Time for our yearly round up: the best books we read this year, whether surprise new releases or old favourites we've read many times, and our favourite episodes of 2025 in case you're wondering where to start! And our final game of the year is not to be missed: the Booktails Job Swap! Producer Mark is presenting, Rachel is editing and Serena is on 'music': it's going to be a riot.

Thank you so much for joining us this year on Booktails - next year is going to be super exciting and we can't wait to share it with you all!

Festive Frolics 4: Serena's Recommendation

Christmas is just around the corner and we are heartbroken that this is our final festive frolic of the podcast this year! But we've put the perfect gift under your tree in the shape of this delightful mature romance in a picturesque English village complete with quirky ensemble and disastrous dates! You'll want to try our yummy Gingerbread Margi-rita, the perfect accompaniment on these chilly winter nights!

Don't wait to unwrap this gift of an episode which includes discussions on real life gingerbread villages, representations of female aging and why you would never want to live in a remote English countryside village. We hope someone nice comes down your chimney and wish you a wonderful Christmas!

Make sure to join us next time for an episode of our best books of the year!

Festive Frolics 3

On the first day of Christmas Booktails gave to you a baby Alan in a pear tree! It's the 12 days of Christmas as you've never seen them before! A grumpy widower and his children start receiving very specific and familiar gifts on the days leading up to Christmas... but who is sending them and what could they mean?

Join Rachel and Serena as they rake through ladies dancing, unbelievable children, lords a leaping, maids a milking, unfit fathers, lack of Christmas activities, five gold rings, ghost mothers and whatever happened to that partridge chick in the pear tree?!

Festive Frolics 2: The Secret Christmas Library and interview with bestselling author Jenny Colgan.

It's a big one readers: it's our first author interview and we were over the moon to have the one and only Jenny Colgan on to discuss their new book with us!

Join us as we drink a festive old fashioned, chat about real life castle libraries, why books are always the best Christmas gifts and play a festive game of Red Flag Green Flag! Will the love interests in this book will be on the naughty list this year? Only one way to find out!

Festive Frolics 1: Rachel's recommendation

It's the most wonderful time of the year! That's right, the season is upon us, time to roast those chestnuts and sing some carols in the snow! And for this first romantic romp you might just want to look out the mistletoe!

Join Serena and Rachel as they follow identical twins who swap lives for the twelve days before Christmas in this Hallmark-esque holiday adventure, featuring just about every festive romcom trope going, from small town bakeries to Christmas eve blizzards! Just don't forget the sourdough starter!

Prize Winners 3: British Book Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year

We hope you're hungry readers, because if not you're about to be! Based on a true case this book explores murder, feminism and most importantly, the joys of eating. It's never too late to change your life or to start eating good food!

After today's game Rachel and Serena will never be eating margarine again. We're even putting butter in our cocktails these days! So grab a knife and join us for Butter!

Prize Winners 2: Women's Prize for Fiction Winner

Let's go girls! The Women's Prize was set up in response to the lack of female writers being shortlisted for the Booker Prize despite being more numerous than males, and they have been paving the way for representation and equality ever since! Yasss Queens!

This week we dive into the Safekeep and discuss literary wartime lesbians, hare obsessions, twist endings and what pears have to do with any of it! Get yourself a Pears and Hares cocktail and let's get into it!

Prize Winners 1: Pulitzer Prize Winner

First up in this prize winning books of 2025 category is a retelling of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which will turn that tale on its head with an unforgettable narrator and a completely new spin on the hi-jinks of a couple of children in the American South!

Travel down the Mississippi with Serena and Rachel as they discuss past mojito trauma, the language of slavery, absurd travelling royalty, the power of writing and the ultimate reveal. YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER! OH YES I AM!