We have had the chance to adore so many books this year. In the literary category, we had delicate and delightful stories that have stuck with us. From debuts that hit celeb book clubs to the return of some of our favorite authors, the literary fiction genre delivered in 2025.

This year, the winner of the She Reads Best Literary Fiction Award of 2025 is: 

The Names by Florence Knapp

On the day Cora registers her newborn’s name, a tiny pause splinters her life into three possible futures. In one, she obeys her domineering husband; in another, she claims a different name—and a different self. Knapp tracks thirty-five years across these parallel paths with prose that’s lush yet propulsive, examining domestic abuse, the tangle of family and a mother’s fight to give her children tenderness and safety. It’s heartbreaking, hopeful and ingeniously built.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon

And don’t miss out on the rest of our favorite debuts from 2025!

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

Homeseeking follows Haiwen and Suchi across six decades, from Shanghai alleys to Hong Kong song halls, Taiwan camps, New York streets and sunny California. Childhood friends turned soulmates are split when Haiwen enlists to save his brother, leaving a violin and a note: forgive me. Decades later they lock eyes in a 99 Ranch Market, forced to face what memory hoards and survival buries. Chen weaves diaspora history with quiet, aching love and the idea that home lives in the people we choose—and the music we refuse to forget.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Four women—Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer in pandemic solitude; Zikora, a high-powered lawyer reeling from betrayal; Omelogor, a Lagos finance star questioning her reflection; and Kadiatou, a housekeeper fighting for her daughter’s future—navigate love, desire and the truths we hide from ourselves. Adichie threads Lagos and America, friendship and motherhood, regret and reinvention, with prose that sings and stings. It asks what happiness costs, and who pays. Chiamaka revisits lovers; Zikora leans on help she didn’t expect; Omelogor tests the life she’s built; Kadiatou faces a choice to upend everything.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon

Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang

Enka meets Mathilde in art school and falls under the spell of her wild originality. When success pulls Mathilde away, Enka reaches for SCAFFOLD, a bleeding-edge tech that promises empathy—literally stepping into Mathilde’s mind and memories. What begins as devotion slips into possession, raising eerie questions about consent, creativity and the stories we claim as ours. Huang’s prose is sleek, unsettling and tender, and the friendship at its core feels real and raw.

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The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei

In turn-of-the-millennium Singapore, Genevieve Yang becomes a sister when Arin—her grandfather’s hidden legacy—moves into their one-room flat in Bedok. What begins as fierce, us-against-the-world devotion hardens under the city’s winner-take-all grind: no parties, no slack, only grades and escape. Then betrayal fractures the girls’ bond, forcing Genevieve to choose between ambition and belonging, home and horizon, family duty and herself. Wei’s debut is tender and unsparing about girlhood and class.

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We Do Not Part by Han Kang, e. yaewon (translator), Paige Aniyah Morris (translator)

An urgent text sends Kyungha from Seoul to snowbound Jeju, where her hospitalized friend begs her to save a white bird named Ama. The trek becomes a nightmarish vigil—a house, a storm and a plunge into histories buried under ice. Han Kang blurs dream and reality to ask what friendship owes the living and the dead, and how caretaking can be a form of resistance. This spare and luminous read tells us that remembering is an act of love—and sometimes the only way through unfathomable grief.

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Loved One by Aisha Muharrar

When Julia’s first love-turned-best friend dies at 29, she flies from L.A. to London to gather the pieces he left behind—only to collide with Elizabeth, the composed florist-restaurateur guarding his guitar and her own secrets. What begins as an errand becomes an emotional mystery about memory, rivalry and the shapeshifting roles we play for the people we love. Muharrar balances wit with ache, grief with possibility, as two women unspool the truest version of a man they both knew.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

Nineteen-year-old Hai is ready to jump when a voice—Grazina, an elderly widow slipping into dementia—calls him back. He becomes her unlikely caretaker, and over one wet Connecticut year, their fragile, vibrant bond reshapes his sense of self, family and a town fraying at the edges. Vuong braids love, labor and loneliness into a tender epic about survival and the quiet work of staying. Lyrical yet grounded, it honors the people we overlook and the mercies we almost miss—and how second chances take root.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon

Audition by Katie Kitamura

At a Manhattan lunch, an acclaimed actress sits across from a much younger man—and everything we assume starts to wobble. Lover, son, threat, salvation: each possibility locks into place as two competing narratives unspool and quietly rewrite the same encounter. Kitamura’s control is icy and intimate, turning performance into a study of power, privacy and the stories we tell to stay wanted. It reads like a thriller and lands like an x-ray of the heart.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon