Reviewer picks 2025 (part I)
[Once again, we asked and our contributors answered. And, for the second year running, eclectic was the commonality. The titles range from prize-winners to, well, books you’re likely to be seeing for the first time as you scroll through the picks below.
A hearty thanks to our reviewers for their efforts.
Part II tomorrow! —Ed.]
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For me, 2025 ran the gamut, alphabetically-speaking.
The A is simple: Atwood. That is, Book of Lives, Margaret Eleanor A’s terrific memoir. Hefty, yes. Also: poignant, charming, commanding, and priceless as a none-too-reverent social history of CanLit.
As Atwood recalls her first book signing (dire: in the men’s underwear department at the Hudson’s Bay in Edmonton), essay-grading as a lecturer at UBC (with its “vicious” and feuding English department faculty), and other eye-openers from her decades in the biz, she’s as irresistible as she is unparalleled.
And, near the middle, P: In This Faulty Machine by Salt Spring Island’s Kathy Page.
Page’s twenty essays about her (gradual, reluctant) coming to terms with Parkinson’s disease stuck with me for their immediacy, humour, and great generosity of spirit.
The elegance of the writing is the perfect vehicle for Page’s ideas and experiences and findings, which are never less than riveting.
Z came in the form of Vancouver-based Ziyad’s Saadi’s clever and lovely debut novel, Three Parties.
The thoughtful, Detroit-set riff on Mrs. Dalloway describes the unforgettable day of Firas, who’s planning a memorable coming-out party.
From the first page, Saadi’s immediate talent is biting queer humour. And that may be why the novel’s slow burn of emerging (personal, familial, immigrant) tragedies packs such an emotional wallop. —BJG
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At the time of writing, I’ve read 111 books in 2025, so narrowing the best of the best down to only three titles was a feat.
With that said, my favourite book was Glass Girls by Danie Shokoohi. Glass Girls follows a former child medium who reunites with her estranged family to confront ghosts from her past (both real and metaphorical).
Shokoohi crafts petrifying images that followed me through my dreams. The horror is layered upon a truly heart-wrenching story about familial abuse, love, and loss—culminating in a novel that is equal parts terrifying and heart-wrenching.
Another standout was The Road of Bones by Vancouver Island author Demi Winters.
The story follows a woman on the run from magical forces who accidentally joins a group of Viking mercenaries. I read countless romantasy novels this year, and with intricate world-building and a fascinating magic system, Winters manages to offer a unique voice in a very saturated market.
Finally, there’s Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful World.
Two writers compete to pen the biography of a once-famous woman. Part romance, part historical fiction, this is Henry’s most interesting work to date.
Romantic love takes a back seat as the protagonists explore decades of shared memories, unveiling the painful and inspiring complexities of familial love.
It’s gorgeous, it’s devastating—it’s stayed with me all year. —ZM
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Among the many compelling reads from 2025, three nonfiction books stood out for me: their authors combine extensive research with vibrant writing to bring to light largely overlooked history.
First, a book about mountaineering. Mysterious and remote, the comparatively little-known Mt. Waddington rises higher than any other peak in the Coast Range—or Rockies.
The aura surrounding the huge mountain is evoked even by the title of Vancouver-based Trevor Marc Hughes’ The Final Spire: ‘Mystery Mountain’ Mania in the 1930s.
In bringing history to life, the author documents with white-knuckle intensity the remarkable early mountaineers and their struggles with terrifying difficulties.
Fascinating in an entirely different way is the richly illustrated The Taking of Vimy Ridge by Vernon historian Carla-Jean Stokes.
The author’s revelations involving the strange and complex role played by World War I photographer William Ivor Castle link to the surprising facts at the core of the famous battle that is generally touted as one of the most seminal events in Canadian history.
In Holocaust Hero: The Life and Times of Rudolf Vrba, Allan Twigg uses an impressive array of resources and taut arguments to expose the fact that the often-showcased escape of a nineteen year old Austrian from Auschwitz was only the beginning of a disturbing sequence of events.
Although the teenager’s revelations about death camp after his escape led to saving hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives, as Vancouver-based Twigg demonstrates, this often-overlooked achievement is darkly balanced by the institutional forces against which he had to struggle and which led to the deaths of other hundreds of thousands. —TD
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I’ve made more time for reading this year, which has meant hours on the patio or by the woodstove with feet up. Makes me feel wealthy!
First, an old favourite published in 2004 and due for a re-read. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, is a beautifully written, loving epistle, to a grown son from an ageing father, about dying and living, about deep friendship, even with someone on the other team.
The Tao verse about never having to venture far from home to have lived a good life visited my mind.
When I lived in Ladner, Tim Bowling was often in our local paper, launching a book; the librarians would be abuzz!
Then he moved to that next province, but the ocean and fishing still figure in his stories. For good reason, Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand is a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction prize.
A Pond, a Poet, and Three Pests, released weeks ago, is ancient poetry with a timely way in our narcissistic world. With our leaping for attention or selfie-centre, this is a bow to taking the nearest exit from the madness.
Another of ours, also with multi-form nimbleness, Vancouver-based Caroline Adderson writes for all ages with humour and intelligence.
The illustrations are deep and rich. You might buy as a gift for a child, but then keep it and find yourself purchasing a second copy. —AA
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Reading is my first priority after breathing, and I’m happy to say that I read a hearty amount in 2025.
As I well know, Jane Austen homage is a populous subgenre, but Sophie Irwin comes closest to Austen’s sensibility with A Lady’s Guide to Scandal.
Featuring a dutiful young widow who has a jolly good time in Bath amid snort-out-loud moments of subtle humour, I looked forward to reading it each day. The book also seamlessly includes characters of colour and a lesbian relationship: a delightful addition to the genre.
I started reading Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles in 2024, but the series achieves its zenith with Confusion and Casting Off.
Focusing on a British family before, during, and after World War II, Howard manages an extensive cast of characters and makes your heart bleed for each. It’s really a series you can sink into.
My last pick is Vancouver Island-based Joe Enns’ No Lines in Nature.
The poetry collection paints clear scenes and characters. In its pages, it’s easy to be swept away.
Joe and I attended VIU’s Creative Writing program together and I got to watch as he researched self-publishing, sourced printers (Canadian, of course), and designed the book cover.
The finished product is professional quality. Way to go, Joe!
Here’s to another year of excessive reading in 2026! —IR
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As is to be expected, Canadian historians have risen up throughout 2025 in defiance of American President Donald Trump’s assault on Canada’s sovereignty.
Graeme Menzies leads the way with two books on how we came to exist as a British colony.
Bones, about a doctor who served as the on-board physician for Captain James Cook, takes us back to clashes in Nootka Sound on northern Vancouver Island in the 1770s.
Trading Fate focuses on the intrigue of the same period surrounding the scramble of nations to claim the Pacific northwest up to Alaska.
Both are readable and detailed enough to be high-school textbooks.
Hampton Sides’ The Wide, Wide Sea also guides us to historic adventures on Canada’s west coast, but through a biographical lens featuring Cook.
Madelaine Drohan’s He Did Not Conquer shares a closeup view of American patriot Benjamin Franklin’s failed efforts to seize Canada by force of arms.
It seems this “powerful and prominent man” and sometime hoaxer ought to have stuck to his lightning rods!
Unceded, former BC politician George Abbott’s scathing indictment of the province’s racist handling of indigenous land claims, is another strong reminder that we need to be better than our southern neighbours in how North America’s First Peoples are treated. —RV
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We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada’s Hockey Culture, by Rick Westhead.
Westhead, who broke the “London Five” sexual assault story, goes beyond the Hockey Canada scandal that triggered a mass exodus of major sponsors and led to new HC leadership.
We Breed Lions is a brilliant exposé of toxic masculinity in hockey culture—from hazing rituals that homosexualize torture to the professionalizing of minor hockey that turns pre-teen elite players into entitled little hellions.
The World After Gaza: A History, by Pankaj Mishra.
Unless you’re a hard-core Zionist who worships Benjamin Netanyahu, this book will move you. Firmly pro-Palestine, Mishra aims to convert skeptics who think Hamas is the only barrier to peace.
He succeeds with a damning account of Western complicity in Palestinian erasure since the Balfour Declaration—and by disclosing his own youthful Zionism, influenced by Hindu nationalism, that blinded him to the injustice of all nationalisms.
The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, by Catherine Clement.
Combining photos with a narrative drawn from a rich trove of archival sources to include the recollections of victims and their descendants, Clement’s Paper Trail brings to life a dark and forgotten chapter in Canadian history.
The Vancouver Book Award-winning author, who spent some of her childhood in Vancouver’s Chinatown and now lives on the Sunshine Coast, has produced a deeply affecting record of legislative racism and its human consequences. —DG
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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