🏆 Annual Book Awards: The Best and Worst Reads of 2025

It's depressing, but it is so beautiful. It's very sad, but it's also very beautiful.

I didn't DNF and I finished it and I actually do regret not DNFing it because it did not get better for me. I hoped that it would and it would be like worth it at the end, but it was not.

I loved this book. It was such a brilliant time. It was just very cozy, very heartwarming, just beautiful, genuinely just fantastic.

Despite that, this actually is not a new release at all and it's Cinder, earlier YA sci-fi at least retellings, and this one was just a really nice surprise. Not that I didn't expect to like it, but I was going in cautiously.

Anyway, so I was about to give up on this book and then it got good. And then it got better. And then it got so messed up and it got so dark and it got so wicked.

I really enjoyed this one. It just felt a bit more fresh. It almost felt cozy, but it still had darker themes.

And so, for all its flaws, of which there were a few, of course, I still have the most fond memories and feelings towards Sunrise on the Reaping.

It did take me a tiny bit to get into it and I think the first 20-30% was perhaps why it didn't quite reach five stars. Other than that though, it has been such a highlight of my reading year this year.

The Spear Cuts Through Water and I will add a caveat that I understand this is a piece of art, but it's so poetic and it's so artistic it's hard for me to digest. For me, particularly as a reader, as a person, it's not my style. Again, I didn't make very far into this. It was a DNF.

but the one that actually I loved so much and ended up being one of my favorite books of this year was The Black Obelisk. It is dense, not an easy read I would say. However, it is also humorous in a satirical way, which I also historically really mesh well with.