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2025 Books Wrapped🎀

16 items

Soomin Kim

My 2025 book recommendations - read, loved, and recommended without gatekeeping :) Categorized for both your convenience and my sanity.

Sections

Books with cats

Nonfiction

Fiction

Romance

Books with cats

My favorite genre…

I have a cat myself, and this book started my obsession with reading books written by Japanese authors that feature cats in them :)

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series #1)

The book is a gentle, episodic novel set in Kyoto that centers on a mysterious medical clinic; one that doesn’t treat physical illness in the usual way. Patients arrive with vague emotional struggles: burnout, loneliness, grief, anxiety, or a sense t...

We'll Prescribe You a Cat

“If Cats Disappeared from the World” is a gentle, thought-provoking story about a man who learns he has only a short time to live and makes a deal with a mysterious voice to erase things from the world in exchange for extra days. As he considers remo...

If Cats Disappeared from the World

Nonfiction

This book follows the two journalists who uncovered Harvey Weinstein’s abuse and shows what it actually took to get women to speak, verify the truth, and publish a story powerful enough to spark the #MeToo movement. It’s eye-opening, tense, and a rem...

SHE SAID: Breaking the Sexual Harrassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement

This one is a warm and honest memoir about growing up, friendship, and figuring out life in your twenties. Through personal stories about love heartbreak travel and deep friendship it captures all the messy beautiful parts of becoming yourself. Defin...

Everything I Know about Love

"Fear Is Just a Word" follows a mother who refuses to let fear or violence silence her after losing her daughter. It’s intense and heartbreaking but also incredibly powerful in how it shows love turning into determination when justice feels impossibl...

Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for ...

The Body Keeps the Score shows how trauma doesn’t just live in your mind but in your body too. It mixes real stories and science to explain why we hold stress and pain physically, and how healing can actually happen when we pay attention to both body...

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

"The Art Thief" tells the wild true story of a guy who stole hundreds of priceless art pieces from museums across Europe not for money but so he could keep them and admire them himself. It’s part crime story, part character study, and honestly kind o...

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous ...

Fiction

This book follows a married mom who meets another parent and gets caught up in a quiet but consuming attraction. Told through parallel possibilities of what happens if she acts on it and if she doesn’t, the book explores marriage, desire, and the sli...

The Ten Year Affair

"I Who Have Never Known Men" is about a woman who has only ever known captivity and other women, with no answers about why or how the world works. When she’s suddenly free, the story becomes quiet, lonely, and deeply unsettling in a way that really s...

I Who Have Never Known Men by Harpman

“Tender Is the Flesh” is a dark dystopian story where humans are farmed for meat. It follows a man working in this twisted industry as he navigates moral horror, blurred lines between people and product, and just how far society can go when empathy d...

Tender Is the Flesh

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” is about a lonely woman working nights at an aquarium and a super smart octopus who notices everything. It’s funny, sweet, and unexpectedly heartwarming as they both help each other navigate loss, friendship, and startin...

Remarkably Bright Creatures

"Twice" is about a guy who discovers he can go back and live moments of his life over again — literally get a do‑over — and he uses that power to try to fix mistakes and figure out love, especially with the woman he thinks is the one. As you follow h...

Twice

This book is about a woman who joins a mysterious book club that connects her with other women whose lives are messy, chaotic, and beautifully imperfect. It’s funny, sharp, and feels like hanging out with a group of friends who will call you out but ...

The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” feels like a long, emotional letter from a son to his mom — honest, raw, and beautiful. It dives into love, identity, family, pain, and what it means to be seen in a world that doesn’t always make room for you.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Romance

I gotta say…I never read romance/fiction books like this. This might be the area that has the least books listed, and it's not because I don't respect my romance readers. I just don't think I usually have the imagination to enjoy it fully! But this b...

The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2) by Laurie Gilmore