The 2025 Book of the Year, Paper Girl’s World, is lighting up happiness everywhere.

Crack open Judy Williamson’s 400-page masterpiece, and joy pours out like sunshine through a window you didn’t know was there. One page sends you off to a Mach 2 happy hour on the Concorde. Next, you’re face-to-face with the mist of Iguazu Falls. Then, romance drifts in at three miles an hour on a French canal barge, where even the clocks seem to take a break.