12 Fantastically Awesome Books I Read in 2025

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali  I blew through this one for book club and I really really enjoyed it.  It takes place in Tehran from the 1950s-present day. Ellie and her best friend Homa are young girls when they meet in school in the 50s. It was a time in Iran when women were encouraged to go to school, and Homa declared she would someday be a judge and they’d be the lion women of Tehran who would change the world. When they entered university in the 60s things in Iran started to change. Sweeping changes in government threatened the rights of women in the country and Homa would not stand for it. She protested and made a name for herself as an activist until she’d been arrested for it. Ellie feels responsible for Homa’s arrest and horrible mistreatment while in prison. It’s a story of enduring friendship during a time of chaos in a country they call home. Very worthwhile read to give us all insight about how Iran was able to so radically change.

Young Rich Widows by Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, Cate Holahan and Vanessa Lillie I LOVED that this one took place in Rhode Island in the 80s.  RI has a storied history of organized crime. In fact witness protection was started here in RI because of all the organized crimes that were going on.  In this story the 4 women who were the wives/partners of 4 partners in a high end law firm are brought together because a plane crashed killing all 4 of their spouses.  Immediately after the plane crashed a local notorious mob boss started harassing these women for the $4 million that their spouses owed him. The story takes us through these women all figuring out that their spouses weren’t who they thought they were, and also through the underworld of organized crime and the very shitty things that mob bosses did in the 80s to keep control and get ahead. Very good read.

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera  OMG, yes please! Listening this one is a better experience than reading it I would think.  Lucy is from a small town in Texas, and has been accused to stabbing her best friend to death. She has no memory of the event, as they’d all been drinking. She was just found with Savvy’s blood all over her and scratches and bruises.  She has not been convicted because there isn’t actual evidence that she’s even done it. She has to go back home to Texas for her grandmother’s 80^th birthday party, but while the party prep is happening there is a true crime podcaster in town investigating the murder. So the chapters alternate between Lucy’s story moving forward and the podcast episodes where the investigation is unfolding—this is why listening to it was a great experience, it was a lot like Someone Knows Something. So Lucy gets interviewed by the podcast guy and agrees to help him, after all she needs to clear her name. And then of course they figure out what happened that night. But it’s super cool to hear all the interviews of everyone in town who has a theory and an opinion. Loved it. 

Yellowface by RF Kuang This isn’t what I was expecting at all and it was terrific! June is an author whose career never took off—not in the way her frenemy Athena Liu’s did. And June is jealous as hell, but remains friends with Athena anyway.  One night they’re hanging out in Athena’s apartment when Athena chokes to death. June calls 911 and then she grabs one of Athena’s unpublished manuscripts. She publishes it on her own.  But the thing is, she’s white and the book is about Chinese soldiers in WWI. She then has to face all the backlash of appearing to pretend to be Asian and publishing this book, which absolutely tortured her. Super interesting.  It sort of reminded me of the controversy when that book American Dirt came out, and people were talking about how a white woman has no business writing about the plight of migrants. It begs the question of whether someone who is not of the descent of the group they're writing about has any business writing from that perspective. Which, to me, that's what fiction is--embracing a character whether or not they represent you and fabricating a story from that person's perspective. I mean, did Shakespeare have any business writing Juliet's lies, then? Ultimately an awesome book. 

An Inspiring Recovery by Neil McCarthy  This is a very honest and brave memoir by a man who endured a psychotic break when he was 19 and in college. He had everything going for him, the grades, the bod, the friends, and then the sexual abuse he endured as a young child caught up to him in a spectacularly awful way, hence the break and the diagnosis of bipolar.  He has no idea how to manage his condition, and struggles to figure it out all while trying to finish college and be a young professional and figure out his life at the same time.  He takes us through what it was like to learn to manage his condition. He detailed his ups and downs, his successes and failures, and how he learned his own strategies to manage his condition but to also accept himself and his condition. This was an incredible story and I sincerely hope that more people with bipolar who are recovering from childhood trauma get their hands on this book. This book is full of hope, and it’s full of “You’re not alone, you can do it, here’s how I did it.” Very well done.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead  OK, I was pretty into this one and I read it on my June offshore sailing trip. It’s not a true story, but based upon real events. Marian Graves is a twin growing up near Missoula, Montana. She and her brother lost their mother in a ship sinking accident at which her father was the captain, and later jailed for his failure in sinking the ship. As she grows up, raised by an uncle, she becomes obsessed with becoming a pilot. She works as a booze runner during prohibition to earn for her pilot lessons, when a rival bootlegger decides to pay for her lessons. But there are strings attached. It’s all about how this woman has to figure out how to get to where she wants as a woman learning to do things that men typically only do, all with this benefactor who ultimately wants to ground her and keep her all to himself. It was an awesome book.

 

Isola by Allegra Goodman This one was based upon a true story that took place in the 1500s. Marguerite is French royalty, and her parents died when she was young. Because she’s a woman alone she has a male cousin who is her guardian who makes all her financial decisions for her, and of course she has no idea what he’s doing with her money and of course he does whatever the hell he wants with it. He invests in exploring the new world and decides to take her with him on the trip. While on the trip she and his right hand man fall in love, and the guardian isn’t psyched about that. So he abandons them with her made on a tiny island off the coast of Canada where she lives for two years and figures out how to survive and outlives everyone else. It is an incredible story of how someone who was incredibly sheltered gathers her strength and learns how to survive in one of the harshest climates in the world.  Then she gets rescued and gets to pay back the karma. An awesome story.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon This is the second time I am reading this one to refresh my memory for a book club. It's also the second time I am featuring it in one of these blog entries, which I realized when I went to upload the pic of the book cover. I love this book. I love everything about it. It’s about a woman who is a midwife in a small Maine town, based on a true story, and she helps everyone with their medical issues. One of her friends is raped by 2 prominent men in town and Martha has to testify in court about it. But one of the rapists ends up murdered and her son is one of the suspects. It was an awesome story and all the facts of the story were based upon the real Martha Ballard’s daily diary entries. Martha Ballard is also the great aunt of Clara Barton. 

The thing that made it different for me is discussing it in a book club. One of the things in the book is that Martha couldn't testify in the rape trial without either her husband or father present in the courtroom. Of course that's changed, but not by much. When you consider that rape victims need to collect other victims to strengthen their story, and the story of one woman getting raped by one man isn't enough evidence in the trial--like how they needed 60 some odd women to come forward when Bill Cosby was on trial. After all this time, why don't we fully believe women?

Did You Hear About Kitty Karr by Crystal Smith Paul I loved this one. It was about a black family that is in Hollywood. The mom is an actress, the daughter is also a famous actress. The daughters were left a massive estate by a white actress named Kitty Carr who had died and while she was a close friend of the family nobody really knows why she left this estate to these daughters. The story then splits and tells us about Kitty Carr, who we learn is a light skinned black woman passing as white—to the point where not even her husband knew. I am so fascinated by the concept of passing as white and what it meant at the time and how risky it was to be black passing as white in 1950s and this story dives into how it worked and what it all meant. Absolutely fascinating.

The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly Martha Hall Kelly has done it again. This book was awesome. It takes place just after World War II with women who were detained in the Ravensbruk concentration camp. The two women during the war worked with the French resistance and ended up getting caught as they were stealing information from local Nazi soldiers and then transmitting the info to the British. After the war they figure out that a lot of the Nazis have escaped justice and one of them starts tracking them down. The other one is trying to find her young son who was taken from her at the camp. When she is promised that she will be reunited with her son she learns that a former Nazi doctor is still up to no good after the war and she uncovers the whole thing. Very well done.

Class Action by Gail Ward Olmsted This is a spin off from her Miranda series. Lennon Gallagher is a law student and mentee of Miranda Quinn. Lennon joins a study group where she encounters the group leader who has stolen a copy of the Constitutional Law exam and tries to get her involved in purchasing it from him. Of course she doesn’t, but she is implicated in it anyway. On top of that, Lennon is financially holding on by her fingertips, her mom is fresh out of prison and is demanding of her time, and her boyfriend doesn’t understand the pressures she’s under in her last semester of law school and trying to finish school, take the bar exam, find a job and a place to live. An awesome story and Olmsted ratcheted up the stakes.