December 19, 2025
What a fast year it has been! Seriously, I feel like I just wrote a year-end note. But at the same time, it has been a fabulous year of reading.
Something interesting happened this year that surprised people. A book called THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans built its way onto bestseller lists and skyrocketed in sales because of “word of mouth” from readers. It was never a media pick, and it didn't receive a massive amount of publicity, though Ann Patchett did champion it brilliantly. But it was built by one reader after another talking about it. I learned of it from one of our readers. Books used to build like this, with one reader telling another. But in these days of social media and online conversation, it’s rare for something like this to happen via actual conversation.
Bookreporter.com's Holiday Cheer 2025 Wrap-up
THANK YOU to all who subscribed to this Holiday Cheer newsletter and entered our contests! We appreciate your enthusiasm and participation.
This Bookreporter.com SPECIAL Holiday Cheer Wrap-up newsletter brings you a look at all of the titles that were included in our Holiday Cheer feature. We shared five books with you this holiday season, and we thank our publisher sponsors who made this possible.
Below are this year's featured titles, and a list of the prize winners is here.
Stay subscribed to this newsletter so you can participate in our 2026 Holiday Cheer contests, which will begin next November.
Set amongst the glittering backdrop of London's iconic Savoy hotel, LAST CALL AT THE SAVOY is Brisa Carleton’s debut novel and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. In it, a young woman is forced to confront her troubled past as she uncovers the story of the hotel’s first female bartender who has been erased from the history books. In her holiday blog post, Brisa explains how reading THE NUTCRACKER and performing in her town’s ballet production of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s classic tale ignited her passion for the theater and led to an award-winning career as a Broadway producer.
Editorial Content for Cursed Daughters
Book
Teaser
A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry and superstition.
Promo
A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry and superstition.
About the Book
A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry and superstition from the author of the smash hit MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER.
When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin, Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.
There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.
When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?
CURSED DAUGHTERS is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.
Editorial Content for Like Family
Book
Teaser
After a near-stranger dies in their small town, a tight-knit group of friends can no longer ignore their long-dormant desires and unfulfilled dreams in this moving debut about the complicated joys of chosen family.
Promo
After a near-stranger dies in their small town, a tight-knit group of friends can no longer ignore their long-dormant desires and unfulfilled dreams in this moving debut about the complicated joys of chosen family.
About the Book
After a near-stranger dies in their small town, a tight-knit group of friends can no longer ignore their long-dormant desires and unfulfilled dreams --- a moving debut about the complicated joys of chosen family.
It was too much to ask. But sometimes too much is what we ask of the people we love most.
Radclyffe, New York, is an idyllic upstate town, nestled in the hills and complete with artisanal bakeries, pottery studios and hidden swimming holes. Ruth and her wife, Wyn, are living the dream (or Wyn’s dream, at least) with their four children on their small farm, which is also the bucolic gathering place for their circle of friends. It’s a sweet life, but there’s a secret at its center, one that not even Ruth’s best friend, Caroline, knows.
What Caroline does know is that she loves and depends on Ruth, and on the bond between their families. More than anything, she wants her tenderhearted son not to grow up lonely the way she did. Unfortunately, no one can assure her of that, especially not her husband. He just wants things to be easy, drama-free --- which is impossible, as he has donated his sperm to his cousin, Tobi, and her wife so that they could have kids of their own. Now those children are asking unanswerable questions.
After an unexpected death in their community, all three couples are forced to confront the tensions that have long been buried beneath the surfaces of their lives. Richly textured and big-hearted, this exhilarating debut is an unforgettable story of the alchemy of love and loyalty that makes friends LIKE FAMILY.
