Each year at this time, I share the books that moved me most—the ones I found myself imploring friends to check out, the ones I stayed up too late reading, the ones that shifted something inside me. Books are more than mindless escape. Stories help us make sense of things; stories help us heal. Stories change us, and they help us change.
Here are the books that changed me in 2025, organized in a way that I hope helps you in your holiday gifting.
For the season itself—heartbreaking and heartwarming stories set at Christmas:
Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These are both slim volumes that deliver such emotional reward. Capote’s story captures the tender friendship between a young boy and his elderly cousin as they prepare fruitcakes each December, a portrait of love and loss rendered in beautiful prose. Keegan’s novella, set in 1985 Ireland, follows a coal merchant who discovers something troubling at the local convent days before Christmas and must decide what kind of man he wants to be. Both stories break your heart and somehow also lift it—reminders that small acts of kindness and connection matter more than we know.
For cozy winter nights curled up with a mystery:
Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series transformed me from someone who’d never picked up a mystery novel into someone utterly hooked. French’s writing is gorgeous, her psychological insight so sharp and true. These aren’t just mysteries to solve—they’re explorations of how the past haunts us, how memory shapes reality, and how we become who we are. Start with In the Woods and prepare to lose yourself in the twisting streets of Dublin.
For an epic journey into another world:
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet is an immersive trip into post-war Naples and the fierce, complicated friendship between two women over six decades. Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, Ferrante draws you into a world of poverty, ambition, violence, and love with such intensity you’ll forget your own life for a while. This is the kind of series that consumes you entirely, and that you’ll think about long after reading the final page.
For a dear friend who deserves to be celebrated:
Love and Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food and Love by Kim Fay unfolds through letters between two women in the 1960s. This book will make you want to write actual letters again—the kind with stamps and stationery. It will also make you want to cook, to savor, to slow down. Fay captures what it means to be truly known by another person, the kind of friendship that nourishes like a perfectly prepared meal.
For the curmudgeon in your life, who could use some wisdom (but would never admit it):
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman is the perfect antidote to toxic positivity. Burkeman explores the “negative path” to happiness through Stoic philosophy, Buddhist meditation, and the acceptance of uncertainty. It’s self-help for people allergic to self-help; thoughtful and deeply human without a single affirmation or vision board in sight.
For escape into pastoral England with a timeless heroine:
Sometimes we need to step completely out of our own time and into another. In 2025, rereading Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was medicinal time travel for me. It felt like stepping through a portal—the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors, the gothic mystery of Thornfield Hall, and at its center, a heroine who refuses to diminish herself for anyone. Jane is fierce, moral, passionate, and uncompromising in her quest to live and love on her own terms. She’s as relevant today as she was in 1847.
For women at midlife navigating what comes next:
Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck is a collection of essays that feels like a conversation with that straight-shooting friend who always makes you laugh. She turns the indignities of aging into comedy, while also breaking your heart with truth. Ephron writes about maintenance, vanity, mortality, and everything in between, with clear-eyed honesty. If you love this one, pick up her first book, Heartburn—semi-autobiographical fiction that taught me years ago to “be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” That lesson continues to guide me.
This holiday season, consider that in giving a book, you gift a potential transformation: A portal into another world, another perspective, another possibility. Because ultimately, stories do more than entertain. They help us live better, deeper, more connected lives.
For more recommendations, check out my December posts from last year and the year before.
