Our Most Popular Posts of the Week
Welcome to The Best of Book Riot. Here’s your weekend highlight reel of the week’s most popular stories.
The Best Historical Fantasy Novels
There’s just something about historical fantasy. Although their worlds are ours—albeit from many, many years ago—the best historical fantasy novels can feel just as alien as an epic fantasy set in an invented land. Just adding that little touch of magic is enough to make history come alive in new and exciting ways.
A Round-Up of Summer Reading Lists
I had several summer reading lists I wanted to link to but thought “I can’t link to more than one of these in a day that is too much” and then I thought “but if I make today’s newsletter a collection of them then I CAN.” So that’s what we have have for you today in Today in Books. Summer reading lists. A lot of them. And I think they were all written by humans. Mostly. Pretty sure.
The 8 Spiciest Romance Books of 2025
2025 has been quite a tumultuous year so far, but luckily, romance writers are in fine form. The spice-scape is scorching this year, with new and established authors putting out a delectable variety of steamy stories. With summer on its way, it’s a great time to heat up your bookshelves with these spicy romance books!
12 Captivating YA Fantasy Romance Series
Fantasy coming-of-age tales involving romantic plotlines have long been a feature of global storytelling traditions. Many Arthurian legends, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, imagine King Arthur and his court as teenagers. As people began to write fantasy novels, it is not surprising that teenagers coming of age in fantasy worlds continued their popularity. By the 1960s, YA was developed by librarians into a new literary classification category, and thus, YA fantasy was formally born.
Strangely Unsettling: Weird Horror You Can’t Look Away From
Weird can mean that there’s no creepy creature at the center of the story and instead, the vibe of the book is just odd or slightly off-putting because of something going on in the main character’s mind. Weird can mean darkly funny, too, which is what you’ll see in several of the examples below. These are stories where there is something bloody or gross or horrifying happening but your sense of dread and fear as a reader is accompanied by some laughs (comfortable or not!). Weird horror is about something being askew. Something being off. Something raising your pulse or giving you goosebumps, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it.
Power Ranking the Books of 2005
Rebecca Schinsky and I went back twenty years to power-rank the 10 most influential, important, and memorable books from 2005. It was the year of Twilight and The Year of Magical Thinking and The Girl with the Dragon Tattooand so many others. Go here to hear what made our top 10 and why.
