Reading List

Books for When You’re Feeling Lost

Not the kind of lost where you need a map. The kind where you are not sure who you are right now, what you are supposed to want, or how you got here. These books will not fix that — but they will make you feel a lot less alone in it.

Coco Mellors

Blue Sisters

I picked this up expecting something light and summery. What I got was a deeply felt story about a complicated family navigating grief and each other. I am an only child, but this book made me ache for a sisterhood I have never had — and somehow also helped me understand how people move on after loss. It sneaks up on you.

Dolly Alderton

Everything I Know About Love

Required reading for any woman in her twenties. Alderton writes about friendship, ambition, heartbreak, and figuring yourself out with so much honesty that it feels less like a memoir and more like someone finally saying the thing you could not quite articulate. The kind of book you will want to press into people’s hands.

Abby Jimenez

Just for the Summer

An unusual pick for this list, and I know that. But it found me at exactly the right time. Yes there is romance, but at its core this is a story about a woman figuring out who she is and what she actually wants — and the romance is woven through that journey rather than being the whole point. Much deeper than the cover suggests.

Kaveh Akbar

Martyr!

One of my all time favorite books. I read it when I was lost and grieving a life I had once wanted — unsure what came next or who I even was without the version of the future I had let go of. Akbar writes about that specific kind of unmooring with so much precision and beauty that it helped me make sense of things in a way I did not expect a novel to. There is nothing else quite like it.

Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar

Honest confession: this one is still on my TBR. But it belongs on this list anyway — Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman unraveling under the weight of expectation is one of the most referenced books on the experience of feeling lost in yourself. I will update this when I get there. If you have read it, you already know.

Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone

I read this during a really difficult time. At its heart it is about a young woman finding her strength and herself in one of the most unforgiving landscapes imaginable — and it helped me more than I expected. Hannah does not make it easy for her characters, and there is something about that refusal to look away that made the moments of clarity hit harder. It stayed with me.

Allison Larkin

The People We Keep

Not commonly talked about, and it should be. It is not the greatest book ever written — but if you are in that specific place where you do not know who your people are or where you belong, go on this journey. April is searching for both, and there is something quietly powerful about following someone figure that out one small decision at a time.

Cheryl Strayed

Wild

The definitive book about walking away from a life that has stopped making sense and finding yourself somewhere on the other side. Strayed is brutally honest about how she got to the Pacific Crest Trail and what it cost her to get through it. Less about hiking, more about what happens when you have no choice but to sit with yourself. A classic for a reason.

Alison Espach

The Wedding People

A lighter entry on this list, but do not let that fool you. This one helped me make sense of a life I thought I would have — or once wanted — without making the process feel heavy. There is something about watching a character grieve a future that never happened, in the middle of someone else’s wedding weekend of all places, that is both funny and quietly devastating.