I was a voracious reader as a child and as a young adult. And then I just stopped.
I didn’t completely stop reading. I still read books on science, religion, history, and anthropology. Between that and all my writing over the years, I’ve done enough work for at least one Master’s degree and maybe more.
But I stopped reading novels. There was just no time – especially the large blocks of time needed to immerse myself in a good story.
I read some urban fantasy (favorite authors: Laurell K. Hamilton and Kim Harrison). I re-read the occasional classic. I read the series that must not be named – and I’m still angry over the author missing the point of her own stories and turning into the Queen of the TERFs. But that was it.
Three years ago I made a conscious decision to go back to reading novels. Reading good fiction is inspiring. It expands your imagination. And it’s fun – I can always use more fun.
At the end of the year I shared my Top 5 novels of 2023, plus one more that lots of people recommended but didn’t work for me. I read even more in 2024, and I added a trilogy that were great history lessons even if they weren’t great novels.
I didn’t read quite as many novels in 2025, but I still read enough to give me a nice selection for this year’s Top 5 feature, plus a couple extra. So here are the top five novels I read this year.
5. Blood on Her Tongue
Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen. 2025, 368 pages.
Lucy – not Lucy Westenra, though if that’s who you picture in your head you’ll be close – is concerned about her twin sister Sarah, who became physically and mentally unwell after discovering a strange corpse on her wealthy husband’s estate in the Netherlands in the 1880s. And so Lucy goes to care for Sarah, and to try to solve the mystery.
What would it be like to read a vampire novel if you didn’t already know what vampires are? Oh, you know a thing or two about vampire lore, but what’s tangibly real, what’s folklore, and what’s modern fiction? Are they repelled by crosses and garlic? Are they weakened by the sun, killed by the sun, or not even bothered by the sun? And most importantly, what do they need – and want – from the living?
Blood on Her Tongue is perhaps the most unique vampire novel I’ve ever read. The reader is as much in the dark as the protagonists as to exactly what’s going on, until Lucy figures it out.
It’s at the bottom of this list – though above the many more novels that didn’t make the list at all – because it feels more like science fiction than horror (there’s nothing wrong with science fiction, but it wasn’t what I wanted to read). And also because I wasn’t happy with a decision Lucy made at the end… though I have to admit I might have done the same thing.
But it is a fascinating story.
4. Lucy Undying
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White. 2024, 464 pages.
This story is about Lucy Westenra. Author Kiersten White reimagines a key scene in Bram Stoker’s Dracula so that Lucy is not staked by Van Helsing’s hunting party and instead lives into the present day as a vampire. She spends her life trying to stay away from Dracula, and trying to find a way to reunite with Mina, her unrequited and unreciprocated love.
But maybe Mina wasn’t everything Lucy thought she was…
Lucy’s story is told from her journal (just as in Stoker’s novel), from contemporary conversations, and from the discoveries of one of Mina’s descendants. I’m not fond of asynchronous storytelling, but it’s become quite common, and at least in this instance it works.
These are familiar characters in a new and unfamiliar story. The mixed reviews say not everyone cares for that, but I did.
3. Hungerstone
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn. 2025, 336 pages.
It seems like everyone is reimagining J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla these days. Among others, S.T. Gibson’s An Education In Malice (2024) was the #1 novel I read last year.
In this reimagining, Lenore takes the place of Laura in the story. She’s the wife of a 19th century British industrialist. After ten years of marriage, her inability to produce a child is a source of frustration for her husband, who has other issues we discover as we move through the narrative.
And then Carmilla enters their lives through a carriage accident and things begin to change. Carmilla is many things, but she is definitely not a proper 19th century Englishwoman.
Will this Carmilla end up like Ingrid Pitt in the 1970 Hammer film The Vampire Lovers? Or will things take a more favorable turn for the undead?
This book isn’t #3 on my list for nothing.
2. Thirst
Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk. 2020, 256 pages.
Thirst was written in Spanish by Argentinian Marina Yuszczuk and translated into English by Heather Cleary. It’s the story of a young woman with a difficult life in present-day Buenos Aires, intertwined with the story of a vampire who lived through Argentina’s settlement and then decided to sleep for a good long time.
And then her tomb was disturbed.
Thirst is the most literary novel on this list. It’s a vampire novel, but at the end of the day it’s about the human condition, and about how for all things change over the years and over the centuries, people are still people… even if some of them are immortal blood drinkers.
1. An Academy For Liars
An Academy For Liars by Alexis Henderson. 2024, 464 pages.
Lennon’s life is a disaster. As she’s running away from another problem, she gets a mysterious phone call to come take the entrance exam for a college she’s never heard of. She’s skeptical but figures she has nothing to lose. She takes the test and finds herself enrolled in a magical school in Savannah that ordinary people can’t see or find.
Comparisons to a certain magic school that must not be named are understandable, but also unnecessary. This isn’t that. This is a story of someone who sees a way out of a meaningless life and takes it, despite the risks. It’s also a subtle historical commentary on race and class in a way that tells the unpleasant truth without beating the reader over the head with it.
And most importantly, it’s the most engaging story on this list. I cared what happened to Lennon, and I enjoyed her progression through the book. That makes it #1 for me for this year.
This one didn’t make the cut
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. 2007, 514 pages.
One reviewer called this “The Secret History on acid” and they’re pretty close to right. The Secret History was my big disappointment of 2023 – heavily hyped but ultimately unsatisfying.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a Dark Academia story about a brilliant girl whose mother died when she was young, and whose brilliant but strange father moves her to a different school in a different part of the country every year. She’s trying to fit in, trying to qualify for a good college, and trying to have a something resembling a normal teenage life every now and then. And also be the genuinely strange girl she is.
It’s a good concept, and as someone who was a strange kid myself I wanted to like it. Unfortunately, the execution leaves much to be desired. The text is way too verbose, the ending is vague and unsatisfying, and at the end of the day it’s just not as cool as it was supposed to be.
The book is better than the movie, 1934 edition
The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley. 1934, 304 pages.
Christoper Lee called The Devil Rides Out (1968) his favorite Hammer film and it’s easy to see why. It was #2 on my 2023 Streaming Revenge Halloween movie feature. It’s often billed as The Devil’s Bride in the U.S. – Hammer Films was afraid American audiences would think it was a Western.
The movie is an adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s 1934 novel, and so this year I decided to read it. It’s part of Wheatley’s Duke de Richleau series about magic in post World War I Europe. There are a total of 11 books in the series – The Devil Rides Out was the second to be published and the sixth in the chronological order of the stories.
While the movie is good and a reasonably faithful adaptation, the book is just better. It has scenes that didn’t fit into the movie and more details in the scenes that are still there. The only downside is that the book is occasionally racist in a way typical of the late British Empire, something that was mostly (though not entirely) removed from the movie.
After this, I read Wheatley’s To the Devil a Daughter (1953). Hammer’s 1976 adaptation (also starring Christopher Lee) was not very good, and that’s before you get to Nastassja Kinski’s underage – and needless – nudity. I had heard the book was much better there too. It isn’t, even though it bears little resemblance to the story that was filmed.
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