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Cool girl classics to read this summer 🩷🌴📚
27
items Cool reads for girly summer. Curated with honesty, nostalgia, heartbreak and boldness in mind 🐚
Sections
6
ICONIC WOMEN MAKING MESSY MOVES
📖 LITERARY BAD GIRLS CLUB
🎀 PRETTY WORDS, UGLY FEELINGS
👛 FOR YOUR BOOKCLUB (OR JUST VENTING IN THE GROUP CHAT)
TikTok approved 🫶🏻
Summer trips reads 🌴
ICONIC WOMEN MAKING MESSY MOVES
These books feature complicated, clever, and occasionally chaotic women we can’t stop reading about.
Three women chase fame, love, and success—but the price is high. Addiction, betrayal, and pills (“dolls”) rule the glamorous 60s. Unapologetic, dramatic, and strangely modern.
Valley of the Dolls | Jacqueline Susann
Maria drifts through a sunburned, soulless Hollywood in the 60s. She’s numbed out, but she sees everything. Cool, detached, and devastating.
Play It As It Lays | Joan Didion
A poetic, painful coming-of-age about a girl raised in foster care after her glamorous, dangerous mother goes to prison. Dreamy language, hard life.
White Oleander | Janet Fitch
17-year-old Cécile has it all: a villa on the French Riviera, her handsome bachelor father, and no rules. But when love (and jealousy) enters, everything spirals. Elegant and dangerous.
Bonjour Tristesse | Francoise Sagan
📖 LITERARY BAD GIRLS CLUB
These books are not here to comfort you. They bite.
A young, rich, numb woman tries to sleep for an entire year using pills. Darkly funny, disturbing, strangely relatable.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation | Ottessa Moshfegh
A group of elitist classics students at a New England college commit murder. Beautiful writing, intellectual arrogance, and Greek tragedy vibes. You’ll be obsessed.
The Secret History | Donna Tartt
A romance writer with a double life—secret poetry, gothic novels, and running away from her past. Weird, witty, and so much fun.
Lady Oracle | Margaret Atwood
Think Heathers meets Mean Girls at an MFA program. Dark, magical, and twisted AF. You’ll either love it or absolutely hate it (which makes it even cooler).
Bunny | Mona Awad
You’re in the mind of a gross, bitter 24-year-old girl working in a prison. It’s nasty, unpretty, and impossible to look away.
Eileen | Ottessa Moshfegh
🎀 PRETTY WORDS, UGLY FEELINGS
For fans of beauty in writing and heartbreak in story.
Five beautiful sisters die by suicide. Told by the neighborhood boys who loved them, this is hazy, mysterious, and gorgeously written.
The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides
Smart but socially awkward girl. Popular but emotionally closed-off boy. Miscommunication, love, sex, Ireland. So simple, so good, so painful.
Normal People | Sally Rooney
Lucy Honeychurch must choose between passion and propriety after a life-changing trip to Italy. It’s gentle rebellion in the form of Edwardian wit.
A Room with a View | E. M. Forster
Two Black women “pass” as white in 1920s New York—one secretly, one recklessly. Sharp, short, and heartbreaking. Identity, class, and danger.
Passing | Nella Larsen
David lives in Paris and falls in love with a man named Giovanni. Tender, tortured, and timeless. Possibly the most beautiful breakup novel ever written.
Giovanni's Room | James Baldwin
👛 FOR YOUR BOOKCLUB (OR JUST VENTING IN THE GROUP CHAT)
Books that hit emotionally and are fun to discuss.
A custody battle divides a suburban community. Everyone’s hiding something. Secrets, class, motherhood—unputdownable.
Little Fires Everywhere | Celeste Ng
Three moms, a murder, and so many lies. Addictive, sharp, and surprisingly emotional.
Big Little Lies | Liane Moriarty
Hollywood legend Evelyn tells her life story: seven husbands, one great love. Glamour meets gossip meets heartbreak.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | Taylor Jenkins Reid
A brilliant, eccentric mom vanishes. Her daughter tries to find her. Hilarious, touching, and delightfully offbeat.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette | Maria Semple
A fictional 70s rock band breaks up at their peak. Told in interview format, it feels real. Fame, drugs, love, chaos. Like watching Almost Famous on paper.
Daisy Jones & The Six | Taylor Jenkins Reid
TikTok approved 🫶🏻
These books went viral—but they deserve it. Emotionally juicy, fast-paced, and full of quotes you’ll want to highlight and post.
One day. One woman. A thousand thoughts. Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party while reflecting on her life, lost love, and time slipping by. Meanwhile, a war veteran battles trauma in the same city. Stream-of-consciousness, poetic, and quietly deva...
Mrs. Dalloway | Virginia Woolf
Four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—grow up in Civil War-era New England. They dream, fight, fall in love, suffer losses, and grow into women on their own terms. Sweet, smart, and surprisingly feminist. Jo March alone makes this a must-read: stubborn...
Little Women | Louisa May Alcott
Three short stories. Three women unraveling. Aging, jealousy, betrayal, and the quiet horror of losing your identity after motherhood or love. Raw, honest, and painfully intimate. It’s not “empowering” in the TikTok way—but it’s powerful in the real,...
The Woman Destroyed | Simone de Beauvoir
Esther Greenwood has the life every girl should want—success, beauty, opportunity—but inside, she’s falling apart. This is a sharp, haunting descent into mental illness told with dark humor and brutal honesty. Semi-autobiographical, poetic, and unfor...
The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath
Summer trips reads 🌴
After her mother dies, Katy takes the trip to Positano they were supposed to go on together—alone. But once there, she magically meets her mother… as a 30-year-old woman. A dreamy blend of grief, time travel, and self-discovery set on the sparkling A...
One Italian Summer | Rebecca Serle
Italy. Childhood friends to lovers, to then strangers, to then friends and lovers. Second chance romance
One Last Shot | Betty Cayouette
In this vibrant, illustrated guide, Florence Given empowers women to reclaim their joy and self-expression. Challenging societal norms that objectify women’s bodies and suppress their desires, Given encourages readers to embrace their authenticity an...
Women Living Deliciously | Florence Given
JUST READ IT
Summer Love | Nancy Thayer