I can’t believe it’s already 2025! With the new year, comes a new list of most anticipated books that I can’t wait to read. Big blockbuster novels are expected from some of my favorites in fantasy, mystery, thrillers and non-fiction. These are my most anticipated books of 2025. Do you have any of these on your TBR list?

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

I have a love/hate relationship with Emily Henry’s books, but her Funny Story was my favorite read of 2024, so I’m definitely looking forward to this one!

Publisher’s synopsis:
Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Release date: April 22, 2025

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

This will be the biggest book of 2025, no doubt about it! Rebecca Yarros continues her wildly successful Empyrean series with Onyx Storm, the third installment in the steamy dragon romantasy series.

Publisher’s synopsis:
After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty. Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.

Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves―her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.

Release date: January 21, 2025

The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers

Ashley Flowers, the Indiana based author and host of the wildly successful Crime Junkie true-crime podcast, returns with her second novel. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed her first novel and this one sounds even better!

Publisher’s synopsis:
Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.

On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both their cases eventually went cold.

Nic wants nothing more than to move on—from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into her life and offers Nic something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

Release date: May 6, 2025

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Not going to lie, if a book is written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, I don’t even care what it’s about. I am going to read it. She’s my current favorite author and it’s been a bit since we had a new title from her. Everyone is buzzing about it already and it’s sure to be a summer blockbuster.

Publisher’s synopsis:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Release date: June 3, 2025

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

I never buy books. Strange, isn’t it? I have to really love a book to purchase a copy, because with so many new releases every year, re-reads are few and far between. But I hit pre-order so fast on this one because, well, it’s V.E. Schwab, who wrote my favorite book of all time, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Publisher’s synopsis:
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.
London, 1827.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.

Release date: June 10, 2025

With a Vengeance by Riley Sager

This one sounds a lot like Murder on the Orient Express but with a Riley Sager twist! The last couple Sager books have left me wanting more, but he’s just one of those authors that I will always pick up, even if you have to suspend disbelief to read most of his thrillers.

Publisher’s synopsis:

One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.

Release date: June 10, 2025

Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade by Nora Princiotti

As an elder millennial who still jams to 90s and early aughts tunes, I love a good pop culture deep dive and this one is right up my alley! Nora Princiotti hosts one of my favorite podcasts and she’s the perfect person to write this book.

Publisher’s synopsis:
An entertaining and deeply nostalgic dive into how female pop stars—from Britney Spears to Taylor Swift to Beyoncé—broke through the music industry in the 2000s and altered the cultural landscape forever, from the Ringer writer and co-host of the podcast Every Single Album.

Release date: June 17, 2025

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

I’m late to the Abby Jimenez train, but recently picked up Just for the Summer and couldn’t put it down. So now I’m putting all her books on hold and planning to binge read them all this year!

Publisher’s synopsis:
There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong…

. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.

Release date: April 1, 2025

Matriarch by Tina Knowles

While I’m not the biggest Beyonce fan out there, I DID love Destiny’s Child and think this will be an interesting read about Bey’s mama. I don’t know too much about her life, but looking forward to introspection on that as well as some behind the scenes from her daughters careers.

Publisher’s synopsis:
Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood.

This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America—and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.

Release date: April 22, 2025

With more to be announced, I’m sure this list will grow longer as the year progresses. But for now, these are my top books I can’t wait to read in 2025! Curious what my favorite reads were in 2024? Be sure to check out that post and follow along on my YouTube channel where I’ll be dropping monthly reading recaps.

Happy New Year and happy reading!