As the year comes to a close, I have been thinking a lot about the best books I have read in 2025. According to my Goodreads, I finished 10 books over these last 12 months. Truthfully, I had a much larger reading goal that I wanted to reach this year, but I tend to fall into long slumps, so it is doubtful that I will cross that finish line this time. Still, this was one of the best years for me in terms of the quality of the books I have read. I dipped into a new series, continued reading through another, and found some other masterful single novels along the way. In retrospect, I want to share my number one recommendation of the year:
Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid
This is by far the best book I have read in 2025. I would even go as far as to say that this is one of my top books of all time. It truly cannot be understated how phenomenal and moving this book is. At the beginning of this year, I was studying abroad in London, where I took home a plethora of books that I bought during my months there, this novel being one of them. I first encountered it at Goldsboro Books (also known as one of my favorite places in the entire city). Goldsboro is a bookstore that sells first edition books, some of which are signed or otherwise special editions. There are two of these shops in England, one in Brighton and one in London. I visited both in my time abroad. I landed upon Fable for the End of the World in the London shop, and it was the one book I allowed myself to purchase from there. I had never heard of the book nor the author, Ava Reid, but it didn’t matter—the synopsis drew me in. It took me a few more months to actually get to reading the book (I had long since left London by then), but it proved to be well worth purchasing.Â
The most important aspect of this book to me is that it is a lesbian fantasy story. This market, I have come to realize, is severely untapped. Queer leads in fantasy in general are few and far between, and for lesbian relationships, even more so. As a queer person myself, I often find myself longing for this representation. Fantasy and dystopia are my favorite genres to dive into, and I admit to being a sucker for some compelling romance within them. Fable brings all of this and more. This book depicts a dystopian version of Earth, where the ultra-wealthy company Caerus controls everything. Caerus are debt collectors—they encourage the lower-class citizens of Esopus to rack up millions of dollars in debt until they reach a point of no return, the only option being to pay with their own lives, or often, the lives of a loved one.
Inesa, the main female protagonist, is one of the unlucky few meeting this fate. Her mother, despite Inesa and her brother Luka’s best efforts, accrued an enormous amount of debt that required a sacrifice to Caerus’ Lamb Gauntlet. Inesa, always her mother’s least favorite child, was the chosen one for this gauntlet, set to face one of the most dangerous killers in all of New Amsterdam, MelinoĂ«. MelinoĂ« was, what Caerus calls, an Angel of the Lamb Gauntlet. She was trained, genetically modified, and surgically operated on to become a beautiful, lethal weapon of the state. Her job was to find the chosen lamb and kill them swiftly and mercilessly. MelinoĂ« was one of the best Angels there was—yet, this gauntlet was different. She was struggling in ways she never had before during these games. Even more, Inesa proved to be a much harder kill than the odds would expect her to be.Â
This book is riveting in how it switches between the points of view of the two female leads, allowing the reader to glimpse into these wildly different worlds and deeply connect with both characters. It is easy to gain a sense of empathy for both Inesa and Melinoë. Reid does a beautiful job at fleshing these characters out and making the transformations that they endure believable. By the end, you almost think it could really work out. Maybe these two girls could escape the wretched world in which they lived and free themselves together.
If you are anything like me, the end of this book will leave you desperately clawing for more. With tears streaming down your face, you might also be yelling out loud to the pages that it can’t just end there. It is beautifully unsatisfying and even more devastating when considering that Reid “always envisioned [Fable for the End of the World] as a standalone.” To me, the entire point of the book is tied to its seemingly unfinished ending. Clearly critiquing how exploitative online streaming and video spaces are throughout the novel, I feel that Reid is holding a mirror up to the reader. She is saying: Look at these streamers, disgusting in the way they are profiting from these games. Look at how they are content being just another piece in this game. And here you are, desperate to read of more suffering, no better than them.
There are a lot of readers not built for endings, such as the one seen in this book. Even so, I cannot recommend this book enough. Fable for the End of the World is full of action, drama, and political commentary that is disturbingly on-the-nose when compared to our own current affairs in the US. It is heartbreaking and will leave you wanting more, but just as importantly, it will make you question the mechanism behind your desire for a tidy ending with a bow on top. So, if you are interested in a queer twist on The Hunger Games—one that doesn’t focus so much on revolution as it does basic survival and wild hope—this book just might be the masterpiece you are looking for.