Top Ten Tuesday/Best Books Of 2025

The year changed, but I didn’t, so instead of the long introduction I’m used to, I will tell you that I finished 16 books, and it’s just the 3^rd for me, so that’s great if I say so myself. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.

January 6: Best Books I Read in 2025. I decided to add even books I didn’t give five stars

Goodreads Blurb:

Luna, a gentle stray dog, forms an unbreakable bond with Nancy, a kind sixth-grade girl who sees her not as a stray, but as a friend. As Luna welcomes a litter of puppies, Nancy becomes their guide and protector, facing bullies, dangers, and challenges with growing courage. Through their journey together, Nancy learns the true meaning of compassion and discovers how even small acts of kindness can change a life. When she realises Luna has no safe place to call home, Nancy sets out—with determination and love—to build her a shelter, proving that dogs are truly humans’ best friends and that stray animals deserve extra care, warmth, and understanding from all of us.

Goodreads Blurb:

When the life they’ve been building starts to fall apart, they’ll need to fight their past demons and an unknown enemy.

Eden’s betrayal by someone she loved

Matt’s failure to stop the Camp Carroll massacre

Keir’s manipulation and abuse in XIX

Blaine’s sobriety

Caleb’s excommunication from his faith and family

Hutton’s sole purpose, the reason for his existence-destruction.

The person targeting them knows their weaknesses and exploits them fully. Not everyone will make it through this alive.

“I’ve been waiting. I’m dying to meet you.”

Goodreads Blurb:

Sometimes the holidays are messy… Christmas is the season of joy, mistletoe, and, unfortunately for Ryanne, the pressure of bringing home a date. When she vents to Elliott, her best friend and co-manager at the small-town office supply store, he impulsively grabs her phone and texts her mother that they’re dating.

Date. Ing.

I’m utterly speechless.

Elliott Hutson, the man who knows all my secrets, the one who’s never been serious with anyone, and the picture of Male Perfection that makes my pulse leap and frog, has now dived headfirst into my family drama. And as much as I pretend to be annoyed, I can’t deny the flutter in my heart.

I’ve never had a fake boyfriend before—getting a real one is hard enough—but Elliott makes everything look so easy. And I’m absolutely positive the twinkling lights and Justin Bieber Christmas tunes are influencing the way he keeps dropping his gaze to my mouth.

Or maybe I’m not absolutely positive. Maybe The Biebs really does make true love happen.

As we navigate the slippery slope of fake dating, the lines between pretend and reality blur. Our stolen glances over family meals become lingering looks. Our playful banter near sprigs of mistletoe turns into something charged with real emotion.

Suddenly, the festive chaos around us isn’t the only thing that’s messy.

Our feelings are too.

Goodreads Blurb:

Those Missing Years

A Story of Courage, Survival, and Hope During the Darkest Days of War

How do you survive when the world you knew is torn apart?

In the bitter cold of wartime London, young Rose faces a life filled with heartbreak, loss, and terrifying uncertainty. Forced to leave behind the only home she knows, she is thrust into a new world of fear, resilience, and hidden strength.

From the deadly streets of the Blitz to the harsh realities of evacuation, Those Missing Years is a powerful coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of World War II. Battling loneliness, betrayal, and unimaginable cruelty, Rose must summon a courage far beyond her years as she clings to the hope of a brighter tomorrow.

But in a world shattered by bombs and broken promises, will Rose find her way back home—or will the war steal everything she loves?

Goodreads Blurb:

Every night, between two and four in the morning, Adrian signs himself into existence.

Trapped in a body that feels like a stranger’s, the seventeen-year-old writes letters to the boy he knows he’s meant to be—the one with a flat chest, a deeper voice, and a future he can finally live in. It’s a secret ritual, a lifeline in the suffocating darkness of gender dysphoria.

But one night, the impossible happens.

A reply appears on the page, in his own handwriting but impossibly confident. The ink is a different color, the words a prophecy of a future he barely dares to dream of. His future Body is writing back.

As this magical correspondence unfolds, guiding him with uncanny predictions, Adrian must navigate the treacherous realities of his a mother who would rather have a dead daughter than a living son, and a powerful first love with Eli, another trans kid who sees him for who he truly is. The letters promise him a future, but to get there, he must survive the present.

Is the Body a hallucination, a miracle, or simply proof that hope can write back from the future? And can these letters save him as he fights to align his reality with his soul?

Goodreads Blurb:

When seventeen-year-old Grace Fisher’s family restaurant keeps flooding, everyone else sees disaster—but she sees possibility. Armed with months of coastal research and an unshakeable belief that science can save her community, Grace fights to prove that working with rising seas is better than fighting them. But convincing her traditional parents to trust her revolutionary ideas is nothing compared to navigating her growing feelings for River, the brilliant climate activist who sees Grace’s potential when no one else will. As storms intensify and time runs out, Grace must find the courage to defend her research, her relationship, and her vision of a future where love and science can change everything—one tide at a time.

Goodreads Blurb:

When fifteen-year-old Tyrell Forrester gets caught up in a high-profile armed robbery, he’s sentenced to eighteen months in a young offenders’ prison. Now he’s getting out, and he’s determined to turn his life around. Despite his release, systemic discrimination makes it difficult for Ty to truly be free. Inspired by a visiting poet while inside, Ty discovers a whole new world through spoken word and is finally finding his voice. But will society ever see him as anything other than a criminal?

Goodreads Blurb:

She was Wife Six.
Now she’s the only voice left to tell the truth.
Nora never asked to join a cult. But when her father disappeared and her mother surrendered to a faith that called obedience “love,” Nora was given a new name, a number, and a to serve.
Inside the isolated compound of the Doctrine, girls are married off by ranking, silenced by rituals, and punished for doubt. For years, Nora obeyed. Until the night Elise burned—and everything changed.
Now, hunted by the man who claimed her body and soul, Nora must choose between survival and justice. With the help of a rogue boy, a broken witness, and a legacy of women who dared to resist, she sets out to shatter the system that built her cage.
But freedom comes at a price.
And not every prisoner wants to be saved.

Goodreads Blurb:

t’s Halloween and Grandma Witch has lost her hair! What will she do? She has a big party to go to that night, but she can’t go without her hair! She wonders if her Halloween friends can lend a helping hand or ‘something’ else – so she can go to the party.

This book is a posthumous tribute to the author, Jeanette Rolph, who passed away from cancer in January 2020.

Jeanette was in the midst of accepting this new and cruel reality of her condition. She understood that the intensity of the treatments could lead to her losing all of her hair. Not long after she had shopped for potential wigs, she began to be worried about how the further shock and heartbreak from her children and grandchildren would be seeing her without any hair. She then decided to make that transition into a book – a story of love, laughter, and joy that her posterity could read.

As Halloween that year was fast approaching (not to mention that day was a close second to Christmas for her), she decided on the setting for her a kind witch who lost her hair! And must investigate where it could have gone – with the help of her Halloween friends.

Goodreads Blurb:

Jodi Gray has lived through loss, love, and the long road of becoming herself. In this honest and deeply human story, she shares what it means to rebuild after pain, to find home again, not just in a place, but in one’s own skin.
From her experiences in the mental health system to creating safe housing for trans and gender-diverse people, Jodi’s journey is one of courage, compassion, and quiet strength. She writes not to be admired, but to be understood, to remind others that they are not alone.
Told with grace and truth, her story is about what it really means to heal, to belong, and to keep showing up for yourself and others, even when it’s hard.

Alex