The Most Read Books of the 2025 Reading Challenge

Supercharge your Reading Challenge with these unputdownable titles. 

It's summer, which means instead of helping our librarian match kids with the right book at the elementary school where I work, I'm sleeping in, wearing linen, and maybe picking up a couple shifts at the neighborhood café. Mostly for the staff discount. I may even have rediscovered that I exist outside of caring for children.

 

Which, whether it's June or August, you get. Your kiddos are at home. All the time. Don't worry, us educators will return to share the work sometime around Labor Day. In the meantime, though, you're going to want to keep those kids reading, so I'm back with another list of over 70 of the best books for kids that I've read, recommended, repaired, and replaced this year.

 

A few ideas on how to navigate it all:



1. Look for evocative artwork. I don't (only) mean covers. Whether it's spare, busy, or multilayered, choose illustrations that seem worth exploring and considering. Your kid's eyes might alight on something unexpected. There's your book.



2. Remember the power of serial stories. If you want your child to really dig in, consider manga, an early reader series, or even a beloved novel with a new sequel. You'll find examples of each below.



3. Prioritize a few books that appeal to both of you. Not only will you read together more often, but you'll talk about what you've read, which is, you should know, one of the best parts of my job.



OK. You're ready. Happy summer. Happy reading!

This year, we began to welcome our preschool students into the library. It's the best decision we've made in a while, not least because I get to recommend old favorites like Brown Bear… or Nanette's Baguette, along with gorgeous new work from Aram Kim or Alice B. McGinty and David Roberts.

One of the enduring delights of reading is that immersive sensation of being transported to another place or setting entirely.

 

And that, simply put, is the theme of this collection: Transport. Place. Setting. We've waded into the book stacks to provide 144 summer reading recommendations, sorted by the various types of vacation settings you might find yourself in this season. As a bonus feature this time around, we're even including modes of transport.

 

Scroll down a bit and you'll get the idea. Maybe you're in the mood for a story on a boat, or a train, or a classic road trip. Perhaps you're looking for a particular destination: the mountains, the sea, a luxury resort. Or maybe you're feeling really adventurous: Yellowstone National Park, the Arctic Circle, low-earth orbit at 17,000 miles per hour.

 

The collection below spans pretty much every genre on the shelves: mysteries, romance, nonfiction, sci-fi, historical fiction, fantasy, thrillers, horror. The idea is to sort the stacks in a different, summertime, outward-bound kind of way. Click on the cover art images for more information about each book, and you can always use the Want to Read button to shelve a potential title for later review.

 

Bon voyage! Safe travels! Watch out for alligators!

 

 
How are you getting there?


 

Kerine Wint (she/her) is a freelance writer, editor, and reviewer of speculative fiction for publications including FIYAH literary magazine and Goodreads. She's also writing media critique essays, recording podcasts, and designing (editorial and packaging) too!

This year, as part of our Summer Reading celebration, we decided to open up some space for Goodreads' hardworking staffers to share the books that they plan to read over the summer.

 

The rules are pretty simple: Name three books you have on your summer reading list. No restrictions—might be a new book, an old book, an upcoming book, or even a genre classic heist story set in an alternate-world Renaissance Italy. You know, stuff like that.



The idea is that anything goes, and you will find an amazing assortment of recommendations here from our thoughtful, widely read, and uncommonly good-looking staff members.

 

Feel free to browse around. Click on the cover art images for more details about each book, and you can use the Want to Read button if a particular recommendation floats your summer reading boat.

 

Ciara Fogarty, Ads Account Manager

Good news, romance and romantasy fans. This summer? It's going to be goooooood.

 

As part of our annual Summer Reading extravaganza, we've sorted out 99 highly anticipated romance and romantasy novels coming between May and the end of August, according to your fellow Goodreads members. As you shall see, there's a ton of good stuff on the summery horizon. We've sorted the books below by month, according to each title's U.S. release date.

 

Some starting points for clicking around, in no particular order: A streetwise urchin meets a good-hearted swindler in Joanna Shupe's historical romance The Gilded Heiress. Old college sweethearts stumble into an odd second chance in Mia Sosa's contemporary rom-com When Javi Dumped Mari. And a deathly ill assassin falls for a morally upright healer in Brigitte Knightley's romantasy The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy.

 

Also in the Book People Make the Best Detectives column: Earlier this spring, readers on social media sleuthed out a surprise, previously unannounced new Ali Hazelwood book publishing in May. Theories abounded, tea leaves were read, and lo, the people rejoiced when Hazelwood finally revealed the book's cover on her Instagram a month before the book's release.

 

Click on the cover art images for more details about each book, and use the Want to Read button to add any good leads to your digital shelf.