Hello and welcome!
This is my annual “Best Of”, look back at what I’ve read in 2025. The categories, the shortlist, and the winners are all chosen by, you guessed it, me! The prize is the warm feeling that the author will surely feel when they learn that they have been selected for the Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards.
This year’s categories will be:
Best Debut
Best Translation
Best Audio
Best Non-Fiction
Best Fiction
So, let’s get started!
I read several books this year that I later realized were the first work of a new author. I’ve never had Best Debut as a category because this isn’t typically something I pay a lot of attention to but when I realized some of my favourite books were coming from first-time authors, I felt like it was time to add a category. This was a hard-fought category because some of my favourite reads of 2025 are here and you’ll see some of these titles come up again in other categories.
The Runners-Up:
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
This also won the Women’s Fiction Prize this year (equally prestigious) so I’m not alone in my opinion. The level of writing here is superb. From the setting to the characters, this is a lush and beautiful book that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it.
Sleep – Honor Jones
This is a book I’ve seen less buzz about than van der Wouden’s and I never ended up writing a review of it because I never quite figured out how to talk about it without getting intensely personal. But it’s so thoughtful and true-to-life and powerful and whatever Honor Jones writes next I will be immediately reading.
Glorious Exploits – Ferdia Lennon
This book was so delightfully strange and unexpected. It was funny and horrifying and gut-wrenching. It was both truly comedic and truly tragic and the whole thing was navigated with such skill and thoughtfulness.
And the winner is…
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
While any of the above titles would be worthy winners of this category, what made me choose Yoder’s debut novel was how bold she was in the choices she made. For a first-time novelist to be so unabashedly weird and wonderful was beautiful to watch unfold on the page. I did not expect to see so much of myself in this story about a mother who might be turning into a dog but that was Yoder’s skill in writing this book that made so many women feel seen.
Karissa Reads Books 
I love your categories! Most folks don’t have the categories you picked, so I was excited to read your list. How did I forget that you read Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder? It was popular in the horror community! It also had that killer red cover! Also, it’s like a serious version of a book Bill recommended to me called Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller about women turning into dogs.
Oh, thanks! That’s nice to hear! I usually look over the books I’ve read in the year and then see what sort of categories pop out at me. I think it took me this long to read Nightbitch because it seemed so popular amongst horror readers and that put me off. I needed a personal recommendation! I’ve never heard of Carmen Dog – I’m going to look it up!
Debut author is a great category for these awards! I also thought Nightbitch was a horror novel and hadn’t picked it up. Maybe I should give it a try! I really enjoyed Celia Fremlin’s The Hours Before Dawn which covers similar themes (though a very different type of book). Basically it’s in the “thriller with an unreliable narrator” vein, but instead of the unreliability being deliberate deceit/alcohol-induced/any of the other usual tropes, it’s because the main character has a young baby who won’t sleep and she’s so exhausted that she might be losing her grip on reality. I really loved it, and it sounds like Nightbitch is in that vein as well?
Thanks! That does sound a lot like Nightbitch. I can see where people might classify Nightbitch as horror but I really don’t think it fits. It’s not even really a thriller but more of a psychological book. There was so much in it that spoke to me as a mom of young kids that I’m really curious how the book would come across to a reader that doesn’t have that personal experience.
Great recommendations! Nighbitch is really intriguing to me now. Perhaps I should watch the movie first haha
Thanks! I’m so curious about the movie because a bit part of the book is that we don’t really know what’s real and what’s happening in the main characters head that she simply perceives as real. I’m not sure how that works in a more visual format.