Books Read In 2025

I've read fifty books in 2025, up a little on last year. I seem to have settled into a routine of sorts with my reading and I think this amount is what I'd expect to read in a year at the moment.

I've continued to read some classics, my favourite of the ones read this year is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I've still got plenty of classics waiting on my bookshelf so I shall continue with these next year.

I've now come to the end of the Dr Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. There are fifteen books in all, I read the first one towards the end of last year and I've read the rest this year. What a fantastic series this is. Dr Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist who helps the police solve cases. There's a new murder/mystery to solve in each book, but more than that, the characters in these books are just brilliant and it's the wanting to know what happens in their lives which keeps you turning the pages. If you haven't read this series I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Janus Stone - Elly Griffiths

The Teashop Girls at War - Elaine Everest

Winter's Wishfall - Ceri Houlbrook

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

The House at Sea's End - Elly Griffiths

The 24-Hour Cafe - Libby Page

The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher

A Little Place in Prague - Julie Caplin

Nella Last in the 1950s - Nella Last

A Room Full of Bones - Elly Griffiths

We All Live Here - Jojo Moyes

A Christmas Wish at Woolworths - Elaine Everest

Dying Fall - Elly Griffiths

The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey

The Outcast Dead - Elly Griffiths

The Appeal - Janice Hallett

The Ghost Fields - Elly Griffiths

This One Life - Amanda Prowse

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides

One Last Secret - Adele Parks

The Woman in Blue - Elly Griffiths

Always You and Me - Dani Atkins

Lady Susan - Jane Austen

The Watsons - Jane Austen

Sanditon - Jane Austen

New Horizons for the Woolworths Girls - Elaine Everest

The bookshop of Secrets - Kerry Barrett

My Darling Boy - Helen Cooper

Anna O - Matthew Blake

The Chalk Pit - Elly Griffiths

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The Four Winds - Kristin Hannah

The Dark Angel - Elly Griffiths

The Time Machine - HG Wells

The Stone Circle - Elly Griffiths

All Things Consoled - Elizabeth Hay

A Terrible Kindness - Jo Browning Wroe

No One Saw a Thing - Andrea Mara

Tell Me Everything - Elizabeth Strout

The Lantern Men - Elly Griffiths

The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah

The Night Hawks - Elly Griffiths

Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier

In the Time of Five Pumpkins - Alexander McCall Smith

The Locked Room - Elly Griffiths

The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories

The Last Remains - Elly Griffiths

The Impossible Fortune - Richard Osman

My favourite read this year is undoubtedly The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Eleanor bought me this book for Christmas last year, I'd read so many great reviews of it and every one of them is so richly deserved. 

Other favourites were The List of Suspicious Things, The Silent Patient, The Four Winds and A Terrible Kindness. The whole of the Dr Ruth Galloway series is definitely up there too. It's been a very good year for finding great books.

Eleanor bought me Holy Island by LJ Ross for Christmas 2024 but I haven't got round to reading it yet. I've had the next four in this series bought for me this Christmas, so I now have the first five books in the DCI Ryan series. I'm hoping to get started on these very soon, though there's twenty five rather hefty books in this series so it may take me some time to work my way through them all.

Do you keep a tally of the books you've read? I'd love to know what your favourite books of the year are, please do tell me in the comments, it's always good to have recommendations.