2025 Year End Recap

(If you have a short reading attention span, feel free to just skip to the actual ranking, which you'd have to click into the blog post to view >:3)

This particular blog post is to first document what was actually published in 2025.

Note: Notice two font sizes below? The regular size matching this sentence and paragraphs above, are my makeup work for before. The smaller size (like this) are the ones that are posted extremely closed to, if not in fact on the exact published date. Those, should there actually be casual viewers of my blog, are hard to miss, since the Blog Archive function reflects them quite well, and the backdated ones are what easily gone unnoticed, hence the emphasis.

1. [Series Overview] Emily Wilde - Heather Fawcett
2. [Series Overview] The Crimson Moth duology - Kristen Ciccarelli
3. [Series Overview] Secrets of the Nile - Isabel Ibañez
4. [Series Overview] The Scarlet Veil duology - Shelby Mahurin
5. [Series Overview] The Burning Kingdoms - Tasha Suri
6. [Series Overview] The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club - Theodora Goss
7. [Series Overview] The Warring Gods - Gabriela Romero Lacruz
8. [Discussions] Social Networking Platforms for Books
9. [Series Overview] Sands of Arawiya - Hafsah Faizal
10. [Series Overview] Blood and Tea - Hafsah Faizal
11. [Series Overview] Saga of the Unfated - Danielle L. Jensen
12. [Series Overview] Leviathan trilogy - Scott Westerfeld
13. [Series Overview] Scarlett and Browne - Jonathan Stroud
14. [Series Overview] Sample Blogpost
15. 2025 Year End Recap ☜ THIS POST!!!

Like last year, technically this post wasn't exactly posted within the timeframe, but close enough to be counted as published on time, so I'm counting it, lmao. That said, as this is, as of now, the one post per year you'd get more of my personal life, I'll still share the gist of my year:

• Things are basically exactly the same as 2024, I'm simply more active IRL, as continually documented in gist HERE.
• Directly related to the above; what sucks is that the mobile Facebook app is now just, frankly, bad. The filter function on profile is no longer working properly, so it adds shitload of pressure to people like me, who don't always have time to add all the content right after I created those post. I still have a lot posts I haven't finished, so that's gonna take up time in the following year as well. Urgh.

I am however somewhat disappointed in myself for not at least getting 1 post (out of the many posts of the same kind) out before the year ends. For people who couldn't read Chinese, I went to Kyoto twice this year and there's just so many book (and manga) related stuff I'd like to share!

Anyways, as of 2025/12/31, according to the Blog Archive function, I have 11 posts published in 2025 (not counting this one), 1 of which was first published in 2024 but adjusted to this year accordingly. I do hope I'd find time to finish a couple of non-Series-Overview posts the next year. Wish me luck! lol

2025 Reading Challenge

Sammm has read 53 books toward her goal of 65 books.

hide

53 of 65 (81%)

view books

I hope people are patient enough to reach this part, lmao. On Goodreads, there's the My Year in Books function they provided that give some statistics, [check out mine for 2025!] (My GR profile is set for GR Users only, so this one, you'd have to login in order to view.) There's also the Goodreads Year in Review, [read mine!] (no GR account required.)

Like last year (its post updated), GR continues to take their new mini challenges seriously, and I personally find them super hard to access, so decided to share what I achieved here as well (there's more at the very end of the post):

Community Favorites Challenge	Summer Challenge	Fall Challenge

I have to say though, I think the intention itself is nice, but I realized I'm not really invested in collecting the achievements, so I don't go out of my way reading books they listed, some I just didn't read at the time the challenge was released, which is a pity. Back to reading statistics, so what's different here is that I'm going to rank what I've read, but limited to series that concluded or standalones, extras, and compilations published in this year. 2025 does not make a great example but it's better than having nothing lol. And, ladies and gents, drum roll....!

Note: First books of series represent said entire series. I know the cut-off was the final book, but I believe people are usually more familiar with the cover and title of first installments so. Also, due to no longer being a GR Librarian, both sections are currently missing some entries (and yes, which means my GR book-count is also not the final status), will update if applicable.

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 

Right... Not fun since not enough series meet the criteria I set. Because the pool is too small, I'm going to include series concluded or standalones published a year ago that I read this year into the mix; ta-da:

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 

Right... (lol) In case people didn't feel like counting, the total, as of now, is 16 works. The reason why some have been stacked, is because, 1 per slot made the ranking list lengthy, which in itself isn't too big of a deal, however, I feel bad for the ones closer to the bottom. It really wasn't like "it's the second to the last place"; trust me, previous years, certain gaps are super huge, but this year is like, even the ones I liked the least, isn't so, so horrible. Since it's still not reflecting well enough, I figure grouping what I feel the similar amount of like, would make me feel less guilty, haha. There you have it!

More GR achievements, I mean, I think it's rare for me to actually read every month, so at least I did it this year, YAY ME!

GR also upped their game when it comes to their Year in Books email, unfortunately I didn't have time to shelve all the books I've read immediately after I read them, so most of the stats provided weren't accurate, there's however this one below that requires almost no changes:


I wrote "almost", because technically it's still missing one, which I have not and am still not sure if I'd add on GR, though I did indeed finish it this year and it was nominated for this year's award: the full-cast audio edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. TBH, the reason I was hesitant to add it was that I thought it would affect the GR Year in Books stats, but I just very belatedly noticed that it actually is its own thing, and like not bundled with all the other editions of the same title, meaning it ATM wouldn't take up the "Most Shelved" position. That said, IMHO, it being a nominee, this itself I'm already not for it, you know? Sure, the production is new, but the content is not. So yeah, can't blame GR for not having it in the image they generated for me lmao.

Hope despite the crisis in 2025, you'd still have a fruitful year! What series concluded in 2025 do you like the most? Feel free to share!