A Bookish Time Capsule: May 2025
39 books I loved in May from 2017-2024
It’s that time of the month again ~ Bookish Time Capsule time!
As I mentioned in April, each month I will now be sharing books that I read and loved that month in past years, some months going all the way back to 2015. This serves you with more backlist book recommendations to request from the library or find at used bookshops, and gives me a chance to mine my reading archives for those gems I want to savor again. Win - win!
Make sure you check out the April list too!
For May, I am bringing you 39 very different titles that I read and LOVED this month in 2017 - 2024: from foodie memoirs to little-known sweet uplifting stories to books I am 100% you already know about that made my past literary Mays so very happy. The only favorites that I did not include were those already in the Backlist Summery Reads collection and those that are not the first in series.
Are you wondering why there are SO MANY BOOKS for May? Well, I have mentioned several times that this is my favorite book release and reading season! There’s a reason for that, my friends … so many good books. And why no books for 2015 and 2016 this month? Well, those years I mostly just read YA books in May plus mass quantities of Kindle Unlimited sweet romances that I didn’t write reviews of and have no memories of.
Please tap through each title below to learn more! OR you can see (almost) all of these books & their covers in one place at my Bookshop.org collection.
NOTE: The year listed is the year I read the book, not publication year.
2017 The Simplicity of Cider by Amy E. Reichert
2017 Touch by Courtney Maum
2017 Luck, Love & Lemon Pie by Amy E. Reichert
2017 A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe
2018 Idlewild by Jude Sierra
2018 The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go by Amy E. Reichert
2018 The Wedding Sisters by Jamie Brenner
2018 The Royal We (Royal We, #1) by Heather Cocks
2018 Beartown (Beartown, #1) by Fredrik Backman
2018 Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, & Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy Horn (NF)
2019 Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
2019 Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl (NF)
2019 The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay by Kelly Harms
2019 The Key to Happily Ever After by Tif Marcelo
2019 The Last Book Party by Karen Dukess
2020 Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon
2020 The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
2020 The Curiosities by Susan Gloss
2021 The Inside Edge by Ashlyn Kane
2021 Just a Heartbeat Away (Forever Yours, #1) by Cara Bastone
2022 At Least You Have Your Health by Madi Sinha
2022 Love & Other Disasters (Nashville Love, #1) by Anita Kelly
2022 One Night on the Island by Josie Silver
2022 The People We Keep by Allison Larkin
2022 Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
2022 The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar
2023 Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture by Virginia Sole-Smith (NF)
2023 All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley (NF)
2023 Teacher of the Year (Teachers in Love, #1) by M.A. Wardell*
2023 Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich (NF)
2023 When in Rome (When in Rome, #1) by Sarah Adams
2023 Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
2023 Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story by Julia Wertz (NF)
2024 The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
2024 The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli (NF)
2024 If You Can't Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury by Geraldine DeRuiter (NF)
2024 The Wedding People by Alison Espach
2024 It's Elementary by Elise Bryant
2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
* indicates that a book is not included in the Bookshop collection
I would love to hear ~ have you read and loved any of these? Are there any high on your TBR? At this point, you should definitely be able to access them easily at your library or even used bookstores!
Thanks for stopping by!
