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End-of-the-Year Contest 2025

Congratulations to the winners of our 2025 End-of-the-Year contest! One reader received all 42 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2025, while seven others won six of these titles.

You can see all the winners below, along with 2025's Bets On selections.

If you would like to know more about these books, be sure to check out this video and podcast where Carol talks about each of her 42 picks.

Lisa Genova, author of More or Less Maddy

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects that bipolar has on her identity, her relationships and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova

January 2025

I have been a long-time fan of Lisa Genova’s work. In fact, her previous novels --- STILL ALICE, LEFT NEGLECTED, LOVE ANTHONY, INSIDE THE O'BRIENS and EVERY NOTE PLAYED --- were Bets On selections. Reading them, I have learned about early-onset Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury, autism, Huntington’s disease and ALS.

In MORE OR LESS MADDY, Lisa takes us inside the world of Maddy Banks, who seems to have normal issues for a college student. But when they escalate, she finds herself in a deeply depressed and dark state, barely making her way through the day. A quick visit to the university’s health facility gets her a prescription for an antidepressant, and all is well for a while.

Week of January 5, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of January 5th include THE LIST by Steve Berry, a gripping novel of suspense about a lawyer in a small Georgia town who finds himself at odds with his new employer; KISS HER GOODBYE, the fourth installment in Lisa Gardner's addictive Frankie Elkin series, in which Frankie is called to Tucson, Arizona, to find a missing Afghan refugee, whose friend suspects she is in grave danger --- before it is too late; Lisa Genova's MORE OR LESS MADDY, a riveting page-turner about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal” life for a career in stand-up comedy; SAVE OUR SOULS by Matthew Pearl, the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck and betrayal; and FIRST IN THE FAMILY, a deeply moving and lyrical memoir from Jessica Hoppe, who shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm.

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