December 2025 Reading Recap
In this issue: reviews for my nine December 2025 reads!
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BELLWEATHER RHAPSODY by Kate Racculia | 5 stars | ebook (Libby)
Picture this: a high school music festival, full of the most talented and neurotic arts kids in New York state, rehearsing for the most intense concert of their careers. Then add the fact that a child prodigy orchestra star is found dead by her roommate, only for her body to go missing. Factor in that this murder directly echoes a crime from nearly two decades earlier, a giant snowstorm, and that hundreds of students and chaperones are now trapped in a crumbling hotel with their personal secrets… and a killer on the loose? You’ve got my attention.
This book resonated with me on a soul level— I was one of those performing arts gunners in high school in oboe, vocal, and theatre performance, and was even a theatre major for half of college. Racculia perfectly nails what it’s like to be young, talented, and anxious for approval; the arts aren’t just a backdrop for the plot, but the way these characters navigate identity, loss, and relationships to one another. Rabbit, a bassoonist, agonizes over coming out to his twin sister. Alice, his twin and singing superstar, is terrified of being outshone and losing her edge at college. Natalie, their chaperone, deals with traumas that resurface when she unexpectedly encounters someone from her past, and a hotel guest who was present for the original murder comes back to confront that haunting night.
It’s not without its flaws— if you’ve never done any sort of musical activity before, you might be lost, and there’s some very dated occasional fatphobia—, but otherwise Racculia pulls off a lot of impressive feats here: multi-POV narration from an ensemble cast of incredibly distinct characters, a character-driven mystery that doesn’t skimp on plot, lyrical prose that doesn’t get too flowery, and genuine suspense as an undercurrent throughout. It’s funny and quippy, but it’s also a meditation on talent, youth, grief, and the community arts give us. My final five-star read of 2025 — I underlined everything and shed a little tear at the end. A gorgeous book.
SIMILAR READS: SALTY by Kate Myers (full review here); THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin; not a book, but GLEE or AUGUST RUSH.
BEST OFFER WINS by Marissa Kashino | 4.5 stars | audiobook (Libby)
Margo is desperate. Eighteen months and eleven unsuccessful bids into house-hunting, she feels like her life plan of having the perfect house and, in turn, a baby, is unraveling— as is her marriage. But when she hears word that her dream house in her dream neighborhood might be coming on the market soon, she becomes obsessed with getting in on the ground floor (pun intended) and buying it before it hits the market. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, she’ll stop at nothing to get her life back on track.
If you are a thriller lover, pick this up immediately. One of the most original concepts I’ve read in the thriller space in a while, Kashino’s buzzy DC-set housing market thriller debut is absolutely stellar. The characters are distinct, the dialogue is sharp, and the plot is a page turner. Even though Margo is one of those trainwreck protagonists that digs her hole deeper and deeper, you can’t help but root for her (without condoning her methods, obvi). There are some unexpected moments of critique of privilege as well, like when Margo is caught snooping but deemed harmless because she’s an Asian woman in Lululemon. While the prose itself isn’t anything Pulitzer-worthy and a couple of story beats are predictable if you’re a thriller connoisseur, the plot keeps you guessing until the very end. It’s a dark, unhinged rollercoaster ride that I think most anyone would enjoy.
SIMILAR READS: COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna (full review here), FIRST LIE WINS by Ashley Elston, DISCONTENT by Beatriz Serrano (full review here)
THE AMUSEMENTS by Aingeala Flannery | 3.75 stars | ebook
In the seaside town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season to take advantage of the amusements (a term here for the boardwalk carnival). Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; she dreams of escaping to art college with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine. Following the Grant and Swaine families and their neighbors in Tramore for three decades, it seems leaving Tramore is easier said than done.
I’m a sucker for Irish literature, especially when the action takes place in a small town with working class folks, and Aingeala Flannery is a new author to watch on the Irish scene. Her turns of phrase are gorgeous, the dialogue is spot-on, and each of the characters feel fully fleshed out and alive. My biggest gripe with this is that it is, ultimately, not a novel, but a short story collection with varying degrees of intersection between characters. If you go into this thinking that we’ll see Helen and Stella across the years, you wouldn’t be wrong, per se, but you wouldn’t be right, either, as they pop up in only about 10% of the actual text. Some people are related to others, in true small-town form, but rarely do we see the actions of one story impact another. One could argue that structure is the point of the collection: that the interiority of one person’s life rarely becomes legible to others, even in an insular environment. Who’s to say! It left me a bit cold and wanting more connective tissue and plot, but I still think it’s a solid read if you like a story collection or the conceit of interconnected vignettes.
SIMILAR READS: WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST by Alina Grabowski, OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout
THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN by Lisa Jewell | 3.75 stars | audiobook (Hoopla)
The Bird family’s idyllic life in a Cotswolds house—filled with rambunctious children, a whimsical mother, and a gentle father—is shattered by a tragedy one Easter weekend. As the children grow into adults and go their separate ways, it seems their family may never have existed at all. But when something draws them back to the house of their childhood, long-buried secrets from that fateful weekend come to light, forcing them to reckon with the past and with one another.
An older Lisa Jewell novel (this one’s from 2013), I wouldn’t go into this expecting the same twists and turns as her more recent works, like NONE OF THIS IS TRUE, DON’T LET HIM IN, or even THE GIRLS IN THE GARDEN (full reviews of those linked here). THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN is more family drama than thriller, and where it shines is its thoughtful, emotionally resonant portrayal of a mother’s mental illness and the way it variously impacts her children throughout their lives. Multi-POVs work to uncover layers of impact across the years, and you can’t help but ache for each of the characters (though for me, jury’s still out on Beth). I will say I found it overlong in parts— it’s 388 pages and you feel every one of them— and the “mystery” of what happened in their childhood is a bit of a letdown, in my opinion. But its quiet devastation is unsettling and thought-provoking. I think it’s best read if you’re expecting an intergenerational family story rather than the thrillers Jewell’s made her name writing, but I do think it’s a good one.
SIMILAR READS: COMMONWEALTH by Ann Patchett (full review here), THE HUMAN ORIGINS OF BEATRICE PORTER AND OTHER ESSENTIAL GHOSTS by Soraya Palmer
THE DINNER by Herman Koch | 3.5 stars | audiobook (Hoopla)
On a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, two brothers and their wives meet at a posh restaurant for dinner. But they’re not meeting for pleasure; both couples have teenage sons who did something that they need to discuss, and the course of that discussion could change their lives forever.
Oh I loooove this genre of fiction, the chamber drama or bottleneck episode of tensions unfolding over a single compressed setting. This one is no different; over the course of a fancy dinner, the narrator feeds you a slow drip of information layer by layer with brilliant pacing. Every one of these characters is deeply unlikable on purpose, with a skin-crawling unsettled feeling that permeates the narrative.
Two points that didn’t work for me: one, I listened to it on audio, and while the voice actor was great, I think I would have preferred to have read it in print. There’s a lot of man-doing-woman’s-voice narration here that I dislike and probably detracted from my experience. The second thing is that one major reveal didn’t work for me at all— I won’t say more than that for fear of spoilers— and knocked this down a whole star for me. If you’ve read it, I’d love to discuss it!
Overall, if you love a slow build of tension or want to get into translated fiction, this might work for you!
SIMILAR READS: JUST A LITTLE DINNER by Cécile Tlili (full review here), THE COUPLES TRIP by Ulf Kvenssler
DOMINION by Addie E. Citchens | 3 stars | ebook (Libby)
Charismatic preacher Reverend Sabre Winfrey rules Dominion, Mississippi, with faith, privilege, and absolute authority, which his wife, Pricilla, and sons, especially Emanuel “Wonderboy” benefit from. But through the eyes of two women who love them, the cracks in the perfect facade of the patriarchy begin to show…and escalate into something much darker.
This is Citchens’ debut novel, and I loved the female characters here. Diamond, Wonderboy’s “girlfriend,” and Pricilla, the pastor’s wife, are such strong and biting voices that they kept me reading. Otherwise, I unfortunately found this one pretty predictable: Wonderboy isn’t so wonderful, the pastor isn’t so holy, and powerful men are abusing power and getting away with it. Like… duh? With them at the center of the book, I struggled with was how little I cared for these men with so few redeeming virtues that I was rolling my eyes through much of the story with how much these women cared about them. And though the voices of Pricilla and Diamond are vividly written, some of the character choices Citchens makes are just textbook tropes that I’ve seen a billion times before: Pricilla self-medicates with pills to dissociate from her home life and Diamond is woefully young and oblivious to how bad her decisions are because she thinks she’s going to marry Wonderboy.
I wanted much more of their journeys on the page than the fawning over these dumbass men who felt like cartoon character villains twirling their mustaches. Mixed media elements, like church bulletins, feel out of place and skippable. While I’d read Citchens’ work again, I liked the voice of the writing much more than the story.
SIMILAR READS: GOD SAVE THE GIRLS by Kelsey McKinney, THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES by Deesha Philyaw, THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver
THE MOST WONDERFUL CRIME OF THE YEAR by Ally Carter | 3 stars | audiobook (Hoopla)
Rival authors at the same publishing house, Maggie is a cozy mystery queen and Ethan is a big-time thriller Michael Crichton-coded leather-jacket guy. Maggie hates Ethan’s guts; Ethan thinks Maggie’s name is Marcie. But when they both accept an invitation to attend a Christmas party at the mansion of an Agatha Christie-esque mystery writer— and that author disappears— they have to team up to figure out what’s going on.
An enemies-to-lovers romance and locked-house mystery setup sounds like a promising premise, but overall I felt it should have picked a lane. As someone who doesn’t typically read romance, I did enjoy the banter and light yearning, but I felt like there was very little reason for why Maggie didn’t like Ethan before the novel’s events— he saw her crying at an event? Okay? That doesn’t explain her hostility and her woe-is-me attitude really put me off. Ethan seemed like a caricature of a hottie who kept monologuing at her and calling her “sweetheart,” which also put me off. Overall, I don’t think their chemistry totally worked because so much of the book was dedicated to the plot. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND…I don’t think the mystery worked because so much of the book was dedicated to their romance. The mystery was a nothing burger! While Maggie and Ethan are running around a mansion, you as the reader aren’t let in on the mystery-solving, nor are you given any background on the characters that are locked in the house with them. When the reveal happens a la Poirot, you’re left being like, “…okay?” Just because a novel happens in a mansion doesn’t make it Knives Out!!
In sum: good vibes, not great plot. Very brain candy, so don’t pick it up thinking it will actually have a mystery :(
SIMILAR READS: THIS IS NOT A GAME by Kelly Mullan (full review here), THE UNFORTUNATE DECISIONS OF DAHLIA MOSS by Max Wirestone
THE LITTLE BOOK OF HYGGE by Meik Wiking | 3 stars | audiobook (Libby)
Denmark is often called the happiest country in the world, and hygge is the reason why. Loosely translated as coziness or the pleasure of simple comforts, hygge is something you recognize by feel: candlelight, shared food, quiet mornings. Meik Wiking, CEO of Copenhagen’s Happiness Research Institute, guides readers through an introduction to this Danish way of living well.
I was a little unimpressed by this book. Listen, I got a PhD in English; I’ve been hygge-ing for years. Cups of tea, cozy socks, candles? Amateur hour. This is very much peak 2016, Tumblr-era cozy living nonfiction: a pleasant read that works best in short bursts that you can read over a cup of coffee. It’s a solid introduction to the concept if you’re new to hygge, and it has that polished, giftable quality that makes it easy to recommend or leave on a coffee table. That said, if you’ve been steeped in cozy living culture for years, there’s unlikely to be much here that feels genuinely new. Meh!
SIMILAR READS: THE HAPPINESS PROJECT by Gretchen Rubin, JOYFUL by Ingrid Fetell Lee
THE GAME SHE PLAYS by Siena Sterling | 2 stars | audiobook (Hoopla)
Nicola, an American woman who quits her job, falls instantly in love with an English man she meets on a plane, and follows him to London—then straight into a weekend party with his Oxford-educated, country-house set. Hoping to fit into his insular, upper-class circle, Nicola feels like she’s settling in until James’s alluring first love reappears fresh off the plane from Hong Kong. Jealousy, manipulation, shared secrets, and past relationships reach a boiling point, turning a glittering country weekend into something far more dangerous.
I’m not quite sure how I heard about this book, but it’s under the radar for a reason. The romance is rushed and unconvincing— you met this dude on a plane and now you’re living with him? Come on. The characters are trite, the plot predictable, and I honestly can’t tell you anything more about this because it was that forgettable. Skip!