The BEST Books of 2026 (So Far) ⭐️📚

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]I'm getting spoiled at this point, and now I feel like I have to keep it going as much as possible. The first month where I don't find a five-star read is going to be really sad for me now.

[00:00:14]Hey, welcome back. In 2025, I read 10 five-star books. 10 five-star books in 2025. However, four of those books were part of the Throne of Glass series. They were rereads. It was obvious they were going to be five stars. So, for the purposes of this video, these don't count. So, these were really the five-star books that I read that were all new to me and ended up being five stars. Six five-star books. First time caller by B.K. Borison. I think I read this in February. That was the first five-star that I read. I feel like I was fighting off a reading slump, and this was just one of those situations where it was like the right book at the right time. I absolutely loved the writing of this. Loved everything about it. Then I read Beartown, I think in March. This was my second Fredrik Backman book ever, I believe. It definitely lived up to the hype. I loved this book. Then I read Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry.

[00:01:02]This was her new release in 2025, I believe this was in April. I loved everything about this book. I know that there is a lot of discourse among Emily Henry fans. Most people really didn't like this book. Most people also didn't like Happy Place, which is my favorite Emily Henry book, so maybe I'm just kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum of some of the fans, but I absolutely loved this. Coincidentally, I'm currently rereading this. This will be my first book of May. Then I read My Friends by Fredrik Backman in June. When this first came out, this book was my favorite book of the entire year. Such an easy five stars. And then I had a long drought where I was in and out of reading for certain reasons.

[00:01:38]Specifically near the end of the year, I had a lot of health issues that I was dealing with. I just wasn't reading at all. And so, my next five-star read was not until the end of the year, in December. I read Twice by Mitch Albom.

[00:01:50]This book is absolutely fantastic. I think it's very underhyped and that more people need to be reading it and talking about it. And I ended year with The Strength of the Few as my last five star. This is the second book in the Hierarchy series. The first book is The Will of the Many, one of my favorite books of all time. This is a continuation of the series and it did end up being a five stars for me. So, six five stars in 2025. It is currently only a couple days into May and I already have read six five stars in 2026. We are at 100% match to 2025 at this point. I don't know how, I don't know what blessing I have stumbled across, but I have had a five star at least one five star read every month this year so far. So, let's talk about them. My first five star of the year was in January and that was Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. I had really been dragging my feet when it came to the new Hunger Games books. I just didn't think there'd be any way that those books could live up to what the original trilogy was for me, one of my favorite series of all time bar none.

[00:02:52]And I kind of ended that series just like, I don't really need more. I don't need more to the world, I don't need prequels, I don't need more characters.

[00:03:00]I'm just not like super interested in it, you know? I know that a lot of people treat that differently than I do.

[00:03:05]Some people just want to get as much content out of a specific series or a specific world as possible, but it just really felt conclusive to me and I wasn't left wanting. I especially didn't really want to read Songbirds and Snakes or Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I have no interest in a Snow story. I really don't care about Lucy Gray. I just was like kind of resolved with not reading it. And then when Sunrise on the Reaping came out, I sort of felt the same way even though my interest was more piqued with Haymitch versus Snow. I mean, Haymitch is a lot more of an interesting character and that historical point of the Hunger Games was more interesting to me than Songbirds where it's only like 10 years after the first one. And really I just heard so many good things about this, even more than Songbirds. And so I was like, all right, let's let's just try it. Let's pick it up. I kind of went into it with low expectations. Like I was expecting to not like it. I was expecting to not cry because I'm like there's just no way that it's good enough, you know? And I was severely proven wrong. Like this book [laughter] is so good. I was instantly back into what I love about The Hunger Games series as a whole, the characters, the world, the writing style. There was a little part of me that was like, how could this possibly surprise me? How could this be made interesting to me because we know Haymitch goes to the Hunger Games, we know all of the other characters that go with him are going to die because he's the winner of the Hunger Games, we know all of this. So, how am I going to get emotionally attached to people when I know their fate? What is going to be surprising to me? And really I was continually surprised. For one thing, this is one of the Quarter Quells. I think it's 50 years of The Hunger Games and they chose twice as many tributes as normal. So, there's four kids from each district that are going into this games.

[00:04:46]That alone makes it kind of crazy. I thought the arena was really really cool. I loved seeing Haymitch's backstory and how he ends up where he is in the original trilogy. It was so well done. It did make me emotional. It did make me cry. I think Suzanne Collins's writing is brilliant because there's not a lot of fluff to it. There's not a lot of romance. It's not very lyrical or metaphorical. It's very blunt writing.

[00:05:09]It's very straightforward writing, but she knows how to tell a story. That's what captivates us about Suzanne Collins's writing. It's the story. It's the characters and she knows that she doesn't need fluffy, beautiful, lyrical, romantic sentences to make us feel connected to these characters. She just says it like it is, very simply, very bluntly, very directly and it's exactly what we need for the story. And I loved going back to it. I was so so invested in this. It made me want to rewatch all of the movies and against all odds, it made me kind of want to read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which I have since bought, haven't read it yet, still don't think I'm going to like it very much, but I am resolved to read it now.

[00:05:48]This was such a good first five-star book of the year. Next I read Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross. This is another one where I went in with pretty level expectations. I wouldn't say low expectations, but kind of level. Rebecca Ross is the same author that wrote Divine Rivals, which is a fantasy duology. I loved the first book of Divine Rivals. I was really, really let down and disappointed by the second book. I think the second book was pretty messy, a lot of plot holes. It felt like there were a lot of things that were retconned, that just didn't make sense, but we kind of threw them in there because we needed something to explain this other thing, and I just was really disappointed by that second book. So, I kind of had this preconceived notion about Rebecca Ross that her writing is beautiful. Her world and her characters are beautiful, but she has never truly stuck the landing in a book. There's always something in the plot that feels off, that feels rushed, that feels like she couldn't like fully get a grasp on it. And so, I kind of went into this book with that perception, and she really proved me wrong on this one, too.

[00:06:50]Two books back-to-back where I was fully proven wrong in what I expected. This book truly has some of the best pacing and the tightest plot of a book that I have read this year. I have no questions. There are no plot holes that I'm confused about. She paced it perfectly. She gave us all the answers exactly when we needed to get them. The character development was perfect. It wasn't too rushed, it wasn't too slow, it wasn't too shallow, and it wasn't too deep. It was perfect. I actually have nothing bad to say about this book. It really felt like Rebecca Ross completely honed her writing style. It's like she just got so good. She got so good, and I was so incredibly pleased by this. Yes, this book is primarily a romance, but there's also a lot of interesting politics that go into this plot as well.

[00:07:35]We follow our main characters, Matilda and Vincent. Matilda is a goddess, and Vincent is a human. They have a connection as children, and they become friends, and then through a series of circumstances, they don't talk for many, many years. They reconnect in adulthood when Matilda has to come help Vincent protect his kingdom, his land, essentially. And they sort of fight in this war together, a small-scale war, maybe like a big battle, but still they're fighting together, they're trying to save his land. Matilda is trying to make atonement for certain things that she did or didn't do in her past. They slowly start to build back up their relationship again and I just think it is so beautiful cuz you also have this thing hanging over them that's like, Matilda's a goddess, Vincent's a human. How are they going to pull this off? How is this possibly going to work?

[00:08:20]And the way that it all works out in the end, like it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I loved this book so much, and I think it's just because I was so excited that Rebecca Ross like pulled it off. She really, really pulled it off.

[00:08:31]She stuck the landing, and it was so good. An easy five stars. Then we enter the month of February, and I said, "Well, I think it's time for me to cry again." Let's read A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. I knew that this was going to be a five-stars before I even started it because most of his books are five-stars for me. The only ones that weren't five-stars were Anxious People, which I rated four stars, and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, which I rated an annoyingly specific 4.75 stars. A Man Called Ove, I just knew that this was going to be five-stars because of what people had said about it, because of the reviews that I had read, because of previous history and experience with him as an author. I just knew I'd love it, and it really matched my expectations perfectly. I think this is a smaller plot than I'm used to reading from Fredrik Backman. A lot of his other books focus on many characters and slowly learning the story of many characters, and this really mainly focuses on Ove. And we see him as an old man, he's a widower, and he has certain things in his life that he's just kind of come to terms with, he's accepted. He doesn't want to be on this earth without his wife anymore, and then this family moves in across the street from him and totally disrupt his life. They add color to his colorless life. He learns to be excited again and to love life again and to love people again and find community and friends and kind of the importance of that, especially towards the end of your life. And it's such a beautiful thing to see. You start out with Ove as just this grouchy, crotchety old man and the book ends and it's so clear how much he's learned to find happiness again.

[00:10:03]This is another book where I thought the pace thing was absolutely excellent. You spend exactly the right amount of time with Ove. There's perfect character development where when you get to the end, when he feels happy again with his life, it doesn't seem unearned.

[00:10:17]Everything feels earned, which means that the emotions felt really earned for me. I was crying so hard at the end of this. So, so hard, but it felt really, really good to get there. Absolutely loved this book. The next book I read was The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. This is one that I have talked about a couple times channel now. We're into, I believe, the month of March for this book and I still have a hard time talking about it. I still have a hard time breaking down the plot because I just don't think you can in a short synopsis, in a short conversation, in a video on BookTube. Like I literally don't think that you can break it down to something so small because this book is so deep. There's a lot of nuances to this story and to the characters that I still kind of have trouble explaining back to people, but the thing that I explained to people is that this book really made me wrestle with a lot of emotions, a lot of how I felt towards certain characters, particularly one character that in the beginning of this book, you are introduced to him. You are told that he is pretty much the worst human alive. Like he has done so many horrible things. He is awful, super cruel, super horrific. Everybody is afraid of him and yet he is in this place of ultimate power about to become the new emperor for the Azalea Dynasty.

[00:11:36]Our main character Wei becomes a concubine for him and basically starts to figure out a way that she could maybe kill him and free the world from his tyrannical reign. But in order to kill him, she has to get close to him. She has to get to know him. She has to learn his story. And I remember being like partway through the book and talking to my husband about it like going back and forth trying to process how I was feeling of just like, I don't want to have compassion for this character. I don't want to learn to like him because he has done unforgivable things in this book. And I just don't know if the author is going to go in that direction or is she going to go in a different direction? Like how is this going to shake out? I have no idea. And at the end of the book I did get to a place of like, yes, this character that I am so conflicted about still is awful. There's nothing that excuses his actions.

[00:12:25]There's nothing that pardons the things that he has done. But there is explanation that is important to understand and to know as a reader and for a main character Wei to know about.

[00:12:38]There is reasons. There is explanation.

[00:12:41]It's not excuses. It's not a pardon. But there is an understanding there and when you start to understand somebody, no matter how awful they may be, it's hard not to have a little bit of compassion.

[00:12:53]It's hard not to have a little bit of empathy, no matter what they have done.

[00:12:57]And I think that that is kind of part of being human. I don't know. I still feel very conflicted about it to this day, but for that reason, the fact that I feel so much, the fact that I need to process it so much and I'm going back and forth on so many things, like this book gripped me. This book had me in such a chokehold, mainly because I just was like, it's all I could think about.

[00:13:18]I'm still thinking about it a couple months later at this point. I can't stop thinking about this book. I think it is so incredibly impressive that this author was able to get me to get to a certain point about this character. And again, like I hate that character. He's the living worst. He deserves everything that comes to him for like retribution.

[00:13:37]And yet, she perfectly placed out these breadcrumbs, these little trails of why he is the way he is. And while again, it doesn't excuse everything he's done, at least for me as a reader, I'm like, "Oh, that's why." And it made me sad and it made me emotional. No, it didn't make me forgive him. And I don't even think our main character really gets to a point of forgiveness with him. But it does make me just like understand, I guess. And I thought that that was just insane that an author could make me feel that way.

[00:14:06]So well done, so incredibly beautiful.

[00:14:08]On top of all of those emotional complications, incredible characters, a rich, beautiful world, and beautiful writing style. This is an easy five stars. And with this being a debut novel, it's even more than a five stars for me. It's a 5.5 stars. I loved it so much. We are still in the month of March, and my next five star read was The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez. This book actually really surprised me. It kind of snuck up on me how much I enjoyed this. I've said this before, but I have a little bit of a complicated relationship with Abby Jimenez as a reader author perspective goes. Some of her books I've absolutely loved. Some of her books I've absolutely hated. And some of them I'm just completely indifferent to. I don't care about them at all. So at this point, I go into most books from Abby Jimenez that I read just kind of level. Just sort of like, I don't know what we're going to get. I'm just going to go with level expectations, not expecting too much, not expecting too little. And then the way that it shakes out is just the way that it shakes out. And I think that was the case with this book. I went in pretty level. And this really exceeded my expectations in a lot of ways. I think that this is her deepest book. I think that the writing in this is definitely her best that she's ever been that I've read. I haven't read every single one of her books, but at this point, I think this is like the fourth or fifth book that I've read from her, and this is definitely her best in my opinion. This follows our main characters, Larissa and Chris. Larissa is dating Chris's best friend, Mike, but Larissa and Chris sort of become friends. This whole book takes place over the course of about a year. I think there are some people in this that would say that this book is a cheating trope, and to me personally, I just didn't get that. Yes, you do see Larissa and Chris start to develop some feelings for each other while Larissa is still in a relationship with Mike, but they never truly act on those feelings. And also, I think there's a lot going on with Larissa and Mike's relationship that's very, very complicated in the situation that it is. You definitely get Chris's perspective throughout this book, and you see him fully fall in love with Larissa, but you also see him being like, I have to love her from afar because she is in a relationship with my best friend. To me, this didn't cross the line into a cheating trope, and by the time Chris and Larissa actually got together, yes, their feelings had already developed, but Larissa and Mike were over at that point. And actually, that part of the book was one of my favorite parts because there was no crazy like fireworks moment of them finally coming to terms with the fact that they can be together. It was really soft and really gentle, and it showed that their entire relationship had such a strong foundation on friendship and trust at that point because they had been developing for over a year at this point. So, when they actually were finally free to be together, it just kind of like slotted into place as if this was the way that it always should have been. And the way that that scene was written, I was just like, that is beautiful. That was so beautiful the way that that was written. And you see Chris and Mike in particular towards the end of the book, they obviously have to talk to each other because you know that Larissa and Chris are going to be together. I personally, I'm sorry if I'm giving away a a bit more information in this book than you guys necessarily want, but a lot of this you can kind of expect. Like Larissa and Chris are the main characters. It says in the synopsis that Larissa is dating Mike. You know that Larissa and Chris are going to end up together. You know that then Chris would have to have a conversation with Mike. Okay, let's not pretend that that's like a major spoiler at this point. The final conversation between Chris and Mike, the way that that conflict is handled, I thought was genius. And that is the conversation that honestly made me emotional at the end. It's not even in a conversation between Larissa and Chris, our two main characters. It was the conversation between a side character, Mike, and Chris. And it was handled so freaking well. I absolutely loved this book. I think that there was so much depth to it. It definitely goes beyond the bounds of just like a cheesy cute rom-com, but at the same time, there are a lot of just cheesy cute rom-com things that happen in this book that kind of just lighten the mood for a second, as is sort of needed as you're reading this book. You're just like, "Wow, there's there's some tough things going on in this book. Oh, let's do like a quick cheesy rom-com thing to like lift you out of those emotional depths for a second, and then we'll get back into it." I just thought the pacing was great, characters were great, dialogue was great. It was so beautiful.

[00:18:25]Definitely my favorite Abby Jimenez book that I have read so far. So, that was March, and then my five-star read for April was of course The Bright Years by Sara Dessen. I just recently talked about this book in detail for my reading wrap-up for April, so I'm not really going to dive into it that much right now. If you want to see all the thoughts and ramblings that I have about it, you can go check out the April wrap-up that I posted a couple days ago, but pretty much, to sum it up, this might be my favorite book that I have read this year, and I've read almost 40 books this year so far. We're at like I think 38-ish, and I think this is the best one. It was so emotional for me. It was so touching, heart-wrenching, tragic, beautiful, happy, every scale of emotion that you could possibly feel I felt with this book. I don't really know why. I think maybe it's because I have a little bit of personal experience with some of the things that are talked about in this book. I think the writing was so good.

[00:19:16]The exact right words were used with the exact right sentence to just hook me, grip me, tug on all of my emotions. I just thought it was so beautiful, and I think at the end of this book you really see the characters get to a point where they choose to fight for a happy ending.

[00:19:31]They choose to be hopeful about a very dark situation. They choose to find a light at the end of the tunnel, and I thought that that was a very brave thing for these characters to do, and it didn't feel unearned at all. I think the author really set all of these characters up as far as their development goes that it makes sense the decisions that they make in the end, and I just thought it was absolutely incredible. I think this is my favorite book that I've read so far this year, definitely. So far, this might be my best reading year I've ever had. There is a high chance that this is just the best reading year I've ever had. Six five-star books in four months, at least one five-star book every single month.

[00:20:08]I'm getting spoiled at this point, and now I feel like I have to keep it going as much as possible. The first month where I don't find a five-star read is going to be really sad for me now. Let me know if you have read any of these books, if you agree with my thoughts on them, what are some of the five stars that you have found this year. Drop them in the comments so that we can all find five stars for each other. As always, thank you so much for joining and hanging out with me on [music] this little corner of the internet.

[00:20:28]Definitely go and check out some of these books if you can, and we'll see you next time.