So, here are the 2025 book releases I'm most excited about:
#1 The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong
There are no words to describe how excited I am for this book. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous destroyed me in the best possible way, and I have yet to find another book that matches it. So, The Emperor of Gladness is easily one of my most anticipated books of 2025. I really hope it lives up to the author's debut novel.
Blurb:
Publication Date: January 21st, 2025
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
#2 We Do Not Part, by Han Kang
This book is already out, and I'll soon pick it up. However, this year I'll be reading a lot of Han Kang in general. Next month, we are going to be reading Han Kang's Greek Lessons on my book club, and I've also recently re-read The Vegetarian.
Publication Date: April 15th, 2025
Blurb:
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.
A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.
Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering,it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
#3 Vanishing World, by Sayaka Murata
My interest in Japanese literature is still going strong, so it's no surprise that some of my most anticipated 2025 book releases would be by Japanese writers. Sayaka Murata impressed me with The Convenience Store Woman, and I'd want to read more from her. I'm a bit afraid to pick up the Earthlings (especially from the comments I've read online), and I think that the same applies here. But it will be released on my birthday, so it's a sign to pick it up!
Blurb:
As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?
Publication Date: February 11th, 2025
#4 What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan
Publication Date: September 18th, 2025
Ian McEwan is one of the writers that I've been following for a long time. I remember reading Atonement for the very first time when I was still in high school. Since then, I've picked up several books by him, most of which I've enjoyed. So, it's no wonder that What We Can Know ended up in this list.
Blurb:
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
#5 Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett
Another book that it's already out! This is the third and final instalment of the Emily Wilde series, which I've enjoyed listening to. In the past couple of years, I've got into cozy fantasy, and this series has been one of the best I've read. This will probably be the next audiobook I'll listen to.
Blurb:
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm-as its queen.
Along with her former academic rival-now fiancé-the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell's long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare, filled with scholarly treasures.
Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world-how could an unassuming scholar like herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in-Wendell's murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell's magic-and Emily's knowledge of stories-to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
#6 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna
Publication Date: July 15th, 2025
Another cozy fantasy that I've enjoyed is The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. Therefore, I'm curious to find out whether I enjoy this one as well.
Blurb:
Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps her aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power…
Enter Luke Larsen, handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and might just know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing.
Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone...and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.
#7 Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao
Publication Date: January 14th, 2025
Well, not only is this book out, but I've already read it. The reason why I'm including it in this list is because I was so excited about it because of that ridiculously gorgeous cover. I won't tell you my thoughts here, as this might be the first review I write in 2025.
Blurb:
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.
Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.
Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.
#8 Sisters in Yellow, by Mieko Kawakami
Publication Date: tba
Sisters in Yellow is supposed to be publised in spring 2025, but we have got neither a blurb nor a cover yet. In any case, Mieko Kawakami is one of the Japanese writers I'm the most interest about, so I'll pick it up whenever it ends up being published.
Are you interested in any of these books? What are the 2025 book releases that you're the most excited about?
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