Pao's Top Reads of 2025

Explore the team’s favourite books of 2025! Choosing three from an entire year is a challenge and more recent reads tend to obscure what you read in February. Still, there are those that stay with you through the months. Why three? Because it's more than one but less than a list. The rules are: they don't need to have been published in 2025, but you need to have read or re-read it this year.

These are Pao's choices!

CHOSEN FAMILY When I found out Madeleine Gray had a new book out, I *had* to devour it immediately and beg the publisher to bring her to Edinburgh. I'm a sucker for her writing style, her sparse and sharp prose and the way every other page makes you laugh out loud or want to cry. Chosen Family follows up the author's debut, Green Dot (very good, also one of my favourites) with a tale of two best friends, following them from childhood to adulthood. I loved the focus on alternatives to heteronormative parenting and the description of queer family making, even if I was frustrated with the way one character suddenly dropped off the map.We're doing an event with Madeleine Gray, Ahahit Behrooz and Wuthering Dykes in January that I am SO excited about! Find out more here.

ALL THE HOUSES I'VE EVER LIVED IN I'm a sucker for books about identity/belonging and this is one of the best I've ever read, conveniently read amidst my own move to Edinburgh. Yates charts the histories around most of the houses she's lived in as a result of an ever-shifting housing crisis, sharing memories amidst the reasons she was never afforded housing stability. Who knew a book about housing could make you feel so much? I finished it feeling full of rage and galvanised to organise more around housing - and was so pleased to stumble onto Living Rent's work in Edinburgh as a result.

NATURAL BEAUTY Every now and then I'll get into a book slump where nothing I read is satisfying. I read Natural Beauty during a slump like this, convinced that a horror title would be unable to get me out of it (horror and I historically do not get on because I am scared of everything). I was wrong! Natural Beauty is a critique of the beauty industry, its white Eurocentric standards and the power that beauty can bring to otherwise marginalised groups. There's a spicy bisexual subplot, creepy speculative elements and a whole lot of New York. So good!