Amazon best books include these top 10 for 2025
Get ready to get your tissues out – Amazon’s best books of the year list is full of heartfelt weepers that will make you contemplate grief, humanity and compassion.
Every year, Amazon’s editorial team gathers for a literary showdown to choose a list of standout books. Some years are contentious, with boardroom coups and stubborn defenders. But this year’s number one pick was practically unanimous, say editors Erin Kodicek and Sarah Gelman.
Selecting a Top 20 is difficult work, let alone a single best book of the year. But Amazon’s editorial team looks for a book that’s approachable and enjoyable to any reader, regardless of preferred genre.
Here’s what they picked this year, revealed exclusively online by USA TODAY.
Amazon reveals Best Books of the Year 2025
Unlike Amazon’s bestseller list, this is curated based on editorial judgment, not sales data. A team of former publishing reps, booksellers, writers, journalists and agents read hundreds of books to prepare. Their most beloved make it to the overall Top 20 list, and they create additional genre-specific lists with favorites in nonfiction, romance, history, sci-fi, cookbooks and more.
1. ‘Buckeye’ by Patrick Ryan
What it’s about: In this sweeping postwar family drama, two small-town Ohioan families become entangled after a secret ripples through generations.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: “I want to live in this book,” says Gelman. This is a book that you can gift to “just about any age, any gender, and someone is going to find something in it.” The characters are good, but messy and complex, says Kodicek. Most importantly, they feel real.
2. ‘The Correspondent’ by Virginia Evans
What it’s about: A curmudgeonly grandmother, lawyer and divorcee makes sense of her world through letters to her acquaintances and idols, including one mystery recipient she can’t seem to send her letter to.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: “The Correspondent” is an “absolute gem,” Kodicek says. “For people that are in a reading rut or if you’re somebody that has a taxed attention span … this is the perfect read for you. It’s an absolute joy.”
3. ‘The Boys in the Light’ by Nina Willner
What it’s about: This nonfiction story about the author’s father follows the parallel journeys of teenage Holocaust survivors and the young soldiers of Company D on two sides of World War II.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: Though there are hardships and struggles with any war story, it’s a joyful novel at the end, says Gelman. “It’s so well-researched that it does read like fiction,” Gelman says. “You actually forget that you’re reading a true story.”
4. ‘The Emperor of Gladness’ by Ocean Vuong
What it’s about: A 19-year-old finds unexpected community in small-town New England suburbia after an old woman saves him from attempting suicide.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: It’s a big-hearted novel that soothes during contentious times. These characters, living on the margins of society, are “investing in each other and they’re taking care of each other, just because we’re humans and that’s what we should do,” Kodiceck says. “It’s such an urgent reminder that we need right now.”
5. ‘Wild Dark Shore’ by Charlotte McConaghy
What it’s about: A family on a remote island fiercely protecting the land’s seed bank encounters a mysterious woman who washes ashore.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: “It’s a really banner example of cli-fi, or climate fiction,” Kodiceck says. “It really helps you wrap your brain and your heart around these really complicated environmental issues in a way that is more palatable and not preachy.”
6. ‘The Intruder’ by Freida McFadden
What it’s about: A woman preparing her cabin in the wilderness for a coming hurricane realizes there’s more to worry about when she spies a young girl covered in blood outside her window.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: It’s easy to dismiss this as a “popcorn thriller,” but there are deep themes at play, says Gelman. “Literally until the last page, things are thrown at you that you don’t see,” she says.
7. ‘Awake’ by Jen Hatmaker
What it’s about: Hatmaker’s memoir is about a traumatic implosion to her 26-year-long marriage that catapults her into single parenthood, an unraveling of religious and cultural beliefs and a grief journey.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: Gelman recommends the audiobook, which Hatmaker herself reads. “She’s so funny and relatable and then also it’s emotional,” Gelman says. “I found her incredibly relatable. I mean it rivals ‘Untamed’ (by Glennon Doyle) I think.”
8. ‘Atmosphere’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid
What it’s about: A physics and astronomy professor finds passion, success and love when she becomes one of the first women scientists accepted to NASA’s space shuttle program.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: Kodiceck hates the cliche “page-turning,” but admits it applies here. “The second you start this book, you better have time because you’re not going to put it down until the very end,” she says.
9. ‘Replaceable You’ by Mary Roach
What it’s about: This nonfiction deep dive takes a curious look into the human body, its failings and the scientific advancements we’ve made to combat them, like prosthetics and donated organs.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: This book is so engrossing that Kodiceck wishes she had Roach as a science teacher in high school. “Her books are fascinating and entertaining and by the time you’re done with it you are a smarter, more thoughtful person,” Kodiceck says.
10. ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ by Kiran Desai
What it’s about: The fates of two young people intersect across continents and years as they navigate the impact of country, class, family, history and race on their lives.
Why Amazon Books editors loved it: “You will find so much to relate to,” Gelman says. “It’s just universal truths about being in families and being in love and also about the loneliness of growing up and figuring out who you are in what is important to you.”
Amazon’s Top 20 Best Books of the Year 2025
- “Buckeye” by Patrick Ryan
- “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans
- “The Boys in the Light: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood” by Nina Willner
- “The Emperor of Gladness” by Ocean Vuong
- “Wild Dark Shore” by Charlotte McConaghy
- “The Intruder” by Freida McFadden
- “Awake” by Jen Hatmaker
- “Atmosphere” by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- “Replaceable You” by Mary Roach
- “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai
- “Broken Country” by Clare Leslie Hall
- “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America” by Beth Macy
- “Katabasis” by R.F. Kuang
- “Cursed Daughters” by Oyinkan Braithwaite
- “Next of Kin” by Gabrielle Hamilton
- “King of Ashes” by S. A. Cosby
- “The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda” by Nathalia Holt
- “Heart the Lover” by Lily King
- “The Book of Guilt” by Catherine Chidgey
- “Baldwin: A Love Story” by Nicholas Boggs
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
