My Year In Books: 2025

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In 2025 I read 144 books for a total of 44,829 pages. I rated seven of them five stars, but three of those were re-reads. The other four are:

The Stand-In Dad by Alex Summers

“I’m a bit of a daffodil,” David said, smiling. “New beginnings and sunshine. They always remind me it’s never too late to start again.”

Cozy gay romance that jerked my emotions around expertly.

“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #7.5)

By Corporation Rim charters, all stations were supposed to be independent, like UplandGateway One, the nearest station to Mihira and New Tideland’s system, where a number of small corporates rented space but the station itself was sovereign territory. Being independent meant they might be anything from safe and orderly to a chaotic mess.

I really loved getting some insight into Perihelion/ART that’s not from Murberbot’s perspective.

Hold Me by Courtney Milan (Cyclone #2)

I think he is flirting. It would take a giant dork to flirt with, “I hope we both survive a super-flu infection,” but since his screen name is “Actual Physicist,” odds are that he is a giant dork.

This was the only Courtney Milan series I had not previously read, for the dual reasons that it’s a) unfinished and b) contemporary romance about billionaires. I think Milan might be the only author that could make me give five stars to a book about a tech billionaire’s son; I also suspect that the next book in the series is close to a decade late (and counting) in part because of the increasingly herculean task of writing sympathetic techbros while the real-world counterparts do their best to make the world worse.

While the first one was a sort of Prince and the Pauper-esque tale of trading places, this one is more of a The Shop Around The Corner situation, which I always enjoy.

After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian

But he’s spent ten years enthusiastically committing a felony whenever he touches a man. It’s difficult to retain much respect for the rule of law when he can’t live a fairly sedate life without committing a crime. This country has made him a criminal; it took his brother’s life and would have taken his own life too. He has nothing to say to anyone who thinks he should wave the flag anyway.

And yet—Patrick still believes the United States is worth something, despite Hiroshima, despite the Ku Klux Klan, despite this war and despite practically every page of every newspaper on the desk in front of him. He believes it, not because it’s true, but because he wants it to be true, because he wants to believe the people in the streets and the people in this building will come out on top. He wants to believe that enough people want to do the right thing.

It’s a book about grief, hope, and joy, set in a time when the country felt broken.