6 Of The Best Memoirs Of 2025, According To Book Reviews

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According to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. The twists and turns of real life often manage to defy the surprises of our favorite fiction. Maybe that's why memoir remains such an enduringly popular genre. These real-life stories, threaded with research and self-reflection, don't just teach us about lives that are wildly different from our own — they teach us how to think more clearly about our own experiences. From the best memoirs written by female musicians to the celebrity memoirs that actually make great book club picks, these stories aren't merely interested in what happened to a person, so much as why.

"Memoirs are about those most ancient questions," explained book critic Parul Sehgal in a 2019 interview with The New York Times. "Who or what made me? And that 'me,' who is that exactly? The best ones have a ruthlessness, a willingness to get to the marrow of oneself, without preening and dissembling." Some shed light on a unique lifestyle or career while others succeed on the basis of brilliant, surprising authorial consciousness. Either way, a great memoir will sweep you away into a totally new life. In 2025, books like "107 Days" by Kamala Harris captivated audiences with its glimpse behind the curtain at what it's like to be a female politician on the campaign trail, while Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer by Dylan Mulvaney explored the challenges of transitioning and building a public-facing in the spotlight. But while these bestsellers no doubt made waves, they were far from the only impactful memoirs released this year.

In a series of vignettes, Chloé Caldwell's "Trying: A Memoir" begins as a story of trying to conceive a baby. But a story about the fertility industrial complex takes a different turn after a shocking revelation about Caldwell's husband. What follows is an exploration of queer identity and the fertility industry — and, more broadly, the human search for meaning. Caldwell has written several memoirs and novellas, but "Trying" (which was released in August 2025), shines bright among them.

As usual, Caldwell's voice is, by turns, vulnerable and wry. "I like nothing better than spare prose from a self-aware first-person writer," wrote one Goodreads reviewer, "and this book was perfect." Readers praised the books balance of tones. "Caldwell rides the line between heart breaking and funny, in that way that is true to life itself," observed one Goodreads commenter. "As discouraging and difficult as the act of trying to conceive can be (and that is never brushed under the rug) the book itself feels hopeful." Many reviewers revealed that they blazed through this book in a day, unable to put it down. From Caldwell's ability to find meaning in the mundane to the rollicking pop culture reference, this is the perfect memoir to pick up if you like nonlinear structures and honest self-reflection.

The perfect book for fans of the film "Almost Famous," this memoir chronicles director Cameron Crowe's adolescent years, working as a music journalist for "Rolling Stone." It covers the same material that inspired Crowe's seminal film, pulling back the curtain on the bacchanalia of 1970s rock and roll. It's a coming-of-age story, set in a thrilling, colorful moment in history.

Music lovers will delight in going backstage with Crowe, who paints an immersive portrait of the era as he travels with bands like Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers. "Crowe's stories are packed with the kind of details that make you want to hit pause on your day and just soak in the vibe — like him meeting Penny Lane-esque superfans, the 'Band-Aids,' or Crowe being asked to cover the band he was touring with, just like in the movie," wrote one Goodreads reviewer. "I actually rewatched 'Almost Famous' while reading, and it made the whole experience feel even richer and immersive." This memoir focuses on Crowe's years in the music industry and doesn't cover his filmmaking career, so it's a better choice for music fans than movie buffs. Still, if you love classic rock, this book is undeniably, relentlessly fun.

Lidia Yuknavitch returns with a powerful follow-up to her 2011 memoir "The Chronology of Water." Again, Yuknavitch is interested in the way memory shapes our experiences into narratives that form our identities. Her writing is as muscular as ever., but the wisdom of age offers a new dynamism to her perspective.

She probes her own life story, covering some of the same territory as in her first book, from a new vantage point. "I've been craving a book that really hits — and this was it," wrote one Goodreads reviewer. "I cannot praise Lidia Yuknavitch's writing enough. You might wonder how it's possible for someone to write a second memoir without it becoming repetitive, but apparently, it is. She has a unique way of narrating pain in a raw, blunt, and visceral way, while still maintaining a kind of meta-level without it being too abstract." If you're craving a deeply moving memoir, Yuknavitch's meditation on identity and desire is it.

Renowned science fiction writer Margaret Atwood turns her piercing gaze on her own life in her 2025 memoir, "Book of Lives." Above all, Atwood is interested in the myths we make of our own lives, the limits of memory, and the fallibility of self-perception. In fragments and digressions, she reveals her intellectual life to be both dynamic and far ranging. Fans of her work will discover insights into Atwood's inspiration and writing process, including the inspiration behind her famous novel, "The Handmaid's Tale."

But perhaps the greatest strength of Atwood's story is her ability to be genuinely vulnerable without oversharing gratuitously. "She knows that every memoir, however honest, is a performance, and she performs hers with such transparent self-awareness that the performance becomes another layer of truth," wrote one Goodreads reviewer. "The book is full of moments where the boundaries between memoir and fiction shimmer like heat haze." Atwood's persistent and disarming humor is just the cherry on top!

With this unique and lyrical memoir, author Kelly Ramsey invites readers into the singular world of wild land firefighters. The book explores her experiences navigating the male-dominated industry, and a job that gave her a front-row seat to the wildfires devastating Northern California in the late 2010s. The story is powered by Ramsey's ruthless self-awareness and her unrelenting vulnerability, layered with a portrait of the environmental realities of the life on the West Coast.

No matter how different your day job is from Ramsey's, you'll find something to connect with here, as she teases a universality out of her niche lived experience. "This is gritty, fascinating look at the life of a wild land firefighter and inadvertently a reflection on the costs of climate change," wrote one Goodreads reviewer. "Rich with technical details, [Ramsey] also conveys the sweat, the adrenaline, the grind, the exhilaration, and the craving to belong to the team as 'one of the guys.'" This is the perfect book to pick up if you like stories about tough women.

Memoirs usually into one of two categories: life stories of famous people or non-celebrities with important stories to tell. And yet, February's "On the Hippie Trail" by Rick Steves manages to be both. Steves started as a travel writer, before transitioning to television with a series that aired on PBS in the early 1990s. To this day, he is considered a cultural figure, though not a celebrity in the traditional sense — certainly not an A-lister. Primarily, he's a guide who advocates for a humble, immersive form of international travel. This book sheds light on the origins of that philosophy. More or less untouched, Steves presents the journals he kept as a twenty-something backpacking the "Hippie Trail," a once popular route that stretched from Europe through Asia.

The book brims with Steves' signature sincerity. "My favorite part of this travel journal was getting to meet baby Rick Steves," wrote one Goodreads reviewer. "Very naive, a little more self-important than he needed to be, a lot more obsessed with souvenir shopping than I'd have thought, but still the same cheerful, busy, gregarious, curious, and adventurous traveler that he portrays on his TV show." The trip was profoundly moving for Steves, and after returning to the United States, he switched careers — quitting his job as a piano teacher to make travel his full-time job. For those who love the comforting tone of Steves' show, this book is an optimistic, immersive journey.

The memoirs on this list were selected on the basis of both critic reviews and star ratings on Goodreads. In looking through the reviews, consideration was given both to the cultural impact of the author, the quality of the writing, and the significance of the book's themes and research topics. Preference was given to books that transcended the celebrity memoir form, exemplifying the reflective and introspective strengths of the memoir genre.