The Best Debut Books of 2025

I read more debut books this year than ever before. My general process is to read a handful of pages for every book that comes my way. From there, I decide to finish about a dozen per month to curate Debutiful‘s monthly lists. Coming up with a ‘Best Of’ list is always simply a matter of personal taste. From Debutiful to The New York Times to TIME, there’s no perfect list that everyone can agree on. In fact, no editorial board can possibly read every book, so every list has a blind spot. This list features about 20% of the books I’ve read that were published in 2025. It was capped in the mid-30s, as voted on by Debutiful‘s readers. While Debutiful coverage skews toward covering novels and story collections, there are a handful of the best poetry collections and nonfiction titles I read this year.

These are the titles that kept coming to mind repeatedly and were the ones I recommended most often throughout the year to friends, family, and strangers. Some you will see on other lists, and others I feel were criminally underrated throughout the year. Each one is brilliant in its own way and I am sure there is something for everyone throughout these titles.

Here are the Best Debut Books of 2025, in alphabetical order, according to me, Adam Vitcavage, founder and editor of Debutiful, along with a brief description of how each one made me feel. You can click on the book’s title to learn more information about each one and make a purchase through our Bookshop.org link to help fund Debutiful.

The Best Debut Books of 2025

Big Chief by Jon Hickey

From the publisher: There, There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.

This is a new American classic. Hickey’s book is tightly written while being an expansive look into Indigenous politics. If you only read one book this year, make it this book.

Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su

From the publisher: A humorous and deeply moving debut novel in the vein of Bunny and Convenience Store Woman about a young woman who tries to shape a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend.

A laugh-out-loud and off-the-wall story. It’s all about finding yourself and finding love, but it does so in a completely unexpected way. Reading this was like riding a rollercoaster.

Crawl by Max Delsohn

From the publisher: A darkly comic, introspective debut collection that looks beneath the surface of trans life in 2010s Seattle

This collection about the trans experience is sexy, sharp, and sincere. Delsohn has a unique voice and explores different aspects of the trans Seattle community with a kaleidoscopic view. “Sex Is a Leisure Activity” is the perfect taste for what to expect in Crawl.

Dead Girl Cameo by m. mick powell

From the publisher: A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving personal loss with the life stories of Aaliyah Haughton, Whitney Houston, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Phyllis Hyman, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, and others to explore sexuality, survival, queer mourning, and the afterlives of stardom

powell is a ferocious writer with an unapologetic voice. She explores how we treat our heroes, and what heroes do and do not owe us. The poems are odes to those we lost (Whitney Houston, Left Eye) and a reminder that we’re all hiding pain. Moving and refreshing. A knockout.

Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

Mississippi will always hold a special place in my heart. My wife lived there for a decade before we met, and we bonded over our love of Jesmyn Ward’s novels. This book is yet another Mississippi novel that fully breathes life into the state that many misunderstand. Set in a Black Southern town where faith, ambition, and violence collide, it’s a raw, intimate look at how we’re all caught in the webs we weave. Citchens is a powerhouse ready to step onto the scene.

The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole

From the publisher: Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

I loved going on this journey that was so gorgeously written. Bankole expertly crafts an expansive narrative that follows a woman who defies a premonition and moves to New Orleans, only for a hurricane to upend her dreams and leave her daughter years later searching across continents to uncover the truth about their lives. Every word is like silk. Bankole is a writer everyone should be reading.

Extinction Capital of the World by Mariah Rigg

From the publisher: Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai’i—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.

These ten stories expertly explore desire, loss, displacement, and environmental fragility across characters throughout Hawai’i. Each is electric and lyrical. Rigg’s a master short story writer with unbelievable skill. As someone who has never been to Hawai’i, this transported me there and made me care about the people, locations, and history like no book ever has.

Foreclosure Gothic by Harris Lahti

From the publisher: A multi-generational and deeply autobiographical gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality that feels like Andre Dubus III meets Chantal V. Johnson.

A wild ride that is on its way to becoming an all-timer. Lahti will grab you on page one and not let you go as you feel the unearthlyness take over your body. This is firing on all cylinders and the beautiful thing is it feels like Lahti did it effortlessly. Simply stunning.

The Gloomy Girl Variety Show by Freda Epum 

From the publisher: Merging memoir, poetry, and criticism, this radical literary revue traces a first-generation Nigerian American’s search for home and belonging on her own terms.

Epum invites readers into a world filled with beautiful language and clever quips to explore identity in an approachable way. It is a mesmerizing debut that will open readers’ eyes to new worlds.

Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin

From the publisher: A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death, and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.

Tantalizing, to say the least. Franklin’s ability to ooze authentic charisma from the page is unparalleled. This is the perfect summer novel and one that will transport you to the sweltering subway rides while dealing with sweeping themes. Franklin could very well be our next great American writer.

Guatemalan Rhapsody by Jared Lemus

From the publisher: A vibrant debut story collection–poignant, unflinching, and immersive–masterfully moving between sharp wit and profound tenderness, Guatemalan Rhapsody offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country, the people who claim it as home, and those who no longer do

This collection is already one of my favorites since starting Debutiful. They’re fresh but timeless. Lemus writes about place – both America and Guatemala – with precision and care. He writes with utter compassion. Reading this collection was an absolute delight.

Helen of Troy, 1993 by Maria Zoccola

From the publisher: Part myth retelling, part character study, this sharp, visceral debut poetry collection reimagines Helen of Troy from Homer’s Iliad as a disgruntled housewife in 1990s Tennessee.

I didn’t know what to expect when this one arrived on my doorstep. I ended up reading it in one sitting and was moved by the creativity and the modern take on an all-time classic. The moment I finished it, I knew it was going to be a favorite book for a long, long time.

Herculine by Grace Byron

From the publisher: A “witty, often-chilling, compulsively readable” (Vogue) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comrades—and she’s their next prey!

A perfect psychological horror about a transwoman fleeing New York to a trans inclusive commune started by her ex-girlfriend. Byron’s book is a maze you can’t escape. You turn the page and discover something new. I could not put this book down.

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

From the publisher: An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

Chen’s debut is a panoramic story about recapturing, and outrunning, the past. Emotions pour over on every page while characters you will grow to cherish navigate intimacy across place and time. She asks if we can recapture our past, and, more importantly, if we should try to.

House of Beth by Kerry Cullen

From the publisher: A haunting and seductive tale of a young career woman who slides quickly into the role of stepmother, in a life that may still belong to someone else.

An undeniable force that I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a modern gothic ghost story about getting over a break-up while maintaining your mental health and becoming a stepmother. Reading it reminded me of when I read Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt. It’s eerie with a modern twist. It’s quite possibly the most perfect book for Debutiful readers: it’s sad, it’s weird, and it’s horny.

Loca by Alejandro Heredia

From the publisher: If Junot Diaz’s critically acclaimed collection Drown and Janet Mock’s Emmy-winning series Pose produced offspring, Alejandro Heredia’s Loca would be their firstborn.

This was completely enthralling and moving. It pulls back the curtain on young, queer people’s lives and organically allows readers into a beautiful and complicated friendship. Simply one of the most exciting new writers on the scene.

Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu

From the publisher: Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early ’90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it.

Wambugu’s writing about the ups and downs of friendship and jealousy is breathtaking. As the decades progress in Ruth and Maria’s friendship, so does the tension. She’s able to bring characters to life with such ease and makes the world feel so alive. Reading this gave me a full-body buzz for days.

Luminous by Silvia Park

From the publisher: A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings–two human, one robot–as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

It’s a stone-cold stunner of a novel. Park masterfully balances complex characters in a very creative world that feel so realistic even though it oozes sci-fi. The family dynamics in this future-tinged novel are brilliantly written. 

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee

From the publisher: A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.

I haven’t stopped thinking about how easily Yee balanced the ups and downs of life – jumping from laugh-out-loud humor to sobbing into your pillow – throughout this debut.  After the main character learns of a cancerous tumour (aka Maggie), Yee explores how one finds oneself, finds love, and finds humor in the darkest of times. Reading this was like riding an emotional rollercoaster.

Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore

From the publisher: Artfully and precisely drawn, and steeped in place and history as it explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy, Carrie R. Moore’s debut collection announces an extraordinary new talent in American fiction, inviting us all to examine how the past shapes our present–and how our present choices will echo for years to come.

Here is a short story collection ready to enter the pantheon of Best Short Story Collections of All Time. Moore’s collection proves debut books can arrive fully realized and perfectly written. Her stories about Black men and women across the American South as they confront the complexities of home, identity, legacy, and love are immersive and hypnotic. All eleven will knock your socks off.

No Sense in Wishing by Lawrence Burney

From the publisher: An essay collection from culture critic Lawrence Burney that is a personal and analytical look at his home city of Baltimore, music from throughout the global Black diaspora, and the traditions that raised him.

No writer knows a city and its culture better than Burney knows and writes about Baltimore. His debut essay collection touches on everything from the intimacy of how music touches a soul to the global impact of Black culture from continent to continent. Burney is a voice we should all be listening to.

The Past is a Jean Jacket by Cloud Delfina Cardona

From the publisher: Reminiscent of being in a heavily postered room with rock music blasting, Cloud Delfina Cardona’s debut collection the past is a jean jacket is a time capsule of a 90s queer, Latinx teenhood.

Selected for the Hub City BIPOC Poetry Series this collection cuts like a knife. In it, Cardona asks, “why am I nostolgic for the shitty times in my life?” Throughout the poems, Cardona’s voice shines. It was formed on Tumblr, but is timeless.

Plum by Andy Anderegg

From the publisher: For fans of Sarah Rose Etter and Scott McClanahan, Plum is a darkly beautiful, unflinching novel about modern girlhood in the internet age, the daily toll of trauma, and the limits of love.

Plum is breathtaking. Anderegg’s style and prose are a breath of fresh air. She writes about trauma in a raw way that I have never experienced before. I wish more people wrote with the courage that Anderegg writes with.

Ravishing by Eshani Surya

An emotionally resonant and deeply profound book, Surya captures the cost of what it’s like to chase “perfection.” It is a luminous story about learning that we were never broken to begin with. Incredibly written and moving. This will stick with me for a long, long time.

Sister Creatures by Laura Venita Green

From the publisher: In the muggy, insect-ridden town of Pinecreek, Louisiana, college dropout Tess Lavigne is watching two bickering siblings while their parents are away. Her listless day drinking is interrupted when someone emerges from the woods behind the house. Filthy and feral, the daughter of religious fundamentalists, the girl known in town as Sister Gail convinces Tess to take her in for the night. The strange events of that evening will set the course for Tess’s future, and Sister Gail’s ultimate fate.

Give me more books like this. Green grabbed me on page one and didn’t let me go. She has a pitch-perfect tone and pace. I felt like I lived in Pinecreek, Louisiana, where feral girls kick off a chain of events that consume the novel, for ages, and I never want to leave it. Her voice is one we’ll be reading for years to come. 

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

From the publisher: Cross the jet bridge with Linda, a frequent flyer with an unusual obsession, in this “audaciously imagined and surprisingly tender” (Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch) debut novel by the acclaimed author of Out There.

Sky Daddy has quickly become the easiest and most frequent book for me to recommend. There is something in it for everyone, but especially those who need an off-the-wall, bonkers escape from our reality.

The Slip by Lucas Schaefer

From the publisher: For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.

An ambitious and masterful book of epic proportions. Schaefer comes out swinging and delivers on every page. Crime, sports, and coming-of-age have never felt so alive in a book.

Strange Beach by Oluwaseun Olayiwola

From the publisher: A debut poetry collection wrangling the various selves we hold and perform–across oceans and within relationships–told through a queer, Nigerian-American lens

Olayiwola’s poems made me stop and catch my breath. He writes without fear, inviting readers to experience raw emotions and unspoken truths. Strange Beach was profoundly moving.

Thank You, John by Michelle Gurule

From the publisher: a heartfelt, laugh-out-loud tragi-comedy of errors based on her time spent as an inexperienced sugarbaby in 2010s Denver.

Know this: you’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll pick your jaw up from the floor. Gurule’s memoir is a sublime and revealing story about being a sugarbaby in college. It reads like a Hollywood reality series in the best way possible.

There Are Reasons for This by Nini Berndt

From the publisher: There Are Reasons for This is a modern love song about the fallibility of love–in all its iterations–about the denial and tethering of desire, about the family we are given and the one we find for ourselves, and to what comes next, whatever that may be.

This is an undeniably engrossing read with a beautiful cover. Berndt’s writing blew me away time and time again throughout this novel. She writes like a boxer floating off the page with ease and packing the heaviest of punches with the simplest flick of her wrist.

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma

From the publisher: For fans of Cloud Atlas and The Power, a hauntingly beautiful and prescient debut set in a future where a renamed China is the sole global superpower.

A slim and powerful speculative novel about what happens when memories are taken from us and given to everyone. Ma is a brilliant mind with a shining voice. His writing is spellbinding, and his plot and characters are innovative and engaging. Reading it was reminiscent of the first time I read Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life.” It made me believe that books can change my brain’s chemistry. 

Underspin by EY Zhao

From the Publisher: Stay True meets Headshot in this intimate, bruising coming-of-age novel about the short and tumultuous life of a charismatic and enigmatic table tennis prodigy, as seen through the eyes of those pulled into his orbit.

Drive, desire, and determination in the table tennis world are central to exploring how outside forces can shape us. I love a good sports novel and this is a gold medal of a novel. It shocks and awes as good as the masters.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown

From the publisher: An exuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls, as sweetly vulnerable as they are cunning and tough, coming of age in a gritty postindustrial town in nineties Yorkshire, England

If you couldn’t tell by now, I love coming-of-age stories set in small towns and I love the 1990s. This book does everything exceedingly well. It’s full of emotion.

What God in the Kingdom of Bastards by Brian Gyamfi

From the publisher: What God in the Kingdom of Bastards is a poetic exploration of grief, memory, Blackness, and the haunting legacy of familial trauma by way of colonialism, told through the lens of two brothers: Lot, the elder, who is flesh and alive, and Frank, the younger, a ghost navigating his post-suicide existence.

Diving into Gyamfi’s poem proves he has an eye for rich and evocative imagery on top of emotional language. He expertly blends a personal lens with the larger cultural roots that built him as a writer.

When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris 

From the publisher: In this heart-wrenching debut novel, a young Black gay man reckoning with the death of his father must confront his painful past–and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex.

I nearly fell over when I heard Norris read from Harvest at AWP 2024 in Kansas City. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say her craft is genius. Norris radiates on the sentence, emotional, and plot level. An early contender for Novel of the Year.

Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) by Colette Shade

From the publisher: Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a delightfully nostalgic and bitingly told exploration about how the early 2000s forever changed us and the world we live in.

We need more great essay collections that take a critical lens to recent culture and history and Shande’s collection is a perfect addition to that pantheon. While nostalgia is just now dipping into the Y2K era, Shade unflinchingly looks at the time period with biting takes and a keen eye. She explores why we’re so nostalgic for the 2000s, why what we were promised never came true, and what we can learn from our past.