As promised in this Year in Books 2025 overview post, I’ll be going into a bit more detail on each of my favorite reads of 2025 on Sundays. For the first installment, I give you my favorite lit fic novel that I read in 2025.
And the winner is…
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
This book was recommended to me by my instructor for my final book design course. Throughout the term, I’d gotten to know that our tastes were pretty similar in that we both loved Tana French and Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods. So I was already tuned to Elaine’s recommendations. Plus, I’d already read one of Rebecca Makkai’s books, I Have Some Questions For You, and loved it. So I put a library hold on The Great Believers.
The library hold came through right as my spring term was ending, and after a slow start from post-term exhaustion, I devoured this book in two days. I couldn’t put it down. There are two parallel timelines and two main characters: Yale in the mid-1980s and Fiona thirty years later. Both timelines explore the impact of the AIDS epidemic on one close-knit group of friends and their families. Oh, and there’s really cool art shit in there, too. The interweaving of so many different threads is done in a way that feels both cohesive and seamless.
In my particular circles, I would highly recommend this book to narrative medicine folks for the illness aspect and how humanly it’s portrayed. That’s what sets this book apart: how real the characters feel, full and alive and struggling and flawed, complex and messy. I loved living in their world, even when it was heartbreaking.
~Chrys
Chrys Buckley 