If you’re struggling for reading inspiration this year and need some recommendations, then an author has shared her top books that you need to pick up in 2025 – and they’re perfect for summer.
There’s nothing better than sitting by the sea or the pool and getting your current read out of your beach bag. But which books does Cassie Steward, known on TikTok as @cassieauthor, recommend you pick up ASAP?
Cassie said that 2025 had already been an amazing year for books so far, as she pointed out there “have been so many incredible new releases”.
She claimed that these books “are absolutely worth the hype,” saying “it is impossible not to fly through them”.
1. Number Thirty-Two by Cassie Steward
Not wanting to miss an opportunity to promote her own release, Cassie said this book wasn’t released this year, adding: “But everyone is reading it anyway”. She described it as an “emotional rollercoaster of a book” where two women’s lives are changed forever “thanks to a tragedy that happened 40 years earlier”.
2. The Sirens by Emilia Hart
Cassie said that this is the “most anticipated second book from the author of Weyward.” She said that she had “such high hopes for this one, and it did not disappoint”.
She explained: “It’s a story of two sisters in Australia, and one of them goes mysteriously missing in the tiny coastal town that she’s moved to. And as the other sister searches for her, she uncovers some very disturbing things about the town and people that have disappeared over the years in it and how all of the mysterious goings on date back hundreds of years.”
3. The Favourites by Layne Fargo
Cassie described this book as “so addictive and fast-paced” – she managed to read it in just two days. “It’s the story of Heath and Kat, a couple of childhood sweethearts, who fight their way to the top of the ice dancing world to escape their dark pasts,” she explained.
Cassie continued: “They eventually become world champions, and then everything unravels as their pasts come back to haunt them. There’s betrayals, there’s drama, there’s secrets, there is everything in this book. I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through”.
4. The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan
“If you loved Evelyn Hugo, you will love this book,” Cassie promised. Cate Kay is a “world famous author, but no one knows who she really is” because her real identity is a secret, and “nobody knows why”.
“Who is the real Cate Kay? Who is the woman behind the books and what is she hiding from?” Cassie said that “everybody will fly through” this book because it’s so good.
5. The Lamb by Lucy Rose
Cassie said: “This is the story of a young girl who lives deep in the Cumbrian woods with her mother. In fact, they live so deep in the woods that the only visitors they ever get to their small cottage are people who’ve lost their way on the hiking trails around them.
“Every time they get a knock on the door from one of these lost souls, they invite them in, and they eat them. Yep. Cannibals. This is the first literary horror-type book that I’ve ever read, and whilst it was super gory and gruesome, I absolutely loved it. It was the biggest surprise of the year for me by far”.