Below are 6 books that have won literary or genre book awards during 2025 and that I absolutely loved.
The Dead Cat Tail Assasins, P. Djeli Clarke
The Dead Cat Tail Assasins, P. Djèlí Clark is one of the 10 winners of the Alex Awards which goes to written for adults that have special appeal to young adults. It’s one of the awards sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Awards. I loved this book. The World building was lavish, detailed – I feel this is something the author does really well based on the other books I’ve read.
Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.James, Percival Everett
James, Percival Everett
Another popular award from the American Library Association is the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. This year’s winner for Fiction is James, Percival Everrett, which won multiple other literary awards including the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a 2025 Audie Award Winner for Literary Fiction and Classics. This is a retelling of the classic novel, Huckleberry Finn, but told from the point of view of James, the slave companion of Huck. I’ve also read this and felt it deserves all the accolades it has received.
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Bookshops & Bonedust, Travis Baldree
The Audie Awards recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. The winner for the Fantasy category in the 2025 Audie Awards is the charming novel Bookshops & Bonedust, Travis Baldree (who is also the audiobook narrator). Definitely an audiobook that will absorb you.
Viv’s career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk, so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. But it may be both exactly what she needs as inexplicably, adventure isn’t all that far away.
The Eyes Are the Best Part, Monika Kim
The Eyes Are the Best Part, Monika Kim, won a 2025 Bram Stoker Award for best First Novel. Just that gorgeously horrific cover enough alone should be enough to entice you and the book was truly an unforgettable read for me.
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying … yet enticing. In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. Eyes that leave her with a hunger that can only be sated in the waking world.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell won a 2024 Nebula Award for Best Novel (presented in 2025). The Nebula Awards are given to the writers of the most outstanding speculative fiction works. This book was s super weird but in the best way. Reviews are mixed – seems you either love it or hate it – but I loved it!
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she is chased out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent. Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere? Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did.
A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher
A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher, won a 2025 Locus Award for Best Fantasy. The Locus Awards are given to winners of Locus Magazine‘s annual readers’ poll and there are multiple categories such as Science Fiction, Horror, Young Adult, First Novel, Novella, etc. A Sorceress Comes to Call is a dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic. A thoroughly engrossing novel that I didn’t want to put down until the very end.
Do you follow literary award and attempt to read any of the winners? Do you tend to agree or disagree with the choices?
