Best of the Best 2025 Contemporary and Historical Fiction
Bookworm Reviews
It's that time again.
I want to apologize with how late this series is this year. I had health problems through December and January. My chronic back pain is becoming excruciating to the point that I am probably going to need surgery or at the very least, treatment. I am working on getting them X-rayed.
My glasses broke in December and I have spent a month without glasses. I have a new pair but I also have cataracts and will need surgery this year.
Now on with the Best of the Best 2025!
This is similar to last year, chosen by genres Contemporary, Historical, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery/Thriller, and Nonfiction. As usual series reviewed over the course of one year count as one.
You will notice last year that there is considerable overlap between genres. Some Nonfiction uses literary techniques. A Historical Fiction novel is a semi autobiographical account based on the author but much was speculated. Fiction novels blur between one or more genres and had to be put into one specific category. If you disagree with their placement, you are certainly well within your rights to do so. I completely understand just let me know. Overlap makes for great reading but difficult placing later so these were actually very difficult to decide not only which books to select but where they belonged.
I would love to thank the authors, publishers, and PR groups especially those at Reedsy Discovery, LitPick, Mocking Owl Roost, Reader Views, Henry Roi PR, Hidden Gems, Voracious Readers Only, and DP Books. Above all thanks to the Readers of this blog for making working on it worthwhile. Thanks and as always Happy Reading.
Contemporary Literature
This is a cerebral and introspective character study about a man who uses his interest in philosophy, travel, and creative writing to solve mysteries in his own life.
Ollie Tucker, a graduate with a BA in Philosophy, leaves his dysfunctional family to teach at a community college, develop a relationship with Mary, another teacher, and get some answers about his estranged Uncle Scotty.
Ollie’s interests allow him to explore who he is and where he came from. Philosophy gives him the tools to ask the deep questions about his existence and weigh what he learned in school with what he learned in life. Novel writing gives him escapist wish fulfillment and a mask of detachment to consider his real and fictional journeys. His travels give him the opportunity to explore new experiences and learn why he is stuck in the same emotional places even as he physically moves.
Most importantly Ollie's studies, writing, and travel help him learn about Uncle Scotty. The more he learns, he realizes that his romantic image of his uncle was a false one that hid a disturbing reality.
This is a powerful and sometimes disturbing novel about grief, loss, and nostalgia.
Artist Drystan Cane has been living a hermit-like existence since the murder of his daughter, Alba. He once lived a happy idyllic life with his family but now his only remaining emotions are crippling depression and boiling rage against Alba’s killer.
The emotions are deeply felt through Drystan’s first person narration. The nostalgia of his life before is clear, matter of fact, and painful. His words are those of someone whose real life slipped away. The murderers took Alba's life physically but Drystan's life mentally.
The book does not focus on Drystan's investigation so much as how he feels about it and uses it as a means to cope with his anguished, crippling loss. He moves from frozen despair to fierce aggression. He involves the Reader in his range of emotions then pushes them away lost in his own isolation.
This is a continuation of my favorite Contemporary Fiction novel from 2024, S.M. Steven’s Beautiful and Terrible Things. Instead of a wide-reaching novel about six friends focusing on life, love, and many of the social problems of 2020’s life, this novella takes a streamlined approach of focusing on one character, his friends, and family.
Xander Wallace is a political activist from a very traditional wealthy family. Over the course of six chapters, he invites each of his circle of eccentric friends for dinner with his rigid father and his placid stepmother.
Xander is aware of the privilege in which he was raised but also recognizes the superficiality and artifice. He lived with creature comforts but an inability to live his personal truths. It takes Xander’s friends to bring out his authentic self.
Xander’s friends Terrence, a fellow political activist, Jessica, an ambitious financial advisor, Charley, a mentally ill bookseller, Sunny, a non-binary solar panel installation sales rep, and Buwan, an introspective artist navigate Xander through activism, practical advice, emotional and mental assistance, sexual identity, and creative thinking. They influence Xander to be himself despite his family's objections.
This is an evocative and sensory novel about love, death, and how to cope with the inevitable end of life.
Mark Rennie and Karen McKenzie are both afflicted with terminal illnesses. They could get treatments and chemotherapy or they could wait for the inevitable. Mark and Karen make their decisions but also decide to make the most of the time they have left together. They travel for 100 days to do all of the things that they wanted to do and become closer as a couple.
The book is a descriptive travel guide of their various experiences. Mark and Karen walk across the Great Wall of China, dance in Cuba, swim with sharks in Cuba and many others. They have a scenic itinerary of exciting adventures and experiences.
This book also captures the different ways that people experience death. Some want to do everything possible to medically prolong their lives while others would rather face death on their own terms. There is no one specific or proper way to face death and those ways can be just as individual as the people who experience it.
Despite being a Contemporary Fiction novel, this almost reads like an idyllic fantasy, with an almost otherworldly enchanting setting and characters.
Sophie Groenvald ends a disastrous vacation destitute and abandoned by her boyfriend. She finds her way to the Aviary Inn owned by Ms. Ava Roxtoby who hires her to work at the inn. As Sophie gets to know the older woman, she realizes that they have a stronger link than they originally thought.
Aviary Inn is reminiscent of a fairy castle with its beautiful descriptions, bird motifs, and the means of finding it by word of mouth. Ava herself is similar to a threshold guardian or White Witch who connects with nature and gives advice to those who will listen.
However, there is a stark reality that moves this beyond semi-Fantasy. As Sophie explores Ava's past, she sees a woman who had been hurt in the past and builds a fortress to prevent herself from getting hurt again. Sophie is able to enter that fortress with love, trust, and an unbreakable bond.
This anthology captures the struggles that women face including love, family, work, appearance, gender identity, sexuality, relationships, emotional and mental health struggles, fear, questions of identity, self-reflection, and authenticity.
It uses various styles and genres such as Thrillers, Mysteries, Science, Fantasy, Historical and Contemporary Fiction to explore the wide tapestry of the female experience.
A woman recalls an influential friend who may or may not exist. A little girl has a terrifying encounter with a kidnapper. An underwater circus receives new management after a violent riot. An office worker doesn't recognize her own face in a futuristic workplace. Two women with a similar birth defect take very different paths in life.
This anthology has a lot to say about women and uses many unique and colorful ways to express it.
This may be an adorable whimsical concept for a series about humans seen through the eyes of their stuffed animals but the themes and subject matters discussed makes this definitely a unique and intelligent series for adults.
Over the course of two books, various Teddy bears comment on their humans who are caught in various emotional, mental, and physical crises. Fair Bear reports on its human friend Kelli who is coping with an abusive relationship. Love Bear tries to help Richard improve his perpetually unlucky love streak. Sleepy Time Bear is the friend of Ms. V, a brilliant but troubled teacher in Paris. Tiny Bear hangs on the keychain of FBI Agent Chloe Stodgson while she investigates a drug ring. Rocco Bear accompanies the Alessi family who have to enter witness protection because of their proximity to organized crime.
Vjota brilliantly captures the unique narrative voices as each ursine character observes the human troubles. They straddle lines between childlike innocence and confusion over the subtle human experiences and world weary wisdom and snark over their friends getting into and out of conflicts.
The human characters are also well rounded. They deal with problems like domestic violence, addictions, the dating scene, familial estrangement, divorce, death, crime, and attempted murder. These are dark subjects that are told through fresh pairs of eyes that are bearly human but always waiting to be furever friends.
This book expertly explores the themes of finding solidarity and community during times of stress, trauma, and war.
Set during the recent Russia-Ukrainian War, a group of four women meet at the home of Kathryna, an elderly woman. Her three new friends are Yulia, a newlywed, Anna, a middle aged wife of a career soldier, and Natalya, a mother. The three younger women are brought together after the deaths of their husbands during the war.
The four characters’ lives are told through flashbacks that focus on their lives and relationships before the war then moves to the present as they share memories, laughter, tears, loneliness, and heartbreak. Because they represent different ages and generations, we see them making different plans to move into the next transitions in life only to be cruelly interrupted by the war.
In collaborating and communicating with each other and inviting other mourners, The Sunflower Widows learn that while grief never really goes away, there can always be something positive found in sharing it and helping others.
This is a Gothic Literature novel that focuses on child abuse, trauma, and finding one's personal power and independence.
Violeta Valentine is isolated by her mother who keeps her secluded from the outside world. Her only contact is with her brother, Tommy who tells her what he sees and hears every day at school. The toxic situation explodes when their mother puts both children in danger.
Violeta concerns the anxieties that are found between parents and children and siblings. The Valentine Family engage in continuous conflict, emotional and psychological instability, and fragile dysfunction.
The siblings are confined and battered by their mother’s volatile and abusive behavior so they can only rely on each other. They support each other to break from her, recognize their comfort, strength, and independence, and find sanctuary and a real home.
This book is a deconstruction of various genres including Romance and Conspiracy Thrillers that focuses on the troubled souls within them. It is also a strange, stark, uncomfortable, troubling, disturbing, critical, skeptical, pessimistic ride through the darker aspects of the human mind.
The plot focuses on three residents of the Sinnenberg Mental Institution in Germany. Eva Jaeger is involuntarily committed after she responds to molestation with violence. Eva’s brother Isaak silences the thoughts in his head by committing self-harm. Finally, Sebastian Guzman has been in Sinnenberg long enough to show the twins around but his friendly nature hides a violent past.
The three have been hurt and use different means to express that hurt even against others. They are not in great emotional places to develop romances so for now it's much more effective to establish empathy and understanding with other individuals who have been there and know what they are going through.
The book has an undercurrent of Nihilism that makes it even more disturbing. The characters have been betrayed by people outside and inside the institution. They are cold, barren, used, abused, and cast adrift. Sinnenberg becomes a microcosm of the world that they left behind as they are being monitored by outside forces that control them.
Once they try to make their escape, they are struck by the reality that whether they are in or out of the institution, they will always be captives. Sometimes the only meaning that can be found in life is by connecting with people to help them survive it.
Honorable Mention: Recovering Maurice by Martin Zelder, Goon by Glenn Erick Miller, Bird of Paradox and Other Tales by John Devlin, 14 Hours of Saturn by Mike J. Kizman, Antonio's Odyssey by Mike Pagone, The Book of Outcasts by Matt Nagin, Small Worlds by Gail Vida Hamburg,
Historical Fiction
10. Lunch Ladies by Jodi Thompson Carr
This book is a lovely pleasant experience of a few weeks spent exploring the inner lives of three characters in Hanley School District in Hanley, Minnesota circa 1976.
Crystal’s active imagination is a distraction from her conflicts with her aging grandmother and dour niece. Coralene’s simple life and happy marriage are complicated when her wayward nephew moves in. Sheila finds her usual routines and independence challenged by a new romance.
The book explores how conflicts of love, family, separation, and death affect the characters. There's enough quirky charm and harsh drama that makes Readers like even love these characters as they go through these shakeups in their lives.
The town and its residences have peculiar names, interests, and hobbies that make them stand out and for the Readers to recognize them. The small town atmosphere is benign if claustrophobic at times with minor issues being treated as major problems and people often in everybody’s face and in everybody's way. However, there is a distinct edge to the book particularly towards the end that shakes the characters out of their dull complacency and forces them to really look at their lives objectively.
Rebecca Rosenberg is no stranger to the blog and her latest book about a fascinating historical woman is another addition to her already impressive catalog.
This focuses on Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, the daughter of miner and entrepreneur Elizabeth McCourt Baby Doe Tabor. The book explores about twenty years of Silver Dollar’s life as she embarks on an entertainment career, is romanced by dangerous men, and struggles with mental illness.
Silver Dollar embodies the Roaring 20’s with effervescent joie de vivre, her constant mobility, and modern independent spirit. She moves from bit player, to stunt woman, to actress, to dancer, to animal tamer. She meets a dizzying array of film stars, monsters, and other early 20th century celebrities. Her life is unpredictable but not boring.
There is a darker side to her nature because she has Dissociative Identity Disorder and sometimes her alter, Echo LaVode takes over and puts Silver Dollar into potentially dangerous situations. She sometimes leaves Silver Dollar helpless and vulnerable, a victim of unpredictable tendencies that push her over the edge.
This novel is about a captivating woman and is filled with deep emotional pain, joy, passion, ambition, change, economic rises and falls, love lost and won, triumphs and tragedies.
Grace Granville leaves her wealthy family behind to marry Jack Gilmore, a coal miner. A tragedy forces her to reexamine her life and start over while pursuing a career in fashion design.
One of the strongest themes in the book is change and the ability to adapt to it. Adaptability is one of Grace's strongest gifts as she has to reinvent herself a number of times throughout the book.
The book goes from a sweet frothy Romance between characters from different economic statuses and evolves into a harsh drama about achieving strength through adversity. Grace transforms from an innocent romantic obedient schoolgirl to a strong willed capable complex woman.
This book tells two separate stories with a theme of something pleasant and beautiful torn apart by greed and gain.
In the 1940’s Mary Boone starts investigating mysterious illnesses affecting the town and discovers that the new power plant is responsible. Almost twenty years later, Luke Hinson is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and he discovers other residents with similar long term illnesses leaving him to pick up where Mary left off. The Readers learn that Mary and Luke had more in common than an environmental investigation.
The two stories work well together as a beginning contrasted with the end of a story. We see the small town of Hanford, Oregon waking up after WWII and the Depression, accepting progress, and taking nature around them for granted. Then we see the results of a destroyed land, terminally ill residents, and a town shrinking because of the falling population. It shows how human error and misconception led to this end as much as greed and environmental destruction did.
We also see how Mary and Luke were affected by these changes and how their relationship moved from neighbors and acquaintances, to friends, to lovers. It is a troublesome unhealthy relationship but it is one born from loss and deep emotional connection. Once done it can't be undone. Like the environment surrounding them, it ends up destroyed leaving other generations to clean up the consequences.
This Psychological Thriller is among Van Laerhoven's best works. It deals with family dysfunction, post trauma scars from war and genocide, and the pursuit of vengeance and justice.
After a violent encounter with his abusive SS father, Hermann Becht and his mother Marina flee Germany and settle in France. Hermann decides to fight the enemy within by becoming a spy for Britain.
The book focuses on one man's survival during trying times as Hermann tries to reconcile the various political and nationalistic identities surrounding him such as his father's fanatic German loyalty and his mother's nostalgic longing for her Belarusian roots.
He also suffers from a damaged and fractured psyche after he investigates the concentration camps and comes face to face with the darkest, most subterranean dehumanizing acts that people commit towards one another.
5. Madame Fiocca by Suzy Henderson
This gripping and moving Historical Fiction covers one of WWII most decorated and famous female spies, Nancy Wake.
The book covers her colorful background, her career in journalism which she used to criticize Hitler, her marriage to Henri Fiocca, her world as a courier and spy, her daring adventures and frantic escapes.
The book described Wake with tremendous courage and independent spirit which she reveals in her first person narration. She is written as a strong willed spunky adventurer who is not thwarted by rejection. She finds her own way.
Wake's spying adventures are greatly detailed so the Readers vicariously experience the tension, bravery, and duplicity that are involved. Wake is often tested to her limits such as when she has to remember her coded identity while being questioned and takes a long strenuous 72 hour bicycle ride to deliver a message.
4. Bomber Jackets by Rob Santana
Santana is another long favorite of the blog and this book is a prime example of why his books condition Readers to expect the unexpected.
Patrick Madden is part of a gang that roughs up members of the LGBT+ community in 1970’s New York City. He is attracted to Erica Velez, a saucy trans tenant so he starts to question his and his gang’s actions and motives.
Santana brilliantly captures setting and character. New York in the 1970’s is a cesspool of economic crisis, poverty, crime, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. It is the type of environment where tension, violence, and murder are bound to break and innocent people are going to end up hurt or killed.
Patrick and Erica are interesting lead characters. Patrick complacently went along with his friends’ violence out of misplaced loyalty. Once their actions involve someone that he cares about, Patrick turns against them. Erica is a multi-faceted character who discovers her own identity and personal truth beyond her assigned gender at birth. Patrick and Erica bring out the best in each other.
This is another great Historical Fiction novel by another long-time favorite, Sharon Gloger Friedman. It focuses on the intricate complex plot which envelops the protagonist.
In 1880 orphaned Rose Larkin is adopted to become the companion of spoiled Emma Boynton. The two’s animosity, bankruptcy, death, and a blizzard alter Rose’s new life and force her to make some hard decisions that affect her future.
The book explores the Gilded Age economic disparity by focusing on the division between rich and poor. The opulent world in which Emma lives is practically a different world from the slum tenement in which Rose.lives.
A twist occurs halfway through the book that throws Rose into a different situation where she has to weigh the options between who she really is and who she wants to be.
2. The Lindens by Barney Jeffries
This book covers an extensive 150 years of an English house that becomes a home over the years to various families.
The Lindens was built in 1885 by businessman Arnold Cann. Various people live there including farmers, entrepreneurs, evacuees, immigrants, parents, children, spouses, authors, and historians.
The house becomes an important character in its own right as each family adds details, embellishments, and their own identities to the setting. We see additions getting built and being removed to fit the changes over the centuries. It is a beautiful, stately, opulent, steady, proud, warm, and inviting home.
The book also captures the various characters’s individualities and complexities. We meet Tessa Hobson, an intelligent literate dairy maid who wants to advance in life, Arthur and Eleanor Aldridge, a husband and wife children's book author and illustrator who take different paths when their book series ends, The Blakes, a family whose adult children bring their emotional baggage home with them for the holidays, and Marsha Wood, whose research of The Lindens brings the various generations together.
This year brought many books that don't fall neatly into any one specific category or genre. Some like this one walk a faint line between.fiction and nonfiction (Please read the full review on which is which for this particular book).
This is a tense, unpredictable, chilling semi autobiographical novel of Yarborough's experiences when he and his siblings were experimented on by the MKUltra program as children in the late 50’s.
The book covers Beth, Tommy, and Curtis Matthews’ (the fictional versions of Yarborough's family) time in the experiment and the different ways in which they suffered as adults. It also explored how they turned that suffering around to create new lives for themselves.
Tommy’s aggressive tendencies and programmed fear of death inspire him to become a successful orator and politician. Beth’s astral projection and second sight serve as springboards to her career as a best selling Science Fiction author. Curtis's virile images of superheroes and action films lead him to pursue acting and stunt work.
The experiments also result in mental health crises among the siblings. They experience paranoia, hallucinations, PTSD, depression, anxiety, OCD, suicidal ideations, and psychopathy. Only when they are able to discover the truth and explore what happened, who was responsible, and why are they able to create a better present and future from the scars of the past.
