I read over 150 books in 2025 and this is an impossible task of choosing my 10 favorites but alas, I will do it for you all. This list is going to be stuffed to the brim with fantasy, romantasy, and the like, so know that’s what you’re getting into! Also forgive me because this list does say 18 but it could be 18 standalones or 18 series YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHOOOOOOOSE!
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In no particular order, let’s get into my top 18 favorites of 2025:
Blood Over Bright Haven
📕 Fantasy standalone
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
Plot: A woman is working to become the first high mage of her city – a city that does not like women or immigrants – and she is forced to work with an immigrant to advance. Thus making her address her own prejudices while having to work against the ones the world has on them.
Why it’s a favorite: this fucking book broke me in half. I sobbed. I love it so much, it’s so beautiful and unfortunately resonant and I just couldn’t love this more. I think it should be required reading and it made me want a tattoo.
Where to Read:
The Everlasting
📘 Romantic fantasy standalone
🎧 Dual narrated audiobook
🔥 Low spice
Plot: A scholar is tasked with writing the story of a famed knight and in order to do so, he must go back in time and live alongside her. However, he’s not allowed to change any of her path, which doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending. And not intervening becomes harder and harder for him to do
Why it’s a favorite: This book is a masterpiece and was immediately added to my god tier list. The way this was written? Stunning. The story that was told? Incredible. I cried, and I rarely cry y’all. This became an all-timer for me.
Where to Read:
The Strength of the Few
📖 Hierarchy series book 2 – incomplete fantasy series (book 1 is The Will of the Many)
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
Plot: This picks up after book 1, so I obviously can’t tell you much. But book 1 is about an orphan boy with a mysterious past who lives in a society where people cede their Will (aka their power/energy/etc.) to the status of people directly above them in the hierarchy pyramid. So the higher you go, the stronger people are. But he doesn’t want to cede, however he catches the eye of a powerful man who puts him into a prestigious school for reasons of his own.
Why it’s a favorite: GUYS IT JUST KEEPS BEING SO GOOD. I just love this series. If you love big fantasy with sci-fi elements, I just think you’ll love this. It’s brilliantly written, you’re rooting for everyone, the societal commentary is great, and I can’t wait for more of this series.
Where to Read:
The Daevabad Trilogy
📚 Complete fantasy trilogy – book 1 is The City of Brass
🎧 Solo narrated audiobooks
Plot: She is a con woman living in Cairo with a sliver of secret healing power. One day when walking home from a con a djinn appears out of nowhere asking her why she summoned him. She didn’t, but now they must flee from a cemetery coming to life and they flee to a magical world she never knew existed.
Why it’s a favorite: This is just fucking incredible. This is SUCH a rich world and it’s beautifully written and the characters are just so layered and imperfectly perfect. It also features one of my favorite types of stories which is where everyone is someone’s enemy; good, bad, or otherwise. Double also, it made me sob.
Where to Read:
The Song of Achilles
📙 Romantic fantasy/historical fiction
🎧 Solo narrated audiobooks
🔥 Low spice
Plot: This is a retelling of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in Greek mythology. It follows them having met, going to training, becoming romantically involved, and then to the Trojan War together.
Why it’s a favorite: This book is everything. It is so beautiful and so masterfully done. I personally can struggle with Greek mythology retellings because for real for real, everyone sucks a lot all the time. Like everything is so brutal and hopeless. But this? This had that brutality but it had these striking moments of brilliance, sweetness, and hope that dug its lovely little claws into my heart. Despite it also being sad? This was just masterful to me.
Where to Read:
A Forbidden Alchemy
📖 Book 1 in incomplete Artisan romantic fantasy trilogy
🎧 Dual narrated audiobook
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🔥 Lower spice
Plot: Our 2 main characters meet as kids when they come to the fancy, semi-uppity city to find out if they have magic or not. If they have magic, they stay and go to the prestigious school. If not, they go back to their rural, blue collar village for a life of tough jobs. But when they’re in the city they accidentally discover the process of magic identification is not what they thought it was and accidentally sort of start a class war.
Why it’s a favorite: I *could not* put this book down to save my life. You may as well have injected it in my veins, it probably would have been nicer to my system. The twists? Great. The banter? IMMACULATE. The leads? So interesting and I’m so in love with them.
Where to Read:
Don’t Let the Forest In
📙 YA queer romantic fantasy/horror standalone
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
Plot: He is going back for his senior year at this prep school with his twin sister and best friend, who he happens to also be in love with. But his best friend’s parents have gone missing and bestie shows up to the first day of school with blood on his clothes, all while there’s weird shit going on in the forest next to the school.
Why it’s a fave: Guys. The writing in this is so beyond stunning I could barely breathe. I knew this was going to be a 5 star read by page 3. The author is non-binary, the romantic subplot is queer, there’s a mystery afoot, and I’m obsessed. There are actual solid twists I didn’t even see coming, and I ended this book and just wanted to reread it immediately. Loved loved loved.
Where to Read:
The Knight and the Moth
📖 Book 1 in incomplete romantic fantasy The Stonewater Kingdom duology
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
🔥 Low spice
Plot: She is a Diviner, which means she is a vehicle for messages from the gods via Omens. She and her fellow Diviners are incredibly valuable for them, giving the Abbey they live in political capital. One day, a politician arrives with his knights, and she meets a knight who is beyond unimpressed with her and her role in the kingdom.
Why it’s a favorite: In a word? The gargoyle. The most perfect side character that has ever existed. But aside from the gargoyle, this is just beautifully written in a rich world that is so interesting and unique. It is dark but feels whimsical, and Rachel Gillig is a master.
Where to Read:
Shield of Sparrows
📖 Book 1 in incomplete Shield of Sparrows romantic fantasy trilogy
🎧 Dual narrated
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🔥 Lower spice
Plot: Her sister is promised to wed a foreign prince, but when he shows up he says he wants to marry her instead. So her entire life is changed and now she’s heading on a journey she never expected with a fiancé she doesn’t know, his guard that won’t leave her alone, and monsters all along the way.
Why it’s a favorite: I had… a BLAST with this book. It felt so refreshingly different in a lot of ways, but also gave us just the things we love about romantasy. The ending was actually diabolical and I cannot wait for book 2. I also was a huge fan of the monster hunting in this, that was a major highlight.
Where to Read:
Tress of the Emerald Sea
📗 Standalone fantasy
🎧 Solo narrated but also there’s a graphic audio
Plot: Tress lives on this island and has a crush on a boy who lives there, and happens to be secretly a prince. When one day he is forced to leave, she goes on a quest to get him back.
Why it’s a fave: This has some of the most whimsical and amusing writing I’ve ever read, on top of one of the coolest magic systems ever. I was giggling and so entertained on every page, as well as just wowed by how the magic system worked and the way the world was built.
Where to Read:
The Shattered Crown Trilogy
📖 Incomplete romantic fantasy trilogy starting with Smoke and Scar
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Duet narrated audiobook
🔥 Slow burn to spicy
Plot: Her former lover died in trials with the goal of establishing find peace between the fae and human kingdoms. And when his sister enters said same trials, our girl also does in order to protect her from her brother’s same demise. But when they get there, the humans and other peoples aren’t a fan of them but they have to work together to get through these trials.
Why it’s a fave: 1. The FMC is one of my all-time favorites I love her. 2. The trials in this are so well done and so interesting and felt refreshingly different for a trope that can be done a lot. And 3. the glow-up our MMC has from book 1 to 2 should actually be studied and put in Smithsonian.
Where to Read:
The Prison Healer Trilogy
📚 YA complete romantic fantasy trilogy
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
Plot: She’s a teenager and has been in this prison for almost a decade, alongside her father. She became the prison’s healer after he passed away to no acclaim or respect. One day a teen boy shows up who doesn’t look like he belongs there at all, and she doesn’t get what he’s doing there or why. They develop a friendship and things take a turn in the prison.
Why it’s a favorite: I absolutely fucking inhaled these books. I was shocked, I was angry, I was excited, I was relieved; I felt all the things on this journey. It is so addicting from the jump and I just loved it. The found family in this is exceptional and the romance in this is just so sweet. Also, how dare Lynette Noni make me fall in (platonic) love with MULTIPLE BLONDE BOYS!?!?!
Where to Read:
Dragon Queen Series
📖 Incomplete romantic fantasy series, book 1 is The Forgotten and the Feared
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
🔥 Spicy
Plot: After the fae defeat the dragons and humans in a horrific war, they hold deadly trials to remind humans of their place. She and her best friend both get entered into the trials, and they start to find out things are even worse than they thought. This one is also incredibly dark, so please check your triggers.
Why it’s a favorite: This has multiple FMC POVs and I adore when romantic fantasy books do that. This is epic in its scope and could live entirely without the romance in my opinion, but the romance(s) are truly solid. It’s dark, it makes you angry, it makes you sad, and it’s an absolute rollercoaster of an experience. I loved it.
Where to Read:
The Eating Woods Trilogy
📖 Incomplete romantic fantasy trilogy that starts with Anathema
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Duet narrated audiobook
🔥 Spicy
Plot: She lives in a hyper-religious village on the edge of the woods that no one who enters ever returns from. When something crazy happens to her family, she ends up in the woods and finds out just why no one ever returns. Trigger warnings galore, this trilogy is SUPER dark.
Why it’s a fave: This world is so creepy, so rich, and so dark and I absolutely love it. I’m a huge fan of a gothic setting as well as Keri Lake’s writing and she just knocks it out of the park. Then you get an FMC I’m rooting for DOWN and an absolute smoke show of an MMC (who is extremely well explored and more than just a hot guy obsessed) and I am just beyond in love with this.
Where to Read:
Peaches & Honey Duology
📚 Complete duology, book 1 is These Immortal Truths
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
🔥 Lower spice
Plot: One day she’s in the forest and stumbles across a mystery person who offers her a bite from a magical peach that turns out, gives her immortality.
Why it’s a fave: I am such a sucker for any “I’ll love you in any and every lifetime” story for real, and this is just a super well done one. I like how it examined humanity across centuries and how we evolved as people. I love the romance in this, and I adored the writing as well.
Where to Read:
Hazelthorn
📙 YA standalone romantic fantasy horror
🎧 Solo narrated audiobook
Plot: He is an adopted son of a rich man living on his old, secluded estate when something happens and he now has to work with a boy who tried to off him 4 years ago.
Why it’s a fave: CG Drews is an auto-buy author for me. This book captures two boys who are so in love against all their efforts because one boy tried to kill the other a few years ago and now they have to work together to solve a creepy mystery. I won’t shut up about this or CG Drews for a long time, I fear.
Where to Read:
Mate
📗 Book 2 in Bride series of interconnected standalones
🎧 Duet narrated audiobook
🔥 Spicy
Plot: After finding out she’s half werewolf, she makes a public statement in order to take the brunt of public scrutiny. So in addition to that pressure, she also discovers she is mates with the alpha of the Northwest pack. And SOMETHING ELSE happens that makes her feel the need to seclude herself away, but that turns out to maybe not be such a great idea.
Why it’s a fave: This made me feral I could NOT stop listening to it. I was rather mid on Bride (book 1 in this series) but absolutely DEVOURED Mate. Like I’m convinced she put drugs in this. I highly recommend the audiobook because it was exceptional.
Where to Read:
The Bones Series
📖 Incomplete romantic apocalyptic fantasy series that starts with Bones
☑️ On Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Dual narrated audiobook
🔥 Spicy
Plot: In a post-apocalyptic USA, she grew up in this super religious village. As a kid, she gets kicked out and also secretly has healing magic. She ends up in the hands of a bad gang and said magic is weaponized for years. Then one day a rival group takes her, and she’s not happy about this.
Why it’s a fave: This is a fave because of book 2 specifically, but also I could not get this world out of my head after I had finished Fangs. Fangs made me cry 3x and the take on grief and trauma was just so well done. This series also has my favorite found family ever, and I just cannot wait for book 3.
Where to Read:
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