What To Read For The Holidays: SingLit Edition
Add these SingLit reads to your TBR list this holiday.
The year is ending, are you on track with your 2025 reading goals? The December holidays have arrived. For some, this means quieter days during the festive season that are perfect for a good book. If you’re looking for some light reading to accompany you on a flight, or just some literary company for the month-long winter holiday, these are our picks of the best SingLit releases of 2025 — from editorial debuts, to anticipated returns.
The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei
Before her editorial debut, Jemimah Wei’s The Original Daughter was already getting international buzz: named a New York Times Editor’s Pick, featured in Good Morning America’s book club, and was an instant number 1 Straits Times Bestseller upon its release on May 6 this year. It was an explosive debut, to say the least. If you’re looking for a beautifully written story about two sisters and everything that’s gone unsaid, you should pick this book up.
A quick blurb: “Singapore, 1996. Eight-year-old Genevieve Yang’s life is totally upended when her grandfather’s secret second family deposits a terrified child into their lives. The girls grow up as sisters, competitive and codependent in a rapidly modernizing Singapore, constantly reinventing themselves to survive, when their once inseparable relationship becomes violently estranged on their journey towards achieving fame and fortune.”
Get it here
Almost A Love Story by Carissa Foo
Romance has had a huge year in 2025, with the boom of hockey romances and romantasy on BookTok. Here in Singapore, writer and literary critic Carissa Foo offers a more nuanced story with a cast of characters that most Singaporeans would probably know. It’s an introspective tale with emotional depth and nuance. For the literature nerds out there, it’s also full of literary references to classics to flex your academic muscles. It’s a thoughtful read with plenty of heart and is, as the title says, almost a love story.
A quick blurb: Erin is a homemaker who hasn’t read a book in a long time. But that changes when Wendell — now a published author — returns after twelve years. Once, they shared a creative partnership: he wrote, she took notes, their closeness defined by the things they never said. But when Erin begins to read his novel—about a professor and his amanuensis—she sees shadows of herself on the page. The more she reads, the more the boundaries between fact and fiction blur. Conversations restart, old wounds reopen and the past reshapes the present in quiet, irreversible ways.
Get it here
Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe
Amanda Lee Koe needs little introduction. Since 2019, she’s published a few books (including Ministry of Moral Panic and Delayed Rays of A Star), receiving the Henfield Prize, and was the youngest winner of the Singapore Literature Prize. It’s no surprise that her second novel, Sister Snake, amassed much buzz. A reimagining of the Chinese legend of the White Snake, this novel is filled with dark humour and suspense, and will especially speak to readers looking for a wild ride with some punchy writing.
A quick blurb: “Sister Snake is about the sometimes toxic but always abiding love between two immortal snake spirits. Wild child baby sister Emerald is currently bumming around as a sugar baby in New York, while buttoned-up older sister Su is the socialite wife of a high-flying politician in Singapore. When Emerald goes on a date gone wrong, their worlds collide, and their centuries-old bond is tested.”
Get it here
The Unlikely Motherhood of Shaleni May by Sunita Sue Leng
A finalist for the 2025 Epigram Books Fiction Prize, Leng’s debut novel offers a witty take on motherhood, specifically, when it’s unexpected. Motherhood (especially in an Asian context) tends to be portrayed as prickly and complex. It’s a fun and light read that perfectly balances humour with the poignant truths of motherhood and womens’ reproductive health.
A quick blurb: Shaleni May never planned for motherhood — until a chance encounter, a rescue dog and an unexpected adoption at forty-five. Suddenly thrown into digital-age parenting, she battles self-doubt, meddling mums and a lurking threat from her husband’s past. Wry, warm and wildly relatable, this is a story of late-life surprises, resilience and redefining family on your own terms.
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Swimming Lessons by Malcom Seah
Another Singapore author who made his editorial debut this year was 24-year-old Malcom Seah. Having been a finalist in the 2023 Epigram Books Fiction Prize, he finally made his editorial debut this year with Swimming Lessons — genre-bending coming-of-age story with supernatural elements and a dash of whodunnit. For a raw and emotional exploration of grief and identity, this is the book you should pick up.
A quick blurb: “Swimming Lessons is a tender coming-of-age story of sisterly love and a heartfelt meditation on grief, identity and queerness in modern metropolitan Singapore. You’ll hear from three different perspectives that challenge our very conception of time and the supernatural itself.”
Get it here
Finding Chopin by Rachel Tey
What would you do if you were dropped into one of your childhood memories? Another finalist for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize is Rachel Tey’s editorial debut. While Tey cemented herself as a standout talent in the local writing scene through her short stories, Finding Chopin is her first full-length adult novel: an exploration of memory, grief and identity through a mother and son’s time travel adventure. If you loved A24’s 2022 film Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, this book will put you right back in your feels with Tey’s sensitivity and beautiful writing that make her characters feel real.
A quick blurb: Nineteen-year-old Finn Chang’s final-year project demands a photographic exploration of memory. As he pieces together fragments of his past, his mother, Emerald, becomes his guide through a labyrinth of recollections — some vivid, others elusive. Their search awakens long-buried truths, drawing them into a tangled history of loss, love and unexpected revelations. What begins as an academic exercise soon becomes a journey neither of them can control.
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The Mystical Mister Kay by Meihan Boey
Winner of the 2025 Epigram Books Fiction Prize and the final instalment of her acclaimed Miss Cassidy trilogy, this is for readers who want something exciting with a touch of supernatural and mystery. Its final installment picks up from where the previous book, The Enigmatic Madam Ingram, left off. No spoilers here, but if you love witty and charismatic female characters with Southeast Asian ghosts and lore, this is a series that you’ll easily breeze through this December break.
A quick blurb: Miss Cassidy, the mysterious being from Scotland, is presumed dead. But her friend, the Singaporean businessman Mr Kay, refuses to believe it and sets off for Great Britain to find her. Meanwhile, in the English city of Tolwich, the Malayan Princess Nora has founded a seminary for Asian princesses, where the young royals are dressed by the exclusive House of Ruby, whose owner, Mr Ruby, commands unsettling devotion. When a princess is found dead in a bathtub, whispers of something uncanny spread, and Princess Nora turns to a ghost-seer—Mr Kay. But as he delves deeper into the mystery, unseen forces stir in the shadows. Could Miss Cassidy be closer than he thinks?
Get it here or check out the full trilogy