Top five books to read as a young woman

“If you are a young woman in your twenties…you know it’s the trenches.” - Suki Waterhouse

Your teen years are formative, sure, but let’s face it, they are also extremely painful. And there is only so much you can do to supplement some happiness, and even knowledge into the whirlwind that it is. 

For me, I always found that listening to others and truly acknowledging the trench-like quality of it all helped push me through. 

And while there are many different ways to acquire and absorb the wisdom of the world, for me it was always easiest through the words of others. And that always manifested through books. 

Just as these authors have shed a bright light of knowledge into my life, I hope to share five books that will help you through this time more easily. 

“Everything I Know About Love” By Dolly Alderton 

I think it is especially important to remember in your teens that romantic love is not the only form of love that can, and should, fulfill you. Wanting a boyfriend simply because all your friends around you have one, or because you feel like you are behind all your other peers who do, is never a reason to begin dating someone; a concept Alderton highlights beautifully. “Everything I Know About Love”, is a memoir of what it means to lead with love in your life. It is full of stories of the vibrance and richness that comes with life, alongside all the messy and hard times. Alderton demonstrates the true meaning of love through her phenomenal story telling of messy breakups, loss of friendships, loss of loved ones and what it truly means to connect and invest your life into something. This book will not only help you make sense of the mess of your romantic life, but can serve as a reminder that love is all around us, we just have to go looking for it. 

“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” By Ottessa Moshfegh

With your teens comes fatigue, lack of motivation and just flat out burnout. My Year of Rest and Relaxation encapsulates all that it truly feels to lose your mind. The story of a young woman who decides that she will sleep for an entire year to reset her life, turns out to be just the perfect amount of validation for what seems to be the hardest years of life. Moshfegh provides a camp-esque style story that leaves readers siding with an antagonist simply out of relatability. This book serves as a reminder that you can’t escape tough times, try you might, they will find a way to follow you around. Moshfegh provides readers with the perfect balance between complete insanity and total relatability, and this book is sure to remind young readers that they are not alone in their feelings of hopelessness. 

“Normal People” By Sally Rooney 

While anyone on TikTok would tell you to avoid this book for the life of you, I think it truly encapsulates the all-encompassing feel of love and how love can devastate you at such a young age. Rooney follows the story of two young British students throughout their messy miscommunications, reunions and goodbyes. This book serves a simple purpose: we simply can’t always get what we want. Sometimes the people or places we love the most either don’t love us back or simply don’t serve our lives. In that case, the brave and honest thing to do is to let it go. Rooney reminds readers that the way we live our lives is determined through our actions, and if we truly love something, it will return to us. This book, while a heartbreaking read, reminds readers that there is strength in maturity, and to become mature, you must be immature first. And while you never hope to hurt someone, it may be an uncomfortable, but necessary part of your journey. 

“What Women Want” By Maxine Mei-Fung Chung 

The act of truly knowing yourself is one of mystery at this age. There are a million different people, pulling us a million different ways. But to live your life the way you want to, first you must understand what that life actually looks like. Chung, a therapist, recounts some of her most troubling and relatable patients’ stories and how they worked through the issue. This book provides real advice from a licensed therapist, and beautifully shines a light on how everyone’s journey to self-realization and fulfillment is different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lean on each other along the way. 

“The Midnight Library” By Matt Haig

Comparatively, this book may come across as juvenile. However, there is a real, deeper message in this book that helped me understand what it meant to be OK with the unknown. Haig tells the complex story of what would happen if you could see how every little decision can change your life. Would you change anything? What happens when to gain one dream you must lose another? It’s an uncomfortable read at times because it is hard for us to admit that total control can be what ends up making us lose our minds. This book provides readers with the understanding that sometimes, things that are out of our control are some of the best things to happen to us. And acknowledging that we can’t be everything we want to be all at once will free up so much mental space for us to understand what it is that we truly are chasing. 

Like Suki Waterhouse said, your 20s can truly be the trenches, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do everything you can to dig yourself out. These books are full of lessons on self-grace, loving yourself when it is hard, loving others when it is even harder, and honoring yourself enough to step away from things that don’t serve you. 

We all have the potential to either sink or swim, and with a little bit of the knowledge these books bestowed upon me, I find it a bit easier to swim.