Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.
Last week, we released our picks for the Best Books of 2025 So Far, a list of over 50 titles selected by Book Riot staff and contributors. Narrowing down these Best Of lists (they are much larger to start) always feels like an impossible task, but I’m always so proud of the final product. Our favorites include kid lit, YA, and adult books, run the gamut on genre, and include both names you might expect to see on a Best of List as well as underrated reads. I’m perhaps most proud that our lists are always diverse and inclusive. Yes, that matters. Reading is, and has always been, political—and don’t you forget it!
Below, I’ve pulled 15 books by BIPOC authors from our Best Books of 2025 So Far list, and that’s not even half of the BIPOC titles therein. Read on to learn more about a few of our faves, including historical romance set in Belle Époque Paris, cli-fi set in a flooded San Francisco, a middle grade mystery set in Martha’s Vineyard, and a memoir on growing up queer in Florida.
A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
Belle Époque Paris! Sex lessons! Abortion rights! This historical romance set in 1889 has it all. Aurora used her inheritance to become a doctor and run an underground women’s clinic. But when her funding is cut off and new dangers emerge, she accepts the protection of Apollo, the new duke of Anan. A one-night-only tryst leads to sex lessons (such a good trope!). And soon, the Duke is determined to marry. But Aurora is just as determined to stay single. Their conflict and passion leap off the page, as does the prescient theme of women’s reproductive freedom. The book is the third in the Las Leonas trilogy, but also works as a standalone. – Alison Doherty
Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays by Edgar Gomez
I picked up Edgar Gomez’s 2022 memoir based solely on the title—High-Risk Homosexual—and deeply enjoyed his voice, which stayed with me long after I read it. So his follow-up, Alligator Tears, was not only a must-read, but something I was excitedly looking forward to. Gomez writes about growing up queer in Florida, the American Dream, class, family, love, community and so much more, all with a through line tied to his relationship with his mother that will break your heart and heal it. He has an insightful, fresh voice, and his books would make an excellent dark comedy sitcom adaptation. Bonus: he narrates the audiobook! – Jamie Canaves
Audition by Katie Kitamura
A beguiling, sharp, and surprising book that will have you scratching your head in the very best way. Clean, cutting observations and slippery characters combine in this gem for literary fiction lovers. Be warned: you might have to live with a little (ok more than a little) uncertainty in this book, but let Kitamura lead you toward a little provocative discombobulation. – Jeff O’Neal
In Reading Color
A weekly newsletter focusing on literature by and about people of color!
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
In a not-so-distant future where chaotic weather and continuous rain have triggered devastating impacts on Earth, Chinese American artist Bo lives in a flooded San Francisco in a high-rise connected to other high rises by bridges. While many have left the city and its deteriorating conditions, Bo remains, grieving the loss of her mother in a flood and losing her passion for art and for life. But when Bo picks up work caring for an elderly woman in her building named Mia, she finds hope and purpose in her life again. Kwan’s writing is beautiful, and Bo’s poignant character journey set against the backdrop of such an awe-inspiring and haunting future world makes for an unforgettable read. – Megan Mabee
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
Baker explores the traumas of the early COVID-19 pandemic in this horror novel that combines Chinese mythology with themes of grief and racism. After the murder of her sister, Delilah, Cora becomes a crime scene cleaner. Recent murders of Asian women with mutilated bats at the scene make Cora think there’s a serial killer targeting Asian women. Cora knows she has to do something as Delilah haunts her everywhere she goes. Battling grief, mental health struggles, and past traumas, Cora’s attempts to save Delilah from being a hungry ghost forever are messy and have dire consequences. Bat Eater is layered, funny, dark, and visceral. – Courtney Rodgers
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
In the “bright” blue bedroom of her grandmother’s yellow house, Perry fell in love with the color blue. The scholar and author of South to America approached this project—once called her “blue book”—by writing “toward the mystery of blue and its alchemy in the lives of Black folk.” Ruminating on Nina Simone’s music, Toni Morrison’s words, Lorna Simpson’s art, a hint of ceiling “like the sky in August,” water, ceramics, porches, and many more blues, these lyrical essays examine history, spirituality, adornment, movement, and race. Perry gorgeously narrates the audiobook, and this epigraph-rich work reverberates like a chorus of voices. – Connie Pan
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson
The queen of YA mysteries and thrillers has moved effortlessly into middle grade mysteries! Tiffany D. Jackson has a different topical focus with every book, which leads to gripping stories, while her characters’ voices always shine. And those are just two of the reasons she’s listed in The Best Mystery Books of the Past 10 Years. In Blood in the Water, we follow Brooklyn native Kaylani to Martha’s Vineyard. While trying to find her way in a place she doesn’t want to be, she ends up investigating a suspicious death, unaware that the more she digs, the more she’ll upset the residents and their deeply-held deadly secrets…I know! – Jamie Canaves
Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan
It’s a bittersweet joy reading this book, knowing it’s the last in Skyland. Hendrix is the last of the trio to be boo’d up, and she’s perfectly fine with that. But when she meets charming Maverick, she wishes she could pursue more than friendship with him. But friends (and business partners) are what they become, and what they’re determined to stay. Kennedy Ryan is a master of her craft, and Can’t Get Enough will take you on an angsty, anxiety-filled, sexy journey as two people who deserve the best things in life deal with the complications that come with it. This book includes Alzheimer’s, past familial death, and White Nonsense; read with care. – Jessica Pryde
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
The protagonist, Zelu, is a disabled, Nigerian American professor and novelist. The novel shows how her disability, ethnicity, and family shape her personality. After her sci-fi novel, Rusted Robots, makes her famous, strangers judge her personal choices, including walking with bionic legs. She’s disappointed with Rusted Robots’ film adaptation, which Americanizes the robot characters’ Nigerian names. Okorafor’s novel is metafictional. Zelu’s narrative is intertwined with Rusted Robots in surprising ways. Death of the Author explores its themes in depth, from creativity to bodily autonomy. – Grace Lapointe
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
Nicola Dinan’s books are nearly impossible to describe in a tidy little hook. But that’s also what I love about them. They explore the true messiness of moving through today’s world as a queer person, searching for your place through joy and pain and confusion. Disappoint Me stars Max, a British trans woman turning thirty and grappling with what it means to grow older without heteronormative standards of success and happiness. When she starts an unusually traditional relationship with Vincent, Max starts to understand the appeal. But Vincent is hiding some heavy secrets about his past relationships that continue to impact his love life. It’s a poignant, wonderfully complicated, and layered novel that I’m still thinking about weeks after reading. – Susie Dumond
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
I love to kick off a year of reading with a book that recharges my reading battery, and Wilkerson’s follow-up to Black Cake was it. Good Dirt lives within that book club/beach read sweet spot. Historical fiction, incendiary gossip, and commentary on race and class are woven into a multilayered story about an affluent Black family grieving and wrestling with the fallout of a highly publicized death in the family. I don’t get to read a lot of books about wealthy Black people, and the way Wilkerson deftly balances levity and depth in this engrossing tale of generational trauma and perseverance makes it an absolute standout.- S. Zainab Williams
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
A woman’s estranged grandmother calls her out of the blue, requesting she pay her a visit in the hills of western North Carolina. She goes hoping to find answers about the root of their estrangement and instead learns of an American kingdom that once existed in those very hills, one where her great-great-great-grandmother was queen. Here’s the thing: The Kingdom of the Happy Land was a very real place, a secret self-governed community founded by formerly enslaved people in Reconstruction-era Appalachia. If you like historical fiction that dives into the kinds of history we’re rarely taught in schools, you will devour this book like I did. – Vanessa Diaz
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
A little while back, I dubbed this one of the best book club books of the year. Part of the reason is that it tells the story of an almost totally forgotten historical literary figure who helped shape the literal Harlem Renaissance. Jessie Redmon became known as the “Midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” because of her publishing iconic writers like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen through the groundbreaking literary magazine The Crisis. But she was as messy as she was influential — her affair with her married mentor and boss, W.E.B. DuBois, threatened to undo everything. The tea! – Erica Ezeifedi
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara
This is the book about AI and creativity I’ve been waiting for. Vauhini Vara went viral in 2021 when she used a pre-ChatGPT technology to write about her sister’s death. In Searches, she collaborates with AI (I know that sounds weird, but it works, I promise) to explore how the technologies we’ve created are now shaping us. From the depths of her Google search history to a decade’s worth of Amazon purchases to an AI-generated pitch deck for an imaginary start-up, Vara uses her personal relationship to technology to ask what it means to be a person in a moment when technology is increasingly good at performing humanity. If you’re looking for a treatise about why AI is evil, you won’t find it here. Vara resists easy judgments and works from a place of radical acceptance that AI is here to stay to consider the various futures we might create and what art might look like as we evolve alongside this technology. It’s the kind of book that leaves you with more questions than answers and the very best kind of productive discomfort. – Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Sympathy for Wild Girls: Stories by Demree McGhee
This collection of stories about queer Black women is going to live in my head for a long time. If you love Carmen Maria Machado’s work, you need to pick up Sympathy for Wild Girls. They both excel at writing feminist, fabulist/magical realist stories that get under your skin. These stories explore intense, undefined relationships between women; the horror at having a body (especially a racialized, sexualized body); and the strange paths grief can lead you down. Visceral, evocative, and thought-provoking, these are stories that benefit from discussion and deep reading. This collection deserves to be recognized as a new classic. – Danika Ellis
There are more—many more!—BIPOC books on the full list of Best Books of 2025 (So Far), so don’t forget to check that out in all of its glory. What are your favorite books of the year thus far? Let us know in the comments!
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