The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

Fiction | Nonfiction

We’re more than a third of the way through 2025 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) of these will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more suggestions for what to read next, head to our book recommendation page.

Fiction

I want a haunting story by a Nobel Prize winner

We Do Not Part

by Han Kang

The Nobel laureate’s new novel, translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, revisits a violent chapter in South Korean history: Between 1947 and 1954 on Jeju, an island off the coast of South Korea, at least 30,000 people were killed in mostly government-perpetrated atrocities. This disturbing, dreamlike book centers on a writer who travels to Jeju during a blizzard to rescue a friend’s pet bird, only to uncover the depths of her friend’s obsession with the massacre. Read our review.