2025 was a rough year, and my reading took a major hit as a result.

With all the anxiety, stress and uncertainty this year brought, it was hard to sit down and focus on a book -- let alone have one hold my attention.

I didn't finish many books that I started, and it was hard to truly tell if I didn't like a book or I just wasn't in a mental space for it at the time.

I also got really far behind on tracking what I read, so I'm not sure my Goodreads even fully captures everything I read this year.

All that to say, this favorite books list is a strange assortment of things that managed to hold my attention during this dumpster fire of a year.

I'm hoping 2026 will be better, maybe a tiny bit more stable. One of my goals for the new year is to get back on track with my reading. We'll see how it goes.

But for now, here are the books I'll remember and recommend from 2025.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. Cried big tears at the end. The space story, the relationships, it was all so good. My favorite relationship was between the main character and her niece, but man I love a story about space, and this one about women going to space, it was just so good.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A whodunit where the house is a main character and each chapter makes you think the victim or the killer could be them. The Briar House is a woman's boarding house in DC and the grouchy landlady has strict rules all her guests must follow. But a new and mysterious arrival rocks the boat a little bit, introducing weekly dinners in her tiny room and building relationships with each person.

I loved this book. Each chapter introduces you to one of the women, and the other people in there lives. And each time you meet and understand someone new, you learn a bit more about who could be the victim and the killer. So good, a true Kate Quinn classic.

Yours for the Season by Uzma Jalaluddin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was delightful. I love a fake romance to real romance trope, and this delivered. It was cute and fun, and the perfect book to read in the lead up to the holidays -- meaning it didn't make me think too much. I was really sad to put this down when I finished because I so enjoyed the characters!

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've spent the last few months in the world of the Inheritance Games, and they were the most fun books I've read in a long time. Compelling characters, fun puzzles and lots of good twists and turns. Can't recommend these books enough, but be forewarned, they end in cliff-hangers, so have the next book in the series ready to go if you're impatient to know what happens next like me.

We debated what to do on our last day in Madrid. We originally had thought about doing a short day trip outside the city, but after a couple long day trips and knowing the next day we'd have a very long travel day, we opted to stay in the city.

It was the coldest and windiest day of our trip, but we still hoped to get outside, hit up some of our favorite playgrounds and try to make it an active day.

We talked over to a playground in front of the Royal Palace and were surprised to see it roped off. Puzzled, we walked about 10 minutes to one of the other playgrounds. It was also roped off.

We couldn't figure out quite what was going on, but we backtracked one more time to a playground we'd passed on the walk. It was smaller and didn't have much equipment, but it wasn't closed. It also wasn't very exciting for our kiddo, so after ten minutes, we hopped a city bus to take us back to Retiro Park.

Even though all the playgrounds were closed there too, we at least had lots of wide open space to run explore and run around.

I was curious about the playground closure thing and tried to find an answer. Reddit told me that sometimes the city closes the playgrounds in certain weather conditions so tree branches don't fall on kids. I don't know how true that is, but it's the only thing close to an answer I found.

The highlight was for sure getting to pet the police horses patrolling near the lake.

Or maybe it was chasing more pigeons. We did a lot of that too.

We also got to see a pretty rose garden that we hadn't made it to the day before, and I was surprised for late November, how many flowers were still in bloom.

After burning off some energy, we left the park to do one last daytime stroll through the city, admiring the Christmas decorations and stopping for some more churros.

We ended the day with dinner at our friends' house, a perfectly fitting way to wrap up a great trip. I'm so glad we got the chance to visit them and spend time exploring Madrid and some of the surrounding areas.

After our successful day trip to Toledo, we were really excited to take the train for a day trip to Segovia. Our toddler is in a big transportation phase and absolutely loved that our trip to Segovia had us riding the Metro to the train station and then taking a bus into town once we got off the train in Segovia. He might have found the travel aspect the most fun part of the day.

When you get off the bus in Segovia, you're dropped right in front of the ancient Roman aqueduct. It's an incredibly impressive feat of construction and also a striking first impression as you walk into town.

We didn't linger too long at the aqueduct because we had a tickets to tour the Alcazar that morning. 

We strolled along Segovia's main street to the other end of town where the Alcazar sits overlooking the valley around Segovia. The castle was imposing and when you walk across the drawbridge, you peer down into a massively deep moat. 

Supposedly this castle that the Spanish royal family lived in was the castle the inspired Walt Disney for Cinderella's castle. 

We started our tour down in the dungeon before making our way to the upper levels. 

The castle wasn't as stunning as the palace, but it was still really cool to see this big stone fortress.

The best part of the castle though was after we finished the tour, we were hanging out in courtyard for a bit to let our kiddo run around, and he made friends with a little girl around his age. They were having the best time running back and forth between two points. She was there with her parents and grandparents from Mexico, and we were able to chat a little bit. I got to use some of my rough Spanish, but was grateful their English was far better than my Spanish. 

From the castle, we strolled back toward town, stopping to tour a large gothic-style church. 

We enjoyed the ornate architecture and all the little chapels around the perimeter. Our son kept wanting to go back and see one of the Mary statues and asking us where Jesus was. 

When we got to Segovia's Plaza Mayor, I was ready for lunch, and I was so looking forward to trying suckling pig -- a dish Segovia is famous for. 

We wandered down some side streets and peered at menus in some windows before settling on a place that looked good and didn't have a wait. 

The food definitely lived up to expectations, and I'm so glad we took the time for a longer lunch in Segovia. 

We spent the rest of our time exploring. We walked down side streets, visited the Jewish Quarter and then wrapped up at the Roman Aqueduct. We took a long stroll to the very end of the aqueduct hoping our son would fall asleep in the stroller during that time. But no luck. Not sure if it was the bumpy cobblestone or just the excitement of everything there was to see, but sleeping was not on his agenda. 

We strolled all the way back to the main square where we caught the bus, and had the only bit of travel drama on our trip.

When we got off the bus in the morning, we neglected to look at the bus time tables for when the buses would return. We made an assumption that the ran every 10-15 minutes and we go to the bus stop 45 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. But bad news for us, the buses only ran every 20 or 25 minutes, and the next bus was scheduled to arrive at the train station like two minutes before our train was supposed to leave. 

We were super nervous, and debated trying to get a cab, but there were none to be found. We waited and when the bus finally arrived, we zipped back to the train station without too many stops along the way. I was so relived. We made it to the station in plenty of time. 

Our kiddo also fell asleep in the stroller on the bus two minutes before we got to the train station. We hoped to be able to get him on the train while still sleeping, but we hit a big bump getting off the bus and he woke up. So hooray, our two year old only took a two minute nap. 

Luckily he was fairly chill and didn't have any meltdowns on the train ride back to Madrid or the metro ride to the hotel. We decided to keep our evening fairly relaxed after our busy day and got him into bed a little bit earlier. 

Ben and I have been debating which day trip was our favorite. I think his vote is Toledo, but I'm truly conflicted. I really loved Segovia. It was so different than Madrid, and it was fun to get a taste of somewhere so different!