Historical Fiction

Best Reads of 2025

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Speculative historical fiction, Thrutopia, Weird Fiction

This was a hard year for me – I was ill for a lot of it which impacted on my reading speed. During the second half of December, however, I decided to consciously stop checking social media and make my life much more analogue. Surprising no one, this was the month I read the most – and also when I mentally felt the healthiest I’ve been in a long while. So this is something I’m hoping to embrace in 2026 – less time in the digital sphere and more time with a book in my hands…

Books that blew my mind:

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin

Very late to the party with this one, I know, but it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Cosmic horror, philosophy and religion. Fantasy at its best. We follow a teenager who has been hailed as the high-priestess of an ancient religion. Who has been educated to believe she’s one of the most important humans on Earth – but actually, does she have any power at all to decide her own fate? The descriptions of the maze of caves under the tombs of Atuan had be dizzy with fear and wonder.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

A premise that is so ridiculous that shouldn’t work: in their quest to restart the human race to terraform another planet (since humans have destroyed planet Earth) a scientist develops a virus that will drastically accelerate the evolutionary process of a group of monkeys. However, the virus ends up landing in a planet without its monkeys. The planet does have some form of life, though: spiders… Hear me out. This book is absolutely brilliant. I’m not a fan of spiders – actually, I’m really scared of the bigger ones – but this book had me in tears at the end rooting for the spider civilisation.

Most heartbreaking and beautiful non-fiction:

Hijab Butch Blues by Lama H

One of the best books I’ve read about the non-binary experience. It touches many interesting topics as well such as migration and religion. Plus I felt so inspired by the author’s experiences to embrace complicated truths in all its hardships and glories. Truly remarkable: it needs to be translated into many languages.

This Part is Silent by S J Kim

A gorgeous and heartbreaking book about being an immigrant, living in the in between of cultures and languages. And also, a compassionate and brave collection of essays about being a writer and an academic in the United Kingdom today. I’m in awe of the author who has so generously shared very complex and painful experiences.

Most ground-breaking graphic novels:

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

This is the second graphic novel to earn a Pulitzer Prize (after Maus) and the recognition it is getting thanks to it is truly well-deserving. A complex and chilling overview of China’s recent history (specially its cultural revolution and the society that followed). A book also about generational trauma and complex family relationships. Also, a book about migration and multilingualism. As of this day, its author maintains she won’t ever create another graphic novel – this makes me sad, but also I think I understand as this is such a masterpiece!

It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood

Experimental, ambitious, one of the best books about depression and the artist experience I’ve ever read. It’s so playful and dark and nuanced. I know I will re-read it many times.

A book I enjoyed as a child and I still love today:

The Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson

One of the books that made me want to become a writer – I enjoyed going back to it as an adult as I could then read it in English, its original language. It was as good as I remembered.

Horror insights into the darkest parts of the human experience:

Old Soul by Susan Barker

A cosmic horror novel camouflaged as a literary thriller. Lyrical and experimental – and no less terrifying because of that. It asks a really interesting set of questions: why are we all so obsessed with being seen? And who are those bearing witness or observing, and what are their true intentions? A very original novel that combined settings all over the world with very distinctive narrators.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

One of the best horror books I’ve ever read which combines historical fiction with the speculative to create a gothic tale that won’t leave you indifferent. Books like this reaffirm to me how important it is to preserve our historical memory through fiction to remind us all of the atrocities of the past, but also, of the strength of people that survived them. Masterful and touching. I was shaking reading the last twenty pages or so – I haven’t been so moved by a book and its characters in a long time.

Books about gender I couldn’t stop thinking about:

Butter by Asako Yuzuki

This was a very hyped book – and I wasn’t sure was my thing at all until several good friends (and excellent readers) recommended it to me. Even though the blurb makes you think this is going to be a thriller, it goes way beyond the premise. An interesting meditation about the ways gender, fatphobia, food and care connect to each other. The main character is a journalist in her early thirties, more interested in her career than having a community, more interested in being thin (the society she lives in tells her a woman must be thin to be a good woman) than in enjoying delicious food and other visceral life pleasures. The ending still stays with me.

The Vegetarian by Kang

Very late to the party with this one too. A book that horrified me and yet I’m in awe of it. It was hard to read because it reminded me that sometimes being socialised as a woman comes with the understanding (from you, or imposed by others) that you a) are nothing but a piece of flesh others can enjoy or utilise as they see fit b) you don’t have any control over your own body, who may belong to a man, to the state or your family.

Looking back at these two books together (Butter and The Vegetarian) makes me see that they use genre (horror, crime) in very interesting ways to force us to question gender rules in society. Both books have women in them who take ownership over their bodies (and lives) by deciding what they want to consume even if this angers others. The difference in tone comes with the access their main characters have (or not) to a supportive community – in Butter, the main character has a very close friend who is also her supporter; she’s also financially independent (which gains her some basic freedom) and she’s able to form healthy bonds with others as she enters a period of intense change. In The Vegetarian the main character is irrevocably tied to her husband (she depends financially on him) and her family. This second book ends on a dark note that is quite difficult to digest.

Books that celebrate community and challenge our ideas about it:

Any Human Power by Manda Scott

This is an interesting one, because I don’t think it’s a perfect book by any means. In fact, at times I thought the characters seemed a bit too much like concepts the author wanted get across her audience. And yet, this was a fascinating read because it discussed the current sociopolitical situation of the place where I live (England) and used the speculative to imagine different ways into a more positive future. Despite of it not being a happy book at all, it was inspiring in a year when I felt like I had to work really hard to be hopeful. It also discovered me other interesting resources on how humans can co-exist with with the environment and with each other.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

The characters felt so lost in their own complicated circumstances – and I said complicated because almost every character here has a background that means they are facing at least one form of discrimination – being an immigrant, being gay, being Black and so on. Like Hai, the main character of this novel, I’ve also worked in retail and found a very strong community through a job whose sole purpose seemed to dehumanise me. So this is why the story of Hai, who works in HomeMarket, a fast food outlet part of a national chain with a manager who actually cares about every single employer in this job that many would dismiss rang true to me. I was also very interested in the intergenerational friendship between nineteen-year-old Hai and eighty-two-year-old Grazina.

Families are complicated: December 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Nature Writing

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I jumped in glee when I discovered my library had the audiobook. It is narrated by the author (which is always enjoyable) so I borrowed it as quickly as I could. I listened to it in a few days (it’s a short one) through the darkness and rain of early December in the north.

I loved it and hated it – this was one book to inspire lots of feelings in me, often contradictory. I found the author’s voice annoying yet compelling. She narrates this book using, partly, the I-ching – she asks questions to it as if she was speaking to a god of sorts, or the universe, or a superior intelligence. This is amusing and strange – because, of course, she always tries to make sense of the answers she gets, which sound serene, loving, rarely random.

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Surrounded by Ghosts: October 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Spanish

El Celo by Sabina Urraca

The writing of this book is frenetic, visceral and full of detail that is sometimes luscious and other times absolutely disgusting. It took me a while to finish this book because its themes – societal misogyny, sexism, abuse. It follows a female character – ‘The Human’ – who finds a female dog in the streets of Madrid and becomes her owner almost against her will. Taking care of another creature becomes a mammoth task, but The Human, who can barely take of herself as it is, is willing. What she’s not prepared for is her dog in heat – which comes with its own set of complications and pressures for her to handle this wild side of her animal.

As the book advances – often mixing different timelines, The Human as a child growing up in Tenerife, and also as a young woman trying to make life work in Madrid – a few things are revealed. First, that The Human is addicted to anti-anxiety pills she takes to numb a traumatic experience. Her doctor recognises her as a someone who’s suffered from the abuse of an ex-partner so he sends her to group therapy where she meets other women that are nothing like her (they are much older, much younger, they come from complete different places and classes) but that can understand her experience of being hurt by someone they love. The Human bonds with one of the members of this group – Mecha (is interesting to see that other characters are given actual names) – who becomes a friend, a bad influence, and a saviour.

I really enjoyed this story and thought the writing (in Spanish) was really good. It was an uncomfortable, claustrophobic read – which makes sense, considering the narrator is constantly surrounded by many ghosts, the ghost of her grandmother, who she adored when she was a child, but who died of dementia, the ghost of her ex partner, still controlling and frightening her even though they are not together anymore, the ghost of a still birth in the family which was never discussed or acknowledged, the ghost of her grandfather, who dies during the book right after confessing an unsettling truth, the ghost of the career she’s left behind in marketing, the money and the stability, as she tries to become a writer and recover from trauma, the ghosts of all the abusive lovers of the women from her group therapy sessions… and so on.

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Turbulent Books: July 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

This is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read – and also, one of the hardest. Ever. Pretty much like Palestine by Joe Sacco and Maus by Art Spiegel (which I wholeheartedly recommend), I found myself having to put the book down to process it. This couldn’t be done in one sitting. But it is extremely good, a thought-provoking, and it encompasses a lot, from family dynamics to mental health to art and purpose to very complex (and often terrifying) historical events from twentieth-century China.

This is also a graphic novel I was eagerly waiting for from the moment I heard it had won a Pulitzer award. I’m also very interested in historical memory and familial and collective memory – how we inherit the stories from our ancestors, sometimes even without knowing them first hand, as it is the case in this particular graphic novel.

This is also Hull’s first long-form work (although she has excellent short comics published in different places, you can see all those listed in her website). It is, of course, pretty impressive. I have listened to a lot of interviews with the author in which she swears this will be the only graphic novel she’ll ever draw. She says it’s done. I’m saddened, because I’d read every graphic novel she’d produce – but also, I sort of understand. I can see why working on this story would take an extraordinary amount of energy – both physically and mentally.

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Queer medieval utopias, polyamory and complicated adulthoods: December 2024 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature

The Con Artists by Luke Healy

I loved How to Survive in the North and Americana by the same author. I found this one in the library and immediately picked it up. This is an interesting story in that it’s framed in such a way that you are never sure if it’s autobiographical (like Americana) or a complete work of fiction (like How to Survive in the North).

This is the story of Frank and Giorgio, two gay men living in London. Their friendship goes way back: they grew up in Ireland and their families know each other. But as adults, they’ve also grown apart and even though they live in the same city, they rarely see each other. Frank is far too busy, focusing on his goal of becoming a reputable comedian and struggling with an anxiety disorder. However, when Giorgio gets hit by a bus and ends up hospitalised, it’s Frank he callsin the first instance. Horrified seeing Giorgio doesn’t have anyone else (and that he refuses to tell his family what happened not to worry them) Frank agrees to move in temporarily with his friend as he recovers from his wounds and needs a bit of help to get around the house.

As soon as they start living together, Frank starts noticing a few strange things. Giorgio is unemployed and living on benefits, yet there are a few luxurious items lying around the house. On top of everything, Giorgio spends his day buying extremely expensive designer products online, such as bags and clothing. Where is all that money coming from?

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