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As the year comes to a close, we have one burning question for book lovers everywhere: What were your top 5 sapphic reads of 2025?
Luckily our readers like to share! We look forward to passing along these recommendations to you daily into the new year.
It’s not too late to submit your own top reads and get in on the fun. Click here for the form. Our only rules are that authors may not submit their own books and your list needs to be new-to-you books that were read (not necessarily published) in 2025.
Here are Carol D’s top sapphic reads of 2025:
1. Discovering Nicola by Clare Ashton
I could never have predicted these two characters I knew from other books would come together, and once I read the book I could never see them apart. Beautifully written, deeply emotional, and an incredibly satisfying read.
2. Midnight Rain by Haley Cass
I couldn’t believe it when I read the premise of the book, and I cried through almost my entire first reading of it because it was so hard to accept the alternate storyline of the book. Yet once I’d read it I kept returning to it again and again and now love it because it’s a wonderful book.
3. Number Six by Lee Winter
Another book in which two characters met in other books are brought together in what feels like an improbable, impossible romance. And it was amazing! Discovering another side to each of these characters through their discovery of each other was a terrific read. And they lost none of their original unique qualities, they simply became deeper, more complex characters I came to love.
4. The Princess Match by Clare Lydon
While Clare has written about football before and also about royalty, she hadn’t yet put them together, and it turns out it works brilliantly! The impact of each of the characters on the other is seen from the personal interactions, of course, and it’s also seen in the impact on the work each of them does. It was intensely emotional, while at times being incredibly funny, and also very moving – in other words, exactly what I know I’ll find in Clare’s books.
5. This is Who I Am by Harper Bliss
I’ll admit I was quite curious how Harper would take a woman in menopause and a woman who was asexual and make a romance out of their relationship. And it was simple – she wrote them as two women who are drawn together and have some unusual obstacles to overcome. It was a delight to read, and a journey that carried me along with their laughter and their tears and their undeniable connection with its ups and downs leading to a very satisfying conclusion.
