood
Release date: 16 May 2024
Genre: Sexual awakening
With signature wit, the celebrated American writer and director Miranda July explores female reinvention, sexuality and menopause in her latest novel All Fours. Shortlisted in the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025, the novel follows a 45-year-old woman who sets out on a road trip from LA to New York. Instead, she ends up in an unconsummated affair with a handsome man in a motel room much closer to home (just 30 minutes, in fact). They dance, they talk, they share sexual fantasies, and three weeks later, she’s thrown back into her married, child-rearing life. Is this enough for her anymore?
July breathes fresh life into a well-trodden theme - how creative and sexual freedom are at odds with the traditional trajectory of a woman’s life. Her protagonist breaks free of convention to have her cake and eat it, too. Hilarious, profound and unhinged in the best way, there’s a reason why so many women love this novel.
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Buy now £8.49, Amazon.co.uk
'The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane Bradley, published by Sceptre
Best: Time-travel romance
Release date: 27 March 2025 (paperback)
Genre: Time travel
An addictive sci-fi romantic comedy, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is set a couple of years in the future, when the British government got their hands on a time-travel portal. As part of an undisclosed mission, they’ve brought back five “expats” from history. Among the time travellers is Commander Gore, a 38-year-old Navy officer from the 19th century who was part of Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic. In real life, he died in 1847, but in Bradley’s genre-bending tome, he’s forced to acclimatise to the 21st century, while our nameless narrator, a disaffected civil servant, is assigned as Gore’s “bridge” to help him settle in.
Grappling with everything from aeroplanes, dating apps, the British Empire and iPhones, what follows is a part girl-meets-boy (or Victorian-Arctic-explorer) love story and part thriller. Laugh-out-loud funny and a surprisingly powerful meditation on the climate crisis, it’s above all exciting, fun and a good old-fashioned page-turner that you’ll recommend to all your friends.
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Buy now £5.50, Amazon.co.uk
'The Wedding People' by Alison Espach, published by Orion
Best: Wedding-related comedy
Release date: 3 July 2025
Genre: Romantic comedy
A New York Times bestseller, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People follows a woman who accidentally gatecrashes a Rhode Island wedding. Phoebe Stone is a professor who has found out her husband has been having an affair. Recently divorced and depressed, she decides to book into the coastal luxury hotel that she had dreamt of going to with her husband.
Upon arrival, she realises the entire hotel has been booked out for a wedding party, and as Phoebe is in her finest dress, she’s mistaken for one of the guests. While the bride fears this stranger could ruin her carefully planned big day, Phoebe worries that her solo trip and the secret reason behind it are entirely spoiled. But among the chaos, an unlikely friendship blooms between the two troubled women. Laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly moving, you’ll have the most fun tearing through Espach’s charming novel.
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Buy now £7.99, Amazon.co.uk
'Universality' by Natasha Brown, published by Faber & Faber
Best: Social satire
Release date : 13 March 2025
Genre : Satire
Natasha Brown’s new book, Universality, explores similar themes to her critically acclaimed debut, Assembly (£8.99, Amazon.co.uk). The short novel – just 156 pages – opens with a viral longlead exposé written by down-on-her-luck freelance journalist Hannah. The whodunit-style piece investigates a gold bar used as a weapon in a brutal attack on a Yorkshire farm. Connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, a divisive newspaper columnist and a radical faction of anti-government activists, Hannah conducts a deep dive into the identity of the attacker.
Well-structured, the second half challenges Hannah’s account and questions what we can take at face value. Detailing the aftermath of the viral long read (from think pieces to potential lucrative screenplay adaptations), this witty social satire explores the power of language, power and the complexities of truth.
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Buy now £9.47, Amazon.co.uk
'Onyx Storm' by Rebecca Yarros, published by Piatkus
Best: Romantsy novel
Release date: 21 January
Genre: Romance/fantasy
The third entry in Yarros’ Empyrean series, Onyx Storm, continues the romantasy themes from books one and two in a tumultuous tale of love and sacrifice. For those not familiar with the series, it revolves around the college of Basgiath, where cadets – if they're brave enough – learn to become dragon riders. Onyx Storm picks up with the protagonist where Iron Flame left off (*spoilers ahead*), in Violet Sorrengail's second year, after we discovered that Xaden Riorson, her boyfriend and former wingleader, had begun to turn venin. The plot follows the pair as they navigate the search for a cure, all the while learning more about their magic (termed signets, in Yarros' world) and working to defeat the hordes of venin descending on the realm.
Yarros keeps readers enthralled from pages one through 500 and mixes her renowned spicy scenes perfectly with a whole host of tales awash with friendship, battle, humour and discovery. And, of course, it wouldn't be Yarros without the inevitable cliffhanger to tie it off. Guess we'll be waiting another two years...
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Buy now £12.50, Amazon.co.uk
'Food Person' by Adam Roberts, published by Hutchinson Heinemann
Best: Beach read
Release date: 3 July 2025
Genre: Comedy drama
Food writer Adam Roberts brings his knowledge of the culinary scene to his debut novel, Food Person. In a story reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada, it follows twenty-something Isabella Pasternack, who has just been fired from a Bon Appétit-esque food magazine in New York. Dreaming of writing a cookbook of her own, she instead accepts an anonymous gig ghost-writing the cookbook of actor Molly Babcock, whose own career is going down the pan.
Spurred on by the paycheck and the hopes of getting a co-byline, Isabella is met with resistance at every turn. Molly barely eats food, nor can she cook anything herself. Plus, her love and work life are both hanging by a thread, meaning every attempt Isabella makes at connection is met with cruelty. Roberts’ writing is sharp, witty and funny, with the plot moving at a whiplash pace. The characters are cartoonishly cliché, from Isabella’s frustrating indecisiveness and lack of self-confidence to Molly’s manipulative and evil actions. It’s the perfect easy-breezy beach read to devour on a sun lounger this summer.
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Buy now £13.39, Amazon.co.uk
'The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk, A Crowns of Nyaxia novel' by Carissa Broadbent, published by Tor Bramble
Best: Sequel
Release date: 5 August 2025
Genre: Literary romance/fantasy
The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk is the fourth (and highly anticipated) book in Carissa Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia series. It picks up where The Songbird and the Heart of Stone finished, with protagonists Asar and Mische separated after the gods discovered the pair’s failure to do their bidding.
Following the death of Atroxus (god of the sun), havoc wreaks across the lightless human realm. The underworld continues to crumble without Alarus (god of death), this time at an accelerated rate. We are reunited with former protagonists Oraya and Raihn from books one and two, though the circumstances make this a page-turner. Think: underworld monsters on a bigger scale, the fury of several gods and a tumultuous romance from start to finish. It wouldn’t be a romantasy without a few cliffhangers to keep you hooked, not to mention a sprinkling of spice. And, let’s not forget the comforting presence of Luce, Asar’s ghostly pup. The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk is a thrilling end to Mische and Asar’s duology, and a great read on a stormy afternoon.
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Buy now £16.39, Amazon.co.uk
What are the best new novels to read in 2025?
Florence Knapp’s debut novel,The Names, is arguably a future classic. It’s as devastating as it is life-affirming, which is a recipe for the perfect book to dive into this autumn.
For those who love a candid memoir, When The Going Was Good by Graydon Carter is a must-read, while David Szalay’s Booker-shortlisted novel Flesh is an engrossing novel that portrays masculinity, money, sex and chance.
Discover more great authors and books you’ll love in our fiction review section
