The New Year bursts with opportunity and is a time to commit to getting more out of life. In this new LoveReading Collection, we look forward to embarking upon this new year together, holding your hand throughout 2025 and helping you accomplish your goal of reading more from our reviews of wonderful books we love. Whether you plan to improve your cooking skills, eat healthier, be more mindful or boost your mental health or expand your horizons we have the book for you.

We all do it. Well, we've probably all done it at some point in our lives. Made a gazillion pledges to start our new year off well. Whether it's Dry Jan, joining the gym or just promising to eat better, or healthier or maybe trying Veganuary for the first time.

Well, this year I've got no excuse, I'm running the London Marathon this April so my pledges can't be broken. My promises can't be ignored. I'm committing to making 2025 the best yet!

The New Year You You Collection will feature book recommendations from the following areas: Journals, Almanacs, Diet & Nutrition, Mindfulness, Healthy You, Healthy Planet, Nature, Sleep, Exercise and Meditation, Self-Care, Career and Work Success, Sustainability, Community, Travel, Inspirational Stories and Women’s Health. Enjoy!

The Journals

If you're looking to self-explore, rewrite your story and become a better version of yourself this year, try journalling. We fell in love with The Greatest Self-Help Book last year, and think it will become an annual event, buying a fresh new journal and changing your outlook on life with the transformative power of a journal. I bought one for my daughter this year, and we have been journalling together, sharing our plans, our aspirations. I'm excited about the year ahead; this book is the perfect mix of questions, activities, and proven techniques to help you live your best life. It's a creative and beautiful thing, bravo Vex King. Also the husband and wife duo are back for 2025 with a game-changing six-month daily planner that introduces you to the power of mindful planning, every day. Check out One Day One Moment too.

We also love Words to Live By: A Daily Journal by Donna Ashworth: a daily journal of inspiration, comfort and encouragement from the UK's No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Wild Hope, beautifully designed in four-colour throughout. The perfect way to start afresh, a gift to yourself or someone special.

The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2025

The beautiful 2025 incarnation of this landmark month-by-month almanac features a fascinating focus on ancient astronomy. Presented in a glorious gift format — a charming, small chunky hardback that begs to be picked up — the 2025 edition of The Almanac features all the expected valuable detail on sunrises, tide tables and moon phases, along with nuggets to encourage and support seasonal gardening activities — courtesy of the inspiring “Gardening by the Moon” sections — and incisive extra information on ancient astronomy.

Diet & Nutrition Books

Now every year I have the intention to eat less meat and eat more heathily, and by the second week of January, I'm scoffing a sizzling steak and quaffing a beautiful bottle of Barolo. However this year in our household it'll be a little bit different as I want to make it stick. My daughter has now been a pescatarian for six months and I am keen to support her more this year by planning healthy meals all of the family can enjoy. If this sounds like you, I can't recommend Doctor Bowl enough. It's a really lovely book, with tons of stunning vegetarian and vegan recipes that are quick and simple to prepare and look the business. Divya is a GP, a big foodie and a keen cook and her no-nonsense, practical, delicious and nutricious meals are a real hit in our house.

Another hit for family life is Unprocess Your Family Life by Rob Hobson, delivering inspiration for your family's food calendar in the form of easy recipes and healthy snacks that can help you and your family to move away from ultra-processed diets. It's perfect for a busy family looking to create simple menas and also offers the perfect opportunity to involve the whole family in meal planning.

The Book for Mindfulness

Calm Your Mind by Ravenous Butterflies is just gorgeous accoring to our Liz Robinson. A beautiful collection of art and literature, matched to different emotions to help calm, feed, and bring joy to your mind. From joy through to loss, nature to friendship, and wellness to courage, there are 18 different emotions for you to explore within 80 pictures and thoughts. A LoveReading Star Book, Calm Your Mind is a wonderfully welcoming book to accompany and hold your hand through difficult times.

The Healthy You, Healthy Planet Book

Getting Healthy in Toxic Times by Jenny Goodman is an enlightening guide to understanding the connections between personal and environmental health is packed with ways we can detox our bodies and the planet. Backed by the latest scientific and medical research, this book will empower you to look after your own health-and that of the planet. Let's put the good stuff in and take the bad stuff out!

The Mind, Body & Spirit Book

From the bestselling author of Phosphorescence Julia Baird comes a beautiful and timely exploration of that most mysterious but necessary of human qualities: grace. Bright Shining has been described by The Guardian as “luminous. . . . a work to both devour and savour, Baird has, once again, written a book the world needs now.”

The Book for Sleep

100 Poems To Help You Sleep by the wonderful Jane McMorland Hunter is a dreamy collection of poems to read before you turn off the light, or to guide you gently back to sleep when you wake in the small hours. 

The Self-Help Book

Sunday Times bestselling author Dr. Rangan Chatterjee unveils his most groundbreaking book yet, offering a practical guide to creating lasting, positive change in Make Change That Lasts. Drawing on ancient philosophy and his extensive expertise in health, the host of the hugely popular podcast Feel Better, Live More introduces a personalized approach with straightforward techniques. These tools empower readers to reduce dependence on the unpredictable outside world and cultivate self-mastery, paving the way to genuine, enduring health and happiness.

The Book for Exercise and Meditation

Yoga offers numerous physical, mental, and emotional benefits that make it an excellent practice for overall well-being. Whether you're a beginner or wanting to deepen your home practice, The Yoga Happy Year offers a 12-month plan to create an achievable, holistic daily yoga habit. 

If you want to take up running this year, or like me, you are running a marathon, check out Jeff Horowitz’ Think Like a Runner. We all decide to run for different reasons, whether it's to lose weight, improve health, or deal with stress in everyday life. But what is it that keeps you motivated to run, train, and race day after day? With Think Like a Runner, you'll realise that understanding the complexities of why we run will simply help you run better. I certainly hope so! 

The Book for Nature Lovers

Start your journey to flourishing with wisdom from nature with Seasons of Growth by Marcus Bridgewater aka Garden Marcus. In this beautiful self-care journal, we can discover powerful and healing practices organized by the seasons, each mirroring different stages of our growth process.

The Book for Creatives

There is a tangibility and beauty in using our hands to create, that Isabella Strambio showcases with aplomb in this beautiful book Mindful Macramé. It's a reminder of the power of calm as Isabella coaches you through mindfulness utilising macramé. This "yoga for the mind", the ancient art of knotting transforms humble cords into elegant designs. A  journal, a companion that will help you tap into your creativity. And stop, reflect, breathe, unwind and create. 

The Books for Career and Work Success

Packed with practical tips and exercises, The Confidence Workbook by The School of Life is a valuable confidence-enhancing workbook that melds psychological insights with step-by-step support. Arm yourself with the tools (and words) to become more self-assured, and lead a more fulfilling life in 2025.

Have you ever wanted to start or grow your own business, but found that life keeps getting in the way? Then The Six-Minute Entrepreneur by Dragons’ Den fave Sara Davies is just for you! This inspirational new business book teaches you the lessons, habits and strategies needed to start, run and grow a business in just six minutes each week. 

The Book for Sustainability

The Queen of green living delivers another brilliantly practicable volume that brims with information and tips on how to lead a more sustainable life. The Green Budget Guide by Nancy Birtwhistle is packed full of inspired, sustainable and budget friendly hacks that have made Nancy so loved by readers and followers on social media, as well as tips and tricks from a lifetime spent learning how to run a household efficiently by saving time and money.

The Book Celebrating Community

Full of heart, The Volunteers by Carol Donaldson is a book teeming with a love for nature, friendship, self-reflection, and the importance of community. This wonderfully honest and heartfelt book salutes volunteering, and also sits as an offering for the meaning of community.

Books With Inspirational Stories

Uprooting by Marchelle Farrell is as charming as it is thought-provoking, a garden becomes a place of sanctuary, inclusion, reflection, and love. Beauty, pain, and hope are to be found within the pages, and while it is fiercely raw and intense in places, it is also kind and empathetic. It is incredibly easy to read, there is a delicious flow and an invitation to become at one with the words. Highly recommended, Uprooting is a wonderfully generous memoir, it offers the chance to listen, learn, and fall in love with a garden.

All Boats are Sinking by Hannah Pierce is a joyously honest and amusing autobiography of life on board a narrowboat by the 31 year old single author, who floats from London through an epic journey to West Yorkshire. 

The Travel Book

Lonely Planet has gifted us a new book - The Joy of Quiet Places - to help discover 60 of our planet's most serene and peaceful spaces.

Nothing is more healing to the mind and spirit than finding a special place of peace. Learn how to slow down, open your eyes and ears to the tiny details of our world, and find joy in spaces far from the hustle and bustle of daily life with this unique travel guide. Heaven, right?

The Book for the Midpoint

Navigate what’s happening in our minds, in our bodies, in our lives and age successfully with Gabby and her cast of Midpointers. The Midpoint Plan is a game-changer. I needed this book and I'll be sharing it with every Midpointer I know. Who doesn't want to be a healthy and more productive, creative and happy older person? As I talk to myself with kindness, reclaim a bit of care and attention for myself and work towards my best possible future, I thank Gabby. I thank Gabby for her musings, her openness, her honesty, her extensive research, and her brilliant black book. It's well written, well researched, well structured, and I loved it. Buy this book, subscribe to the podcast and learn to embrace these life lessons from Logan and her team. It's a surefire winner.

The Book about Books

And finally, we could not curate this collection without a very big nod to the fabulous Daisy Buchanan and her new book Read Yourself Happy. For readers and worriers everywhere, this is an ode to books, a celebration of reading and a reminder that reading is a happy habit, just for you. Daisy is your page-turning personal trainer who encourages you to turn the volume down on the increasingly hectic world around you. Within them you'll find safety, comfort, joy, escape, adventure. You'll be soothed, moved, challenged and captivated. As this list shows. Grab your copy now and be reminded of the transformative power of reading and the joy of books.

Whatever your heart desires for 2025, we hope this selection of books inspires you. And we'd love to hear your suggestions of books you recommend.