2025 Book Trends
What are agents and readers looking for? Here are my 2025 book trend predictions for popular genres, themes, and tropes in fiction.
Photo by Fiona Murray
Hi authors and readers! I hope your 2025 has had a hopeful and exciting start! In light of the new year, I wanted to talk a little bit about book trends for 2025 and give my predictions for which genres and trends will be popular. Obviously, there are a few things that are true every year: Self-help will be the most popular nonfiction subgenre, and contemporary romance will be the most popular fiction subgenre, but I want to get a little bit more specific than that, so let’s talk about it!
Most Popular Genres of 2024
A couple things that were huge in 2024 were romantasy and psychological thrillers. I mean, I went through Amazon’s top 100 most popular books in 2024 and those two easily took the lead in fiction. And this is not surprising to any readers out there, the massive popularity of authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros took romantasy by storm. Get it?
And the massively popular best sellers like Kristin Hannah’s The Women and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid books were psychological thrillers that everyone and their mother were reading. So it’s no surprise that those genres dominated 2024.
Due to the massive popularity of romantasy in 2024 and the influence of BookTok, I think romantasy will be here to stay in 2025, but maybe not quite as big as it was last year. Romantasy is arguably a genre of its own, and I don’t think it will be fading away any time soon. So what will dethrone it in 2025?
Paranormal Romance and Genre Mashing
When it comes to the romance genre, I think we are seeing a huge expansion of the genre on the back of romantasy. And what I mean by that is romance is no longer confined to chick lit and erotica. Our books are starting to reflect that romance seeps into every aspect of our lives and genres, so I think we will be seeing less of the basic contemporary romance (though those will always be popular) and more creativity and genre-mashing. Think things like paranormal and sci-fi romance or romantic thrillers—romance weaved into all genres in more subtle ways. One of these is Alchemised by SenLiYiu, which follows a healer who is now a prisoner of war, which is described as “the book Dramione fans have been waiting for.”
War Times in Historical Fiction
In doing research for this video, I looked at the deals made last year on the Publisher’s Weekly lists, and I found something kind of interesting.
I think themes of politics and war are going to take over the book market everywhere in 2025, not just nonfiction. It’s just too timely and on the nose, with several recent nonfiction book deals made on the worldwide issue of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, including memoirs and political commentary. I also saw quite a few nonfiction political titles coming out from conservative politicians, not too surprising after the results of the election this year.
But I don’t think the political themes are constrained to just nonfiction. I predict a rise in historical fiction, particularly in war time settings from all decades and around the world, as well as based around political turning points in the US. War as a setting is not uncommon in historical fiction, with arguably the most popular setting being WWII, but I think we’re going to see more focus on wartime outside of the US in particular, which might add new life into the genre. Like, for example, We Do Not Part by Han Kang, set in South Korea in the 1940s during the Jeju uprising.
Historical Fantasy and Thrillers
And speaking of historical fiction, I think readers are going to lean toward a more accessible version of escapism with historical fantasy and historical thrillers based in science fiction. In the last several years, we saw a lot of escapism reflected in the entertainment industry, and I think people are now ready to address the turmoil in the world. And one way to do that is by connecting what is happening now to our history in creative and thought-provoking ways. I think we’re going to see a lot of these themes coming through in historical fiction and general contemporary fiction as people try to speak on and cope with some of these current political issues.
I mean, people don’t have the time and energy to read a huge sci fi or fantasy series where it takes one 400-page book just to get acquainted with the world. Instead, I think people will reach for stories grounded in our world, not as we know it now but in a completely different culture and period, with the fantastical, speculative, thriller subgenres to give it that creative edge and otherworldliness. This isn’t a totally new concept obviously, but I think it will grow in 2025.
One of these coming out in 2025 is Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. This book is set in the 1970s and follows a group of girls who live in a home together and discover the occult. It’s grounded in our world, just from the past, with elements of dark magic or the supernatural that give it that otherworldly twist.
Or even The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, which is a historical horror set in the American west in 1912, which is described as “an American Indian revenge story.” From the description of this book as a horror book, you get the impression that there is going to be something outside our reality that will make the revenge that much more terrifying, and I cannot wait to figure out what that is.
Those are just a few of my genre predictions for the year, but I’m curious what you think. Were my predictions accurate for what you want to read this year, or am I way off the mark? What are your most anticipated books of 2025? Let me know in the comments!
Do you have any questions about publishing or writing? Leave a comment below! Want to hear more of my opinions on all things writing, reading, and publishing? Follow me on Instagram @wisecracksandpaperbacks or subscribe to my YouTube channel @wpediting.