🌟 My 2025 5-Star TBR
Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby. And this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends, and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book.
Amelia Hruby:Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast about the many pleasures of reading hosted by me, Amelia Froomey. In my last episode, I talked about my faves and flops of my 2024 reading adventures. Last year, I read a 150 books, many of which were great, some of which were not, and I really attribute some of my frustrations with my reading from last year to some of the things I tried that just like weren't a good fit for me or some reading habits that I have picked up that just don't make me happy at the end of the day. And in the spirit of pleasure reading, I would like to change that. So my intention for my 2025 reading is to read less this year than I did last year, but to read better books.
Amelia Hruby:And by better, I just mean they bring me more pleasure, and pleasure in, like, the deeply joyful, like, Audre Lorde uses of the erotic kind of way, not the simply, like, that was fun and frivolous kind of pleasure. I read a lot of that kind of stuff in 2024, and I'm not demeaning it. It is fantastic, but it's not quite what I'm seeking in 2025. So with that goal in mind to read fewer books but read better books, I have pulled together a list of 25 books that I think might be 5 star reads for me that I intend to read in 2025. And as I did this, I also brought in another goal of mine for the year, which is to read more of the books on my physical TBR, which are the books that I own that are on the bookshelf in my house.
Amelia Hruby:I, in fact, have a whole bookshelf of books that I own and have not read, and I would like to read more of them this year. So when I constructed this 5 star TBR for myself, it's all from books that are on my shelves already. I already own all of these books. I do not have to go to the library. I do not need to buy anything.
Amelia Hruby:I will be reading 25 books I already own this year, all of which I think might be a 5 star read for me. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through those 25 books. I'm gonna tell you a tiny bit about each one and why I think it might be a 5 star read for me personally. This list spans fiction, nonfiction. We have fantasy.
Amelia Hruby:We have horror. We have literary fiction. We have romance. Kind of all of my favorite genres abound on this list. And that makes sense because it's meant to be not just like 5 star reads as a concept, like 5 star reads for me.
Amelia Hruby:I want these to be books that I give 5 stars to, so they include some of my favorite genres overall. So now that I've told you about the concept of this list and some of the types of books that are on it, let's dive in, shall we? Here are the 25 books on my 2025 5 star TBR. The first book on this list is Against the Loveless World by Susan Abolawah. This is a novel written by a Palestinian writer and activist, and it tells the story of a young woman who dreamed of marriage and financial and domestic security, and instead found herself struggling with displacement and being a refugee and sexual exploitation.
Amelia Hruby:According to the synopsis, she's sharing her life story from an Israeli solitary confinement cell. And when she returns to Palestine, she is transformed by the power of her reconnection with her native land. I bought this book at a basement bookstore in Brooklyn when I was visiting there at the end of 2023, and it sat on my bookshelf for all of 2024, and I think it's time that I read it. I have definitely just from flipping through, I can tell that the prose in this book is beautiful. I always appreciate reading stories about women's lives and other cultures.
Amelia Hruby:And, of course, I have in mind the genocide in Gaza. I have in mind solidarity with Palestinians as I am reading and diving into this book. So that is the first book on my 5 star TBR for 2025. My second read is a book that may be very well familiar to you, but I have not read it. So the second book of my 5 star TBR is the song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.
Amelia Hruby:Now this book has been recommended to me by so many people who have all said it was a 5 star read for them. And while I don't always think that 5 star reads for other people means it'll be a 5 star read for me, like, there have been enough other people who've said that that I feel like I should really give this book a try. Let me share the synopsis with you. Achilles, the best of all Greeks, son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence.
Amelia Hruby:Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond despite risking the god's wrath. They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little did they know that the cruel fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice. So I don't know if anybody else remembers the movie Troy starring Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom, but I do.
Amelia Hruby:And my teenage girlhood definitely does. And I feel like I watched that movie a
Amelia Hruby:lot of times before, you know, the views. And I think this book will probably bring that back up for me. So I bought a copy of this when I was in Seattle visiting a friend, and that was definitely over 6 months ago now. So I'm finally gonna get around to reading it this year, I promise, to myself and to all of you. And we'll see if it's a 5 star read for me.
Amelia Hruby:Up next on my 5 star TBR is Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. I loved the other Celeste Ng books that I have read. I adored Everything I Never Told You. I really enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere, and I bought this book, Our Missing Hearts, when it came out in 2022. Like, I bought it immediately and then I put it on my shelf and I never read it.
Amelia Hruby:So my understanding is that the premise of this book is about this young boy who lives with his father and who has a complicated relationship with his mother, who is a Chinese American poet, who left the family when he was only 9 years old. And he has grown up kind of disavowing his mother and her work, and he doesn't know what happened to her, but he gets this letter that has a cryptic drawing on it, and he's, like, pulled on this quest to find her. So I believe that that takes him on this journey into his history, into his Chinese American culture, and it looks like eventually to New York City. So I really love Celeste Ng's explorations of family culture and immigrant culture, and I don't know why I haven't picked up this book yet. So I look forward to reading it this year, and it just feels like a right fit on my 5 star TBR because I loved her other books and gave those 5 stars.
Amelia Hruby:So I really wanna try this one out and see if it's a 5 star read for me as well. The next book on my 5 star TBR is On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. I think everyone but me has read this book by now. And now that it's been well over 5 years since it came out, it is time for me to read it. So On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read.
Amelia Hruby:That's, like, the first sentence description of all the synopses and, of course, that immediately pulls me in. Let me read you the rest of the synopsis. Written when the speaker of Little Dog is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born, a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam and spans to Hartford, Connecticut, and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. This is a novel, but I know it is a deeply personal book and also has a lot of, you know, political commentary around race and class and masculinity. It's also blurbed by Celeste Ng on the back of the book
Amelia Hruby:that I'm now noticing. So I really
Amelia Hruby:look forward to reading this and I think it very well might be a 5 star read for me this year. Okay. I have 2 more sort of literary fiction picks on my 5 star TBR, then we will move to nonfiction next. So my next literary fiction book on this list is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. My beautiful friend, Grace, gave me a copy of this book back in the summer of 2022, and I have avoided reading it because I think it's really sad.
Amelia Hruby:So I don't want that
Amelia Hruby:to hold me back this year, so I am going to read it. Let me tell you a little bit about what it's about. Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single wide trailer with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through it all, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Amelia Hruby:The last sentence of the description is demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys and all those born into beautiful cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind. Just that sense alone makes me wanna cry. So I know I need to be emotionally prepared to read this book, but I am prepared to make space for that this year, and I'm really imagining it's gonna be a 5 star read, no questions asked. I mean, it won a Pulitzer prize. Right?
Amelia Hruby:So that doesn't always mean it's a 5 star read for me, but when one of my closest friends gives me the book and says you have to read this and it wins a Pulitzer prize, it feels like it's probably gonna be a 5 star read. And then my last literary fiction pick for my 5 star TBR is The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. This is another book that I have seen so many people say such amazing things about. And even over the past year, I've seen so many people say, I can't believe it took me so long to read this book. It is so good.
Amelia Hruby:So so I feel like I'm gonna join that bandwagon this year as I read this book and hopefully think it's a 5 star read. I know that this book is compared to the time traveler's wife and life after life, and the main character, Addie, makes this bargain that I believe makes her immortal, but destined to be forgotten. So the people she meets don't remember her even though she lives forever and meets people over and over and over again. But then 100 of years after this has started, she meets someone who does remember her and the plot unfolds from there. So I think this sounds super cool and interesting, and I love books that have to do with time and have to do with not necessarily immortality, but I feel like immortality is a certain kind of time travel and I love books about time travel.
Amelia Hruby:So I have high hopes for me and The Invisible Life of Addie Larue. Okay. Those are the more literary fiction esque books on my 2025 5 star TBR. Let's talk about the nonfiction books on this list. So the first book on this list is 1, again, I have owned for quite a while, and I feel like I should have read it by now, but I have not.
Amelia Hruby:I will own up to that in public, and that is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. So I have read portions of this book. I have read the serviceberry part many, many times, but every time I'm like, I'm gonna read this book, I pick it up and it's, like, 400 pages, and I get overwhelmed and I put it back down. So so I am committing to reading Braiding Sweetgrass this year, and I do think it will be a 5 star read for me. I know that Robin Wall Kimmerer is a indigenous writer, scientist, professor, and that in this book she talks about our sort of ecological consciousness, the way that we are all connected through the plants and what we can learn from the teachings of plants.
Amelia Hruby:It is a beautiful book from the portions that I have read and I really look forward to communing with the whole thing this year. Up next is another book that I really feel like I should have read by now. I've owned it for a while and people always tell me I'm gonna love it and that is Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown. Now this podcast is called Pleasure Reading and I do believe in embracing pleasure in our lives, particularly that sense of pleasure I talked about at the beginning, like, the pleasure that is deeper and joyful and even erotic over the pleasure that is perhaps frivolous or just, like, fed to us by capitalism. And I think that this book will teach me a lot more about that.
Amelia Hruby:So I look forward to reading it. I really love the style of it where it's at the front where it says written and gathered by Adrienne Maree Brown because there are so many people who contributed to this book. And I think that that's such a cool and interesting way to put a collection together, and I really look forward to reading this. I think and hope it will be a 5 star read for me in 2025. The next nonfiction book on my list is Radical Intimacy by Sophie k Rosa.
Amelia Hruby:The back of this book asks a question that got me to buy this book because I thought it was so powerful, and that question is, in a world where money rules, what does it mean to have good relationships? And from that question, this book really explores how capitalism shapes our intimacy and how we can kind of reshape what intimacy means to us and root capitalism out of our relationships in the process. So I'm really looking forward to reading this and I think that it's gonna be very inspiring read for me with some of the other things happening in my life this year. And so, yeah, that is Radical Intimacy by Sophie k. Rissa, another book I hope will be a 5 star read for me in 2025.
Amelia Hruby:The next book on my 5 star TBR is feminist city by Leslie Kern. This is another one I have owned for years. It looks like I bought it in 2020 and it has sat on the shelf since then. So let me reacquaint all of us with the synopsis. We live in a city of men.
Amelia Hruby:Our public spaces are not designed for women. There's little consideration for women as mothers, workers, or carers. The urban streets are at times a place of threat rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women, especially low income women, even more difficult. But what would a metropolis for working women look like?
Amelia Hruby:In feminist city, through history, personal experience, and popular culture, Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight, the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern reveals the way these issues are exacerbated as race and sexuality influence our encounters with urban spaces. In response, she offers an alternative vision of the feminist city, a space for friendship and solidarity where the transit system accommodates mothers with strollers, women can explore the streets day and night without fear of harassment, and imaginative approaches to housing make the city affordable once again. It is time to dismantle our assumptions about the increasingly urbanized world in which we live. Yep.
Amelia Hruby:That sounds like it's for me.
Amelia Hruby:It's just so obviously, like, everything that I care about in one book, and I need to read it. Do you ever have books like that where you're like, this is perfect for me and so I will
Amelia Hruby:let it sit on the shelf for 5 years? Like, I guess I do. And hence the 5 star TBR for 2025. Here we go. Okay.
Amelia Hruby:The last nonfiction book on my list is a memoir and that is The Yellow House by Sarah m Broom. I had the ebook version of this a while ago and I started it and I was like, oh, no, no, I need to read a physical copy of this. So, basically, it tells the story of the author's family and their yellow shotgun house in New Orleans, and it walks through her family's history and the city's history over the course of 20th century. And I love, me, a book about a house, like, whether it's a haunted house and it's a supernatural story, or it is a family home and we're getting this sort of historical, autobiographical story. I just think it it will be for me, and I know from looking through it that the prose is beautiful.
Amelia Hruby:I think it's a pretty dense read, but I'm hopeful it will be a 5 star read for me this year. Okay. Now that I've mentioned haunted houses, let's talk about the spookier books on this list. So I have 3 creepy horror reads on my 5 star TBR. The first is The Ghost Notebooks by Ben Dolnick.
Amelia Hruby:So this book was recommended to me by a couple people in one of the Discord servers I'm in about books, and they all talked about loving it. So I ordered myself a copy on Thriftbooks years ago, and now I am finally going to read it. Let me tell you what it's about, and then I'll tell you why I think it might be a 5 star read for me. So here's the synopsis. When Nick Barron and Hannah Ramp decide to move from New York City to the tiny upstate town of Hibernia, they aren't exactly running away, but they need a change.
Amelia Hruby:Their careers have flatlined, the city is exhausting, and they've reached a relationship stalemate. Hannah takes a job as the live in director of the Wright Historic House, a museum dedicated to an obscure 19th century philosopher, and she and Nick swiftly move into their new home. The town's remoteness, the speed with which Hannah is offered the job, and the lack of museum visitors are barely blips in their consideration. At first, life in the creaky old house feels cozy. They speak in masterpiece theater accents and take bottles of wine to the swimming hole.
Amelia Hruby:But as summer turns to fall, Hannah begins to have trouble sleeping and hears whispers in the night. One morning, Nick wakes up to find Hannah gone. In his frantic search for her, Nick will discover the hidden legacy of Wright House, a man driven wild with grief and a spirit aching for home. I think this will be a 5 star read for me because I love haunted house books. I love domestic thrillers, and I love books that weave in 19th 20th century philosophy because I have a PhD in that.
Amelia Hruby:So I think that this has all these threads that feel just sort of tailored to my taste, and it has been vouched for by some other readers that I adore. And so I'm hopeful it will be a 5 star read, and I look forward to finding that out this year. The next horror on my 5 star TBR is Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandello. So I read The Woods All Black by Lee Mandello last year, and I really enjoyed it. I don't think I gave it 5 stars, but I was so intrigued by this author.
Amelia Hruby:And so I went to my local bookstore, shout out to Soar Books, and I asked if they had any, Lee Mandello, and this is the one they had. And so here is the synopsis. What does it mean to be in kind with a nonhuman animal? Or in doctor Sean Kel Ludden's case, to be in kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves. Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subjects' perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness, to see the world through animal eyes, smell the forest thick with olfactory messages, even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill, and above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.
Amelia Hruby:Shawn's tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body, and the attention of her VC funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental world she's invading. I picked this for my 5 star TBR because I was so intrigued by Lee Mandela's work and also because it kind of felt like the answer to my desire for Night Bitch to be so much darker and also my love of, like, a sort of tech horror element. Like, it feels like it weaves that really nicely together for me, and so I think it really could be a 5 star read.
Amelia Hruby:It's also a very short book. It's only a 103 pages or something like that. So it will go quick whether I like it or not, and I look forward to finding out if it is a 5 star read for me. Okay. Now the last horror book on my 5 star TBR is the book of most precious substance by Sarah Graham.
Amelia Hruby:So Sarah Graham was the author of one of my favorite books of last year, Come Closer. It was one of the ones I picked for my 2024 faves list when I picked my 4 favorite books of the year. And I learned about this book, the book of most precious substance, from one of my favorite booktubers, shout out to Kayla, and it sounds wild. We love a premise about books and sex. So let me read this to you because when I read it, I was like, what?
Amelia Hruby:After an unbearable tragedy, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer until she gets a lead on a book that could turn everything around. The book of most precious substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written if it exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people on Earth are willing to pay Lily and her partner a fortune to find it if they can. Will Lily fulfill her own desires and join them, or will the book destroy her as it has so many others? The book of the most precious substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we will go to to get what we need and what.
Amelia Hruby:So this feels like another book that was made for me in a laboratory. I love books about books. I especially love horror books about books. So I think this could be right up my alley. I also love books about sex, and I like the sort of erotic darker edges of that sometimes.
Amelia Hruby:So I really look forward to reading this and I definitely anticipate it could be a 5 star read for me. Going a different direction, let's talk about the romances on my list. So there are 2 romances on this 5 star TBR. The first is 7 days in June by Tia Williams. This is another book that so many people have told me is not just a 5 star read, but their all time favorite romance.
Amelia Hruby:So here's the synopsis. Eva Mercy is a single mom and best selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive award winning novelist who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a black literary event, sparks fly. But what no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy torrid week madly in love and have been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Amelia Hruby:Oh, what a good setup. Okay, now I want to read
Amelia Hruby:this one immediately. So maybe that's my next read right there. It feels like it has all the elements for
Amelia Hruby:a 5 star read plus everybody's recommendations. I cannot wait. The next 5 star read on my list is maybe the one I am most suspicious will not be 5 stars, but we'll see how it goes. So this is One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle. I really enjoyed her book in 5 years, and this book is about a bond between a mother and daughter, and it's set on the Amalfi Coast.
Amelia Hruby:My mom's side of my family is Italian, and we have had these, like, dreams and dreams and dreams of going to Italy together. And we did take a family trip to Rome years ago. And my mom and my aunt went to Positano, and I went to Florence on a day trip separately. And there's something about reading this book that feels like a version of bittersweet wish fulfillment for me. It's also a book about grief because the main character's mother dies at the beginning of the book right before they're meant to go on this mother daughter trip to Italy.
Amelia Hruby:So the main character goes on it alone and processes her grief. And because of my, like, personal maternal connections to Italy, I think this could be a really great book for me, and I don't know why I haven't read it yet. There's something in it that like feels like it's gonna break my heart a little bit and maybe that's why I've stayed away from it so far. But I will read it this year. 5 star TBR.
Amelia Hruby:That's the goal. That's the plan. Okay. Up next, I have a mystery book and then some fantasy books to round us out. So my next book on the 5 star TBR is the inheritance games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
Amelia Hruby:Now I had seen this book around for a while. It was, like, on the tables at Barnes and Noble forever and ever and ever, and I never picked it up because I was kinda like, You mystery. I don't know. But last year, I loved reading the Truly Devious series, which was You mystery, and I really loved reading Jennifer Lynn Barnes' other series, the naturals. So I feel like this might be a really good fit for me, and I'm so intrigued to see what I think.
Amelia Hruby:So let me tell you what this book is about. Avery Grams has a plan for a better future, survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her luck changes in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves her virtually his entire fortune. The only catch, Avery must move into his sprawling mansion full of secret passages, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that was just disinherited.
Amelia Hruby:This includes the 4 Hawthorne grandsons, dangerous magnetic boys who grew up with every expectation that one day they would inherit billions. I think this sounds fun. It sounds like it has a sort of glasshouse vibe and I'm intrigued to see if I like it. And if I don't give it 5 stars, I'm going to try not to continue on in the series because I talked about in my 2024 reading flops episode that finishing series I'm not really enjoying has not been working for me. So, hopefully, I could just start this.
Amelia Hruby:Hopefully, it gets 5 stars and I keep going, but if it doesn't, I'm gonna stop. I'm committing to that here and now. Up next is a sort of surprise pick for me. This is a newer book that I had purchased at the very end of 2024, and it's called The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland. So the sort of lead on the back of the book is 3 girls, 1 supernatural killer on the loose.
Amelia Hruby:And this is a book that one of my favorite booktubers, again, a different one than before, this one's Cindy, rated one of her favorite books of 2024. And so I really felt like I wanted to give it a try, and I am very intrigued by this sort of murder meets magic plot. The synopsis, I think, gives quite a bit away, so I'm not gonna read it here. But the cover of this is beautiful, and there's a version with pink sprayed edges. So I do recommend that you look up The Invocations by Krystle Sutherland if you too like teenage girls, murder, and magic, and I look forward to finding out if this is a 5 star read for me this year.
Amelia Hruby:Now up next, I have 2 books that are the first book in beloved fantasy series. So the first is the cruel prince by Holly Black. Now I have stayed away from Holly Black because I kind of assumed she was a little, like, too You book talk for me. Like, that's something I can enjoy but don't always love. But I have just seen this specific book, The Cruel Prince, and the two books that come after it recommended
Amelia Hruby:over and over and over and
Amelia Hruby:over and over again. And I was finally like, okay, I need to read this. And I always crave some really good fantasy in the winter. When I was looking back over my reading lists from 2022 and 2023, I realized that both of those years, I started my reading year with a Sarah j Moss series that I gave a really high rating. And I didn't have anything like that in 2024, so I think that these books are maybe my way of finding out if this is something I'm still enjoying in, like, a 5 star read kinda way.
Amelia Hruby:So here's the premise of The Cruel Prince. Jude was 7 when her parents were murdered, and she and her 2 sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous high court of Faerie. 10 years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, but many of the Fae despise humans, especially prince Carden, the youngest and wickedest son of the high king. To win a place at the court, Jude must defy him and face the consequences. Feels very ominous right there, but I think it could be fun.
Amelia Hruby:Feels like it's got a good a court of thorns and roses kind of vibe for me. So we will see if The Cruel Prince by Holly Black is a 5 star read for me or not. The other fantasy book on this list is An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. So, again, this is the first book in a series and let me read the synopsis for you. Under the Marshall Empire, defiance is met with death.
Amelia Hruby:Leah and her family do not challenge the empire. They've seen what happens to those who do. But when Leah's brother is arrested for treason, she is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promised to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire's greatest military academy. There, Leia meets Elias, the school's finest soldier, and secretly, its most unwilling.
Amelia Hruby:He and Leia will soon realize their destinies are intertwined and that their choices will fate change the fate of the empire itself. So it's funny because as I'm reading these, I feel like an ember in the ashes feels a little akin to Sarah J Maas' Throne of Glass series. And I just said The Cruel Prince felt a little bit like A Court of Thorns and Roses. So I guess maybe I
Amelia Hruby:am just seeking something similar to those for myself. Although I think that they might have been published even before that.
Amelia Hruby:I'm not totally sure. An Ember in the Ashes came out in 2015, and The Cruel Prince came out in 2018. So these are not new by any means. They are, again, as I said, well loved fantasy series, and I'm just really intrigued to see if either one of them works for me and is a 5 star read in 2025. Okay.
Amelia Hruby:So that is 20 books on my 5 star TBR. And for the last 5 books, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. So I picked 20 books that were on my physical TBR that I have not read yet. And then for the last 5, I actually picked books that I have read because something else I wanna do this year is reread more books that I love. When I looked back in my 2024 reading list, I realized I only reread one book, and that was beach read by Emily Henry.
Amelia Hruby:And I really enjoyed rereading it. So I think that I want to build in more rereading into my reading year, and I thought that a great way to do that would be to reread these books that have really stuck with me and that I think are 5 star reads or would be on a reread. So I'm gonna go through these a little quicker since I've already read them, but let me tell you what 5 books are on my reread TBR. The first is How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. O'Dell.
Amelia Hruby:So the first time I read this book, I read it, like, on my Kindle on a road trip. I feel like I actually didn't pay great attention to it, but I remember highlighting so much of the book. And since then, I have read Jenny Odell's second book, Saving Time, and I really loved it. So I'm looking forward to rereading how to do nothing and seeing if it still feels like a 5 star read. After that, I wanna reread one of my favorite books from 2024, a book that I liked enough that I read it from the library and then ordered a physical copy for myself, and that was the Villa by Rachel Hawkins.
Amelia Hruby:So I recapped this in my 32nd reviews of all the books I read this year, but, essentially, these 2 childhood friends become famous writers, very different types of famous writers, and they go away to an Italian villa to cowrite a book together and discover that this villa has a pretty sorted past, and things get complicated from there. This has my favorite sort of book within a book trope, and I wanna reread it and see if it holds up on second reading or if it was the sort of thing that just really found me at the right time and that's why it was a 5 star read in 2024. After that, I want to reread another Emily Henry book and that is Book Lovers. In my mind, this is my favorite Emily Henry book, although I do not remember much about it except that it's a sort of, like, grumpy sunshine romance that has to do with writers and editors and books. So we'll see if I still love that.
Amelia Hruby:I think I will. I really love what Emily Henry writes. And it actually doesn't bother me that I don't remember all the details because that makes a reread more enjoyable. Like, I want to rediscover the plot again and have it feel familiar without really knowing what's gonna happen. That, like, kind of evokes a sense of nostalgia that I find can be really satisfying.
Amelia Hruby:2 more books on my reread TBR. The next one is Wicked Beauty by Katie Robert. So here's where I come out as a lover of smutty literature. Not that you haven't guessed that or didn't already know it, but I have read most of the Neon God series, I think at least the first five books. And this one, this one really took the cake for me.
Amelia Hruby:The basic premise is that Helen gets in a throuple with Achilles and Patroclus. That's kind of a spoiler, but, like, I need you to know that so you really wanna read it. And it's fantastic.
Amelia Hruby:I have never read a sexier book, and this is another one I, like, read on my Kindle and then ordered a physical copy of because I was like, yeah.
Amelia Hruby:I'm gonna need to own that. Thanks. So I look forward to rereading and seeing if that feels as sexy as it did the first time around when I dive back into it this year. And then my 25th book on my 2025 5 star TBR is Home Before Dark by Riley Sager. So last year, I tried to read a bunch of the Riley Sager books I had never read because I want to have read all of them, essentially.
Amelia Hruby:And I'm working on an episode for later this year that will rank all of the Riley Sager books after his new one comes out, I think, in the spring or early summer. And so far, Home Before Dark has been my favorite Riley Sager book. Largely, I think, because of something I have mentioned many times now, which is that it is a book about writers, and I love books about writers and their books. It is also a haunted house book, which we know I love haunted house books. So I think that this is why it was my favorite Riley Sager, and I remember that, like, the twist really got me at the end.
Amelia Hruby:So I look forward to seeing if it's still as satisfying to read when I already know what happens. We we will see. I will report back. And that is my 5 star TBR. All 25 books that I hope will be 5 star reads for me in 2025.
Amelia Hruby:Now I have told you a little bit about each one and why I think it might be a 5 star read And I can't wait to build these into my reading over the course of the year. I mean, with 25 of them, that's gonna mean about 2 books a month that I'm adding in from this TBR in addition to some of the other themed reading lists that I'm working on for different episodes. I have a winter thriller episode coming your way that's got a couple fun reads in it, as well as another dark academia episode focused on You dark academia books, and then some fun guest curated reading lists that will also be coming up in 2025. So I'm really excited for another year of reading with you. I guess I did, like, 3 months of reading with you last year and on the podcast, but we're gonna have a whole year ahead of us together, my friends.
Amelia Hruby:As always, if you enjoy the show, I would really appreciate a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That really helps other people know that it is a great show to tune into, and that helps me keep making these episodes. If you're interested in any of the books on this list, I have put a link in the show notes to a bookshop page where you can find all of them in one convenient place. If you make a purchase through that link, I will receive a small affiliate payment that helps me keep this show going, and I think that's it. So happy new year.
Amelia Hruby:I can't wait for more reading together. And until next time, cheers to your next best book.