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dear friend—

the time has come! i feel like i self-reflected the shit out of myself at the end of 2025, so we’re just gonna dive head-in to the books.

BELOW: ✨ my top 5 books of 2025 ✨ shout-outs to three honorable mentions ✨ everything i read in 2025 ✨ some goals for 2026.1

and, if you fancy: my 2022 wrapped, 2023 wrapped, 2024 wrapped. as always, i recommend looking up each of these books on Storygraph for an excellent crowd-sourced list of content warnings.

let’s get into it!!

1. CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

this book is about a lot of things. it’s about love and sacrifice and forgiveness and family. it’s about the perversity of reality television. the horrors of the prison-industrial complex. the desensitization of violence, especially against Black and Brown bodies.

in creating a world where incarcerated people can enter a televised fight-to-the-death gladiator tournament for the dream of winning a pardon and their freedom, Adjei-Brenyah heightens all these facets of our society to their nth degree. while a powerful exploration of all of these themes, what blew this book to a 5-star rating for me was the music and color of the text itself.

Adjei-Brenyah knows how to make a sentence sing. and not only sentences—just the mere naming of his characters and his ideas had me gasping in, not delight, but something like it. the satisfaction of a puzzle piece locking into place. this is what the english language is for!

at the same time, i fear what hooked me most in the book was the tragedy and drama of extreme injustice and violence. there were some points where reading the book felt more like rubbernecking a car crash than anything. but i also suspect that’s kind of the point. look, this book seems to say. we care when there’s a story. when there’s stakes. when there’s spectacle. spectacle!

we can’t look away while reading this book, but during our daily lives, as the violence of prisons and mass incarceration continues every day, somewhere else, we allow it to bleed into the background. but the truth is, every incarcerated person’s life is as complex and worthy as that of the characters in this book.

in the end, of course—of course!—not much separates the characters we love and root for in Chain-Gang All-Stars from real people behind bars right now.

2. BROTHERLESS NIGHT, by V. V. Ganeshananthan

before reading this book, i didn’t know anything about the Tamil Tigers—i had vague impressions of them as radical, militant freedom fighters in the Sri Lankan Civil War and knew the u.s. had designated them a terrorist organization, a label often dubiously applied to Brown and Black people who threaten american and western power. Brotherless Night, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s portrait of the Tigers and the Sri Lankan Civil War, comes from the perspective of the young woman who grows up seeing the boys she loves chewed up by the conflict.

Sashi, the main character, is relatively agnostic about the vision of an independent Tamil state on the island of Sri Lanka. her life is circumscribed by two dynamics: the anti-Tamil violence and pogroms perpetrated by Sinhalese Sri Lankans, which devour one brother, and the violence of the militant Tamil separatist movement, which devours her three others.

Sashi finds her calling as a truth-seeker and truth-teller, casting light on the Tamils who suffered from the Sinhalese, the Tamil militants, and the Indian armed forces who committed atrocities while intervening for “peace.”

Brotherless Night refuses an easy narrative of injustice and victory. it’s a book about politics in the way that everything is about politics, but Sashi doesn’t examine the cause for an independent Tamil state or the history of Tamil people in Sri Lanka or of Sinhalese repression. i had to read elsewhere to learn the context of the book’s events.

instead, this book presents events from the perspective of someone who is political (Sashi joins a women’s movement to pressure the state to release Tamil boys from detention) but not ideological (as in dedicated to a specific outcome or doctrine), as i’m sure many people in violent conflicts are. Sashi is not a revolutionary so much as a person responding to the violence in her community by surviving, and trying to make life better for those around her and those who suffered most.

something that stuck with me is how this book shows what it means to continue on after horrific tragedies. each loss in this book is written as its own apocalypse, like there couldn’t possibly be anything left to feel or lose after it, because that’s what loss feels like—because every end of a life is in fact the end of a world.

but Sashi does move on. she puts one foot in front of the other and keeps fighting for her people—specifically the ones who have gone unheard as the Civil War unfolds. it’s not glorious and it’s not noble. it’s simply the only way forward.

3. AMERICAN WAR, by Omar El Akkad

American War is a very difficult book to read in that it is a lot of trauma that doesn’t seem like it will end for the characters after the final page. but it’s incredibly written. El Akkad captures the colors and sounds and smells and feelings of Sarat’s world with sharp intensity—from contraband petrol-powered boats snaking through the reeds; to the docks hustling and bustling with soldiers and smugglers; to the children playing and growing up amongst the tents of their refugee camp.

similar to Brotherless Night, American War is less about the righteousness of any cause but the realities of war and violence. Sarat is a Southerner, raised at the edge of the “Free Southern States” that seceded because they refused to give up fossil fuels. the world in which she lives—where her shipping container home is threatened by rising waters and sweltering heat as much as the expanding war—was created by this overuse of fossil fuels. and yet it’s the Southerners who face the highest casualties, the greatest brutality at the hands of the Northerners.

i can imagine that when this book came out in 2016, it was read by some as a plea to have compassion for the conservatives of today. but after hearing El Akkad talk about the book, i think that’s the furthest thing from his mind. (i can ignore his ignoring the historical and contemporary political weight of giving the South this cause and making his Black and Latina protagonist a fighter for a secessionist South, but totally understand if that’s not your thing).

El Akkad has said that he intentionally modeled one scene after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in which Maronite Christians overseen by the Israeli Defense Forces killed thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims in refugee camps. The parallels between El Akkad’s Sugarloaf detention camp and the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are unavoidable.

what stood out most about this book, to me, was how it brought the horrors of western imperialism home to roost. it works to shatter the idea of american invincibility, at least in the reader’s imagination; to depict the cataclysmic violence we’ve enacted and still enact on other countries—from Afghanistan to Haiti to Laos—happening right in our backyards.

and American War does it with an incredibly deft hand at world-building, prose, and character development. Reading Sarat transform from an innocent child to becoming the person who commits the book’s final, terrible act—and to see her family members transform in their own ways at the same time—changed me on a cellular level.

(i also strongly recommend El Akkad’s nonfiction 2025 release, ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS. the book is a mosaic of reporting, essay, and memoir, including some vital record-keeping on the current genocide in Gaza. as most of my understanding of what has happened in Gaza has come in the ephemeral form of images and videos posted to social media, i felt something like relief seeing these same stories and images captured in paper and ink. they were real, they happened, they’re still happening.)

4. BITTERBLUE, by Kristin Cashore

this is the third book in The Graceling Realm series and it’s my favorite. it tells a few years in the life of Queen Bitterblue, who’s slowly figuring out how to put her kingdom back together again after decades of heinous evil under her father, the late King Leck.

Leck’s power to compel people to do whatever he wanted, including feel different emotions, has created a court and kingdom chock-full of PTSD and a populace re-learning how to be human. i first read this book as a teenager and didn’t fully appreciate the deft and caring hand with which Cashore treats this premise.

Bitterblue herself is healing from the trauma of her childhood while also trying to heal her whole kingdom’s trauma. it’s a remarkably human portrayal. i loved how i felt all these emotions alongside Bitterblue.

while Cashore unravels the wounds and mysteries that Leck left behind, she’s also crafting Bitterblue into a different character from the child in survival mode that she introduced in book one of the series. it was so gratifying to see Bitterblue as a young monarch who is navigating a very difficult political period—and then to also see her as a young woman juggling duty, politics, found family, recovery, first love, and all the turbulent emotions that come with being a teenager.

despite the dark elements, Bitterblue also has an incredible amount of love infused in it. it’s been a while since i’ve read a book where young people are so effusive and affectionate, so frank with their emotions, and just trying their best to do right by each other! these Graceling books are crafted with a heart-lifting sincerity. these days, where irony is cool and everyone’s trying to be nonchalant, they feel incredibly life-affirming.

also, Cashore’s writing style is something i covet in a Ten Commandments kind of way. it’s direct, it’s concise—and yet somehow it’s also very vibrant and colorful. how does she do it?? i’m studying it like a sacred text.

5. WHAT IF WE GET IT RIGHT? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

the more i think back on this book, the more it takes up a big place in my heart. mostly because Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s orientation to the climate crisis and climate activism has been incredibly influential on my own. this book is full of wisdom and heart, and it’s a great primer on all the ways you or anyone can get involved in climate work.

the book is mostly a series of interviews with everyone you could possibly imagine, from lawyers to farmers to small business owners to community organizers to scientists to journalists, about how they’re tackling climate issues in their own fields.

i write more about the book here, but something i’ve returned to a lot is Johnson’s emphasis that “successful” climate action isn’t a binary. we don’t only have two options: utopia where everything is fixed and dystopia where the world ends in flames. there are infinite degrees of possibilities in between.

the 2016 paris agreement set a goal of limiting pre-industrial warming to 2 degrees Celsius, with a stretch goal of 1.5. these numbers are getting increasingly out of reach (we hit 1.5 for the first time in 2024), and we know that 3 degrees warming will be catastrophic. but with the stakes this high, every tenth of a degree, every hundredth of a degree, could mean thousands of lives saved from climate disasters like floods and heat waves.

as someone who takes an “all or nothing” approach to most things, Johnson reminds me that even if reversing modern climate change is impossible, that doesn’t mean we resign ourselves to apocalypse (especially since people in the Global South, who contributed practically nothing to the climate crisis, are on the frontlines of its dangers). there is so much joy and wonder and life to be had—and defended—in a 2.1-degrees-of-warming world.

this reminded me of a lot of things i’ve read about activism from writers like adrienne maree brown, Rebecca Solnit, Grace Lee Boggs, Kelly Hayes, and Mariame Kaba (see below). all this isn’t about reaching for some perfect future or ultimate revolution. but rather, it’s about nurturing the relationships and wellbeing and futures of our neighbors, our communities, in the every day—”Maybe the real revolution is the friends we made along the way” type shit.

✨ 3 HONORABLE MENTIONS:

LET THIS RADICALIZE YOU, by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba: the text i turn back to again and again when it comes to ideas about community, care, and organizing. i’m not an organizer by any means, but this book is brimming with insights on how to treat folks and work with folks when the goal is changing the world for the better.

SWORDCATCHER, by Cassandra Clare: this book brought me back to my days of staying up until 2AM on a school night holding my breath as two goobers in love get ever closer to getting together while court intrigue, secrets, and teenaged melodrama unwinds around them. just plain old fun fantasy, which i hoovered up like the teletubbies vacuum cleaner back when Cassandra Clare was writing The Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series.

i read a post once that was like, “did Cassie Clare put crack in these books??” and, REAL. while i wouldn’t call any of her books “perfect,” they are fun and propulsive and feel effortless to read. like artisanal candy—light on nutritional value, but concocted by a craftsperson at the top of their game.

THE END OF IMAGINATION, by Arundhati Roy: this book reminds me that there is a massive history of pro-poor, anti-fascist, anti-corporation, solidarity-based activism the world over that has existed long before the word “intersectionality” ever graced my ears.

in this collection of essays from the late 90s and early 2000s, Roy tackles topics including: displacement from and resistance against India’s gargantuan dam projects, the expansion of Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim violence, and the threat of Bush’s War on Terror and western imperialism. and she does it with absolutely gorgeous, searing, potent prose.

✨ EVERYTHING I READ IN 2026

see something you loved/have lots of thoughts about?? shoot me a text or reply to this email!! i love talking about books :-) also, let’s be friends on storygraph!

✨ GOALS FOR 2026

1. slow down and savor more. annotate more! read like a writer. think seriously about an author’s craft and how i can learn from it. and write more about books in a disciplined way. i like my bulleted book notes that i keep on everything i read, but writing these mini-reviews on books i’ve been thinking about for months, some a whole year, made me realize that sometimes i haven’t even figured out what i think about a book or why it made me feel the way it did until i put those thoughts into some structured form.

2. read more books by Indigenous and African authors. if u have any recs, please send them my way!! i started off 2026 with OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE by Nick Estes, on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the history of resistance by the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux) peoples, and THE MIGHTY RED, by Louise Erdrich, a hard-to-describe novel of community and family and the 2008 financial crisis in North Dakota. big recommend both!

aaand that’s all folks! what were YOUR favorite books of 2025???

thanks for reading, take care,
—mia xx