Books For Your 2026 Reading List: Leila’s 2025 Book Reviews
By Leila Metres
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I’ve always loved reading, but it was a lot easier to do consistently when I was homeschooled and had tons of free time. (My record was 300 pages in one day!) When I started traditional school and had more responsibilities on my plate, I let my reading habits dwindle. However, in 2025, I decided to commit to reading again, and signed up for StoryGraph to track it. The results? It motivated me to make time for relaxation and leisure, it gave me something to look forward to when I was stressed out by other things, and finally, I read 55 books, an increase of 26 from the 29 books I read in 2024! Here are some of the highlights from my most frequented genres, courtesy of my StoryGraph stats:
Best LGBTQIA+ Book: Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H
Hijab Butch Blues is a memoir that weaves together stories from the Qur’an and reflections from Lamya H’s life as she comes to terms with her queerness. Lamya describes her first crush on a female teacher, her journey coming out to various people in her life, and her search for a queer Muslim community. Being Muslim is something that Lamya finds solace and affirmation in, even though Muslims use it as a weapon against queer people, so her story is both transformative and crucial for those interested in the intersection of religion and identity. I found this book compelling because I don’t know much about the Qur’an, and the way that the author paired stories from her life with stories from her religion was really engaging. This memoir is not only a beautiful coming of age story, but also a love letter to accepting yourself and finding peace in the overlapping parts of your identity.
Best Romance: I’ll Get Back to You by Becca Grischow
This holiday romance honestly stole my heart. It follows Murphy, a girl dying to get out of her hometown, who needs to pass a community college accounting class that she failed in order to make it to the state university. Along the way, she reconnects with Ellie, a former high school classmate trying to gain her parents’ support for her grad school aspirations. However, when Murphy agrees to pretend to be Ellie’s girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner and help convince her parents to get on board, she realizes that Ellie’s mom is that same accounting professor who has been giving her such a hard time, further complicating both her future plans and blossoming feelings for Ellie. There was something I found so calming and comfortable about the development of their relationship in this book—although there is emotional turbulence, there are so many tender moments in the sparks that begin to fly. I’ll Get Back to You is also perfect to read around this time of year, because it takes place during the holidays.
Best Classic: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
I read Their Eyes Were Watching God in my English 200: Intro to Literary Studies class with Jimmy Worthy. Growing up Black in early 20th-century Florida, the main character Janie Crawford is pushed into marriage as the proper path through life. However, when Janie doesn’t find fulfillment or love in her first marriage to an older landowner, she leaves him for a new man and a promising future in the first incorporated all-Black town in the US. However, over time, her relationship with her second husband also begins to fail due to his controlling nature and harsh expectations. Finally, after her second husband dies, she finds true love in a man who provides her with a healthy relationship that adds to her life instead of taking away from it for the first time. This story delivers powerful messages about race, womanhood, agency, relationships, and self-discovery, and I really enjoyed discussing it in class. The structure of following Janie through three different marriages provides an interesting model to track her growth and development throughout the narrative of her life.
Best Play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
I read eight Shakespeare plays for English 221 with Adam Zucker, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream stood out. In this play, fairy magic mixes with real human emotions to create a complicated series of events. The fairy king and queen are fighting, a love triangle (or square?) becomes increasingly complex due to social and political forces, the sprite Robin Goodfellow plays pranks on people and fairies alike, and through it all, six craftsmen are preparing to put on a laughably horrible play. I loved A Midsummer Night’s Dream because of the interweaving plots and creative twists and turns but also because of how beautiful the poetic language is. Shakespeare can be incredibly difficult to parse, but it can also be insightful and surprising and whimsical. The dreamlike quality of this play carries readers through various subplots seamlessly, and ultimately serves to help the audience make sense of the strange things they see onstage.
Best Young Adult: Out of the Blue by Jason June
Out of the Blue is a beautiful LGBTQ YA story about finding love in unexpected places and redefining the meaning of home. This book is a dual-point of view story that follows Crest, a nonbinary mermaid, and Sean, a lovesick human pining after his ex-boyfriend. Crest hates humans, and is only on land to fulfill their Journey, a ritual that mermaids do to become Elders. In order to complete their Journey, Crest needs to help a human, and in order to win back his ex-boyfriend, Sean needs a fake partner. They embark on a fake dating scheme that results in a clash of worlds and feelings that neither one of them expected. This book could be corny at times, but in an endearing way, and I loved the twists that Jason June put on the story to make it unique from typical cliches. The characters felt real and flawed, and ultimately delivered powerful messages about exploring different perspectives, falling in love, and learning how to stay true to yourself.
Best Sports Book: The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher
Kara Goucher is a renowned American distance runner, earning two-time Olympian and World Championship silver medalist status during her career. Her memoir, The Longest Race, covers her story as an athlete, including the abuse that she faced on elite Nike team The Oregon Project. Though it has since been shut down, during Goucher’s time on the team there was not only mental and physical abuse but also instances of doping (use of unlawful performing-enhancing drugs). I originally heard about this book years ago, but didn’t get it at first because I wasn’t sure how traumatizing it would be. But while some of the topics covered are difficult to read, I also found it filled with interesting insights on finding meaning and success on your own terms. Finally, it pulled the curtain back on the life of a professional runner and opened up to me a greater understanding of what doping can look like and how to avoid it as an athlete.
Best Memoir: Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner by CeCé Telfer
CeCé Telfer was the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA championship in 2019. Telfer came out as trans partway through her career as a collegiate track and field athlete. Make It Count follows her journey, including the hardships she faced—coming out to a transphobic Jamaican family, competing in a sport that often tried to push her out, enduring a lack of support and homelessness—and the confidence she found in running. Telfer has truly paved a path for other trans athletes, and learning about her story is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to know more about trans people in sports. There are actually a couple of other memoirs on this list, including Hijab Butch Blues and The Longest Race, but I chose this one for the memoir category because I think sharing trans perspectives is really important. The fact that this book is a memoir is significant—it’s Telfer telling her story in her own voice!
Best Politics Book: Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
Emergent Strategy is a collection of theories on change (which can be social, personal, and/or environmental) through a natural and community-oriented lens. This book encourages readers to identify patterns and systems they can harness to create change—in other words, to imitate behaviors from the natural world to help us in our daily lives. It also highlights transformative ways to understand concepts like adaptation and resilience, as well as how small-scale actions can create large-scale ripple effect outcomes. This book is especially geared towards activists, organizers, and people who work with others, but I think anyone could get something out of it. I got a copy of Emergent Strategy as a gift from a high school teacher who I really admired, which I found even more touching after learning that the author encourages readers to mark up this book and pass it on to someone else who might benefit from it.
Best Historical Book: Ace, Marvel, Spy by Jenni L. Walsh
Ace, Marvel, Spy is a total page-turner. It follows the true story of Alice Marble, a young star who becomes one of the best tennis players in the world. She faces poverty, health challenges, and a number of other setbacks—but nothing can stop her from following her dreams. But then, World War II puts her career on hold. When an opportunity opens up for her to become a spy in Switzerland under the pretense of competing in tennis exhibitions, she jumps at it, embarking on an exciting and terrifying journey to stand for her country in a new way. This book was jam packed with action and excitement. From her career in tennis to her work as a spy, Alice’s character was filled with determination and grit, and it was truly inspiring to read. After I finished this book, I was excited to learn that almost all of it was based on real events! Sports fans and history buffs alike will love this read.
Best Poetry Book: Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose From the Undocumented Diaspora by Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Esther Lin, and Janine Joseph
Here to Stay is an anthology by undocumented writers in America that is chock full of poetry with a dash of prose. The book features 1-4 pieces by 52 different writers, making for a wide range of writing styles, cultural backgrounds, and documentation status. The diversity of voices in this book is truly admirable, and it shows how varied undocumented experiences can be. These writers converse with each other through common themes of migration, family, heritage, and belonging, providing windows into experiences that are often erased, if not criminalized, in our culture. Now more than ever, it’s important to support undocumented voices in our country, and this book is one way to educate yourself on this topic. Here to Stay both sheds light on the challenges that undocumented people face in America while also recognizing the positive and fulfilling aspects of embracing multiple cultures and forging a new home for yourself.
Best Book on Race: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Message is a series of reflections on race told through anecdotes on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ travels. Coates writes about how stories and language shape everything, including race and racial discrimination, and how we have the power to take back control of our own stories. He reflects on his first trip to Africa, book banning in South Carolina, and his unraveling understanding of Palestine. The section on Palestine is the longest part of the book, and Coates brings a candid self-reflection and new understanding to this section after having traveled to Palestine himself. This book’s various pilgrimages and contemplations combine for an insightful read that will leave you feeling more informed and more thoughtful about the world around you. I read a couple of different books about race around the time that I read this, and I thought that Coates’ book stood out because it brought a fresh perspective and interesting way to think about race in relation to story.
Best Graphic Novel: Lebanon is Burning and Other Dispatches by Yazan Al-Saadi
This graphic novel is a collection of stories about people’s uprisings in the Middle East during the 2010s. The group of artists behind this book include scenes from Lebanon to Palestine to Egypt to Sudan. Each comic has a unique storyline, and the book weaves them together in a way that highlights the common threads of revolution, self-determination, power, and struggle. Yazan Al-Saadi also does a great job of providing context before each comic so that even if you don’t know much about the history behind it, you can still engage with the story. Personally, I really enjoyed seeing all the different artists’ styles and techniques. If you struggle with sticking to a book, I would recommend this one because the chapters can be read on their own or as part of the whole. The illustrations bring the revolutions to life on the page, keeping you dialed in no matter where you’re reading from.
Reading is becoming more and more of a lost art with social media and short-form entertainment frying our attention spans these days. But from one screen addict to another, know that it is still possible to build healthy and fulfilling habits into your life.
Why not head to your local library and pick up one of these books (or another that appeals to you)? It just might become an important part of your daily routine!
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Leila Metres
