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The Best Overlooked Reads of 2025
It’s that time in your reading year. You’re counting the number of books you’ve read, perusing the lists of best books of the year, considering the gaps in your reading, and thinking about what to read in 2026. But every year there are terrific books that fly under your radar. They may not have been on a bestseller list or picked as a best book, but they earned great reviews from the experts as well as regular readers. And even if a book made one of those best lists, you may have skipped past it because it didn’t sound like something you might like. . . but it deserves a second look. Here are a few candidates for your TBR that you may have skipped over in 2025.
Books You May Have Missed
FICTION
Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven
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This book about a complicated Northern California family in the 1970s received all the stars: Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly. The Samuelsons attempt to rebuild their lives after a shocking death and a new unexpected pregnant family member. We follow them for years as their lives progress. For readers of Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout, or Mary Gaitskill. Huneven hits it out of the ballpark with this one.
Sacrament by Susan Straight
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Straight was a National Book Award finalist who the New York Times says is the “essential voice in American writing and in the writing of the West,” but she’s not always known outside her beloved California. Set in 2020, Sacrament is a Covid-19 novel, but it’s much more than just that. The story focuses on three ICU Covid nurses who, for the sake of their families’ safety, were moved into a trailer park near their hospital. Two of them are mothers now separated from their children. During their isolation, one of the children goes missing and the search for her leads to new love and loss. A captivating look at the sacrifices that hospital workers made during the epidemic.
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel
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Maybe you’ve read Bechdel’s first graphic novel Fun Home, but you might have missed this new one. She’s created a sort of avatar of herself to star in this fictionalized story of her life twenty years later. In this newly created reality, Fun Home has been licensed as a TV series called Death and Taxidermy, earning Bechdel a lot more money than she’s ever had before. She’s living with her partner Holly in their Vermont pygmy goat sanctuary, and Holly seems on her way to becoming an Influencer with her woodchopping videos and reviews of tools. They are still friends with people from years ago, and Alison is wondering how to survive in a climate-challenged world and live an ethical life despite the money. Hilarious and laugh-out loud funny.
Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin
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When 30-year-old Freya comes up short on rent after a medical emergency, she returns to her suburban home in Somers, New York, the birthplace of the American circus, to live in the house she inherited from her parents. She’s shocked to find her 15-year-old niece Aubrey squatting in the derelict home. As the two gradually bond while repairing the house, troubling old secrets resurface and new ones are revealed, but Freya reconnects with old friends and she and Aubrey build a supportive community that helps them heal. Deeply moving.
NONFICTION
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez
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“Fascinating,” “unlike anything else,” “hypnotically amusing,” “engrossing,” “oddly comforting.” These are some of the terms used to describe this book about the author’s visit to 21 different iconic cemeteries around the world. True, Enriquez is known as a horror writer, but in her first book of nonfiction, she staves off the macabre with entertaining sketches of the places she visits. While she describes the sites themselves, she also delves into their sometimes-strange histories and quirky facts about the burials, unusual details you can’t have known, and even how we think about the dead and death itself. She includes related politics, culture, and history, always with insight and empathy. Examples: Did you know that almost every cemetery includes someone buried standing up? Or about the unusual tombs required in low-lying New Orleans? This is a highly entertaining celebration of life. Includes photos.
The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer
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Hammer, the author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, is back with this riveting story of how three self-taught Victorians struggled for twenty years to accomplish one of the most spectacular feats of 19th Century scholarship by figuring out how to decipher the wedge-shaped cuneiform impressions made on clay tablets thousands of years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. A story even exciting enough for Indiana Jones fans.
Magic in the Air: The Mystery and the Soul of the Slam Dunk by Mike Sielski
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Despite being banned from high school and college basketball for a decade, the slam dunk bubbled up to the game’s highest levels and has been a key reason for the growth of the NBA into a global goliath. Drawing on extensive interviews with players, coaches, and experts, Sielski takes us through eighty years of basketball history and explains both the artistry of the dunk and how it became intertwined with current culture and the civil rights movement. The book includes anecdotes from many former players and coaches.
Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser
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Award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser unearths the lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. She pieces together the archaeological, literary, and historical evidence to help us understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women buried in the Homeric epics behind the male heroes. Here are Helen of Troy, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more. Hauser includes newer finds like the rare undisturbed tomb of the Mycenean Griffin Warrior at Pylos. This grave’s contents included many pieces of beautiful jewelry that might have been designated female if he hadn’t been buried alone. She also discusses DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea were Amazon-like female fighters and points out that a prehistoric dye workshop excavated on Crete shows that the “women’s work” of dyeing, spinning, and weaving was incredibly complicated and artistic. This nonfiction work should appeal not only to history and archaeology buffs, but also to fiction readers of Madeline Miller’s Circe, A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, Jennifer Saint’s Electra, or Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls.
If you’re interested in exploring more great titles like this, check our full list of Best Overlooked Titles of 2025.
Or consider these possibilities as well:
2025 Goodreads Choice Awards Finalists
2025 Cumulative Indie NEXT Picks
For more great lists, check out the Recommended Lists section of the Resource Center, home of all the great lists maintained by OverDrive’s staff librarians. Lists include bestsellers, favorite genres, kids and teens, LOTE content, seasonal favorites, and more!
Hot Off the Press
The standard book review source from ALA is Booklist, but have you tried Booklist Reader? It’s their patron-focused companion to the professional journal. Yes, it’s on Libby.
Founded in 1963, this journal is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Not necessarily for the casual reader, here you’ll find thoughtful, probing, and sometimes long reviews of current serious books. Available on Libby where it is one of the most popular magazine titles.
Thank you for joining us in this week’s round up of often missed materials! Reach out to your Digital Content Librarian or Account Manager for more information on how to provide the best content for your community.