Plus Living editor Stuart Dye shares his favourite reads of 2025.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
A sweeping, elegiac love story that spans continents and generations, this novel examines the tangled costs of migration, identity, and ambition. At nearly 700 pages, it draws you in not just through its central relationship but also through a rich chorus of voices: grandparents, household help, unwanted suitors, and hidden ghosts of the past.
The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
Part reunion thriller, part psychological horror: this novel begins with a group of former university graduates who are drawn back together under ominous pretences. What unfolds is a tense, propulsive mystery, rich with secrets, guilt and shifting memories. Edwards uses a tight cast and atmospheric plotting to ratchet up dread, delivering page-turning suspense with a deft sting in its tail.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Set in 2119 Britain, reshaped by climate catastrophe, a scholar hunts for a lost poem once read in 2014 and unravels a web of love, betrayal, memory and guilt that ripples across time. The novel examines not only what we can know about history and others, but also what remains forever uncertain. McEwan achieves a rare combination of haunting dystopia and artful love.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Spanning nearly a century, this 2023 novel charts three generations of a family in Kerala against the weight of tradition, faith, love and a mysterious hereditary condition. It’s an immersive and expansive family saga that feels intimate and universal at once, rooted in history but pulsing with timeless questions about belonging, fate and the legacies we inherit.
