Colorways by Vicki Welsh

It’s the end of 2025 and I ended the year with 5 great books. I enjoyed every one of them.

For the year, I read 58 books, a little over 1 a week. Since 1995, I’ve read about 2130 books, according to my spreadsheet. I’ve had much more productive year than this one, but I don’t really put much value on the number of books. I just read when I want.

I do like to revisit my favorite books for the year and one of them is the last book that I read this month, The Echo Chamber. These are not in any particular order but there were my highest rated books of 2025.

• The People We Keep by Allison Larkin
• James by Percivil Everett
• The Echo Chamber by John Boyne
• The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens, followed by The Shadows We Hide
• Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin
• When These Mountains Burn by David Joy
• Queen Hereafter by Isabelle Shculler
• Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow
• The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
• Love and Hate in Jamestown by David Price
• We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes
• Lethal Prey by John Sandford

What were your favorite books of 2025?

If you are at all interested in football, or know someone who is interested in football, this is a really interesting read. If follows the whole lifecycle of the quarterback from high school to retirement.

The quarterback position is unique across all sports. The author compares it to royalty in the way that the position is glamorized and, almost worshiped.

He had access to several quarterbacks including Johnny Unitas, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, John Elway and Patrick Mahomes. He delves into how quarterbacks are developed and how their expectations compared to the reality of their lives.

Beyond football, this is a great study into what people go through to gain success in their chose careers.

I picked this one up on recommendation from a BookTuber.

Clair Campbell is a recently unemployed investigative reporter in NYC. She’s called home to help her mother out in South Carolina. She had not been back to South Carolina for years. When she was young, her 18 year old big sister, Natalie, disappeared. When her hair and blood were found in a car, the car owner was convicted of her murder but the body has never been found.

While in South Carolina, she decides to take a summer job at Galloway Farms, a muscadine vineyard. While staying in the guest house she finds a diary from a previous resident and it starts to open up questions about what happened to her sister.

This isn’t a fast paced mystery. It’s more of a character driven novel with a slowly developing story. It was entertaining enough but I found the main character a little annoying. For an investigative journalist, she sure makes some stupid decision.

If you are going to read this one, I recommend reading the book instead if listening to audio. I found the narrator’s voice a little “young” and soft for a mature woman. She’s better suited for romance novels. But she wasn’t so bad that I’d completely avoid the book, if that’s your preferred format.

Margo is the daughter of a Hooter’s waitress and a former pro wrestler, pre WWF. He was never really in her life and it’s possible that her mother shouldn’t have been. She always knew she would have to survive on her own.

She enrolls in a couple of classes at the local community college while working a low wage job to pay the rent. She has a brief affair with her English professor and, surprise!, it results in a pregnancy. She decided to keep the baby.

The next thing she know, she had a baby and no job and her father, Jinx, has arrived to be her roommate and help with baby care. She needs money and turns to online content creation with advice from her father from his very successful wrestling career.

It’s a really cute and funny book and Margo is totally likable. I really felt that the storyline was fresh and unique. Elle Fanning’s narration was perfect for the character.

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in the mid-1800’s so this book was set in her contemporary time. She was friends with Charlotte Bronte and was published in Charles Dicken’s magazine

Ruth was orphaned and apprenticed, by her uncle, to a dressmaker. She was quite talented and beautiful and was eventually seduced by the wealthy playboy, Henry Bellingham. The mores of the time would not tolerate her behavior and she eventually lost her job and home and was abandoned by Henry.

She was eventually taken in and supported by a man and his sister and was treated as family. When Henry comes back in the picture, he tries to win her back. She must decide what kind of life she wants.

It was the first book to explore the story of the “fallen woman” and was controversial in it’s time. I have enjoyed several of Gaskell’s books and did this one as well.

This is the last book that I finished in 2025 and one of my favorites. Boyne is already one of my favorite authors. The Hearts Invisible Furies is one of my all-time favorite books. This book is a laugh-out-loud take on the absurdity of wokeness. This was written pre-pandemic at the peak of woke culture.

The story is told through the Cleverley family. Dad is a beloved presenter on the BBC, Mom is a famous writer of women’s literature. They have 3 adult children, all still living at home. Each is totally addicted to their mobile phones and social media and each gets caught up in it in their own way.

This book really benefits from the audio format. The narrator was excellent and there were so many times that I laughed out loud.