Favorite Book Cover

We’ll start off with my favorite book cover of the year, Copper Script by K.J. Charles designed by James T. Egan, self-published. (Queer historical romantic mystery)

It’s just so very pretty and atmospheric. And again I’ll note this is a self-published book, so  traditional publishers out there: you have no reason not to do better.

I’m not 100% on tracking cover artists yet (it sometimes involves searching), but from what is in my spreadsheet, these are the most common cover artists for books I read this year:

Cover Artists

• Jaime Jones: 9
• Ashley Ruggirello: 5
• Perry De La Vega: 5
• Tiferet Design: 5
• A.M. Ruggs: 4
• Mitxeran: 4

I know of the top of my head Jamie Jones did the covers for most of the Murderbot books, and Perry de la Vega did the covers for the Shady Hollow series. (The only websites I can find for Perry de la Vega are Tumblr and Instagram, and unfortunately, both require a log in.)

Favorite Books

My favorite books of the year were:

Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch (Queer urban fantasy & mystery)

and

After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian (Queer historical romance).

Seeing those titles listed together, I realize both have a major theme of dealing with grief.

Take that as you will.

 

Series Read

With some series I can read (or listen to) one book right after the other. With others I need a pause after a couple books–or to read slowly (ha).

There are two series here that I went through twice this year: The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) and the Page & Sommers books (Cat Sebastian).

• Murderbot Diaries:  14
• Miss Marple:  13
• Below Stairs Mystery:  9
• Fred, the Vampire Accountant:  9
• Goldy Bear:  6
• Shady Hollow:  6
• Big Bad Wolf:  5
• Bone Street Rumba :  4
• Brothers Sinister:  4
• Page & Sommers:  4
• Rivers of London:  4
• Chronicles of Brother Cadfael:  4
• Lords of Bucknall Club:  4
• Thursday Murder Club:  4

Publishers

The publisher whose books I read the most frequently was… self-published.

• self-published: 38
• Recorded Books:  20 (RBMedia)
• Tor:  6 (Macmillen: 8)
• William Morrow:  10 (HarperCollins)
• Carina:  8 (Harlequin:  9) (HarperCollins)
• Dreamscape Audio:  8 (Independent)
• Tantor Audio:  8 (RBMedia)

The world of publishing is confusing, because the big companies have multiple imprints that have imprints of their own; I put tordotcom (which is now something else) with Tor, just to make like easier for myself.

The Stats!

As 76% of the books I read in 2025 were rereads, the percentage of backlist I read is large.

What did surprise me is that I managed so many new releases (19).

Because I almost never listen to a fiction book I haven’t read previously, you can see the correlation between audio books (63) and rereads (137).

According to the BookRiot reading log tally, I spent 23 days, 8 hrs, and 8 mins listening to audio books.

I read 180 books in 2025, which is just over half the number of books I read in 2021.

But 2020 and 2021 were outliers, so for the most part the number of books I read each month was on par with previous years.

Again, according to the Book Riot Reading log calculations, I read 31423 pages, and an average of 86 pages a day.

Most books I read fall into multiple genres, so that data is always a little wonky.

Much of the romance I read is historical, but I also love historical mysteries, and of course there are paranormal mysteries, so genre often adds up to 200-300% of the number of books read.

Lastly…

I’m still reading diversely.

This is so much easier to do than it used to be, since it’s getting easier and easier to find books that aren’t just straight white characters. (Thank you, ebooks.)

And I think that wraps up the books of 2025.

Happy reading in 2026 to everyone.

Favorite Fantasy Books of 2025
Mystery Books Books of 2025
Audio Books Books of 2025
Romance, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, & Non-Fiction Books Books of 2025

Fantasy Book Covers of 2025
Mystery Book Covers of 2025
Romance Book Covers of 2025
Non-Fiction Book Covers of 2025