Jun 14

Jun 14 MORE! Hot/Sad Girl Books We've Read, Ranked

The literary landscape is filled with stories about women and femmes who are tortured and tragically out of touch with reality. We love reading about these delusional dames, but not every hot/sad girl book is built the same. Which ones stand above the rest?

Here is a definitive ranking of the hot/sad girl books we’ve read lately. All of these reads are fantastic, and categories are based on what feelings the protagonists evoked in us. If we missed one of your favorites, it’s probably on last year’s list!

Tier 3: Groan, Girl

Rosewater, Liv Little

Liv Little’s Rosewater, starts with Elsie getting evicted from her London flat after accruing massive debts. She’s 28, queer and romantically hopeless, working gigs as a bartender, as a DJ, and she’s a very talented poet. Elsie, in her stubbornness, her refusal to accept community or help, makes my head hurt. For this reason, groan girl. (Aatia)

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

Camille is the hottest sad girl (the saddest hot girl?) in town. In Gillian Flynn’s thriller, Camille is the protagonist with wit and beauty that makes her a perfect candidate for this list. Unfortunately, she has an abusive mother, and a torturous and shameful past that she is brought back to when she goes back to her childhood town. Good for the beach, good for the train, good for bedtime. (Iz)

There isn’t just one hot, sad girl in this thriller by Gillian Flynn, there are three. Our protagonist, Camille, is beautiful and haunted by the death of her first sister; Amma, Camille’s half-sister who is stunning, but spoiled and a little strange. And there is their mother, Adora, another gorgeous gorgeous girl with an abusive streak and bad nerves. This book has modern classic status–of Flynn’s works (Dark Places, Gone Girl, The Grownup) I think this one is the most twisted. (Aatia)

All the Lovers in the Night, Mieko Kawakami

Quiet, lonely Fuyuko develops a slow but charged crush after discovering yhe liberating effects of alcohol. She pines for a neat stranger, Mutsutsuka, and his deep thoughts on physics. But M is not who he appears to be. A tender book of love, loneliness and heartache. (Colleen)

Pretend I’m Dead, Jen Beagin

Oh wow. She falls in love with a man she calls Mr. Disgusting, she's a cleaning lady, and she’s kind of a mess. Super great, sad by nature. Incredible! (Jules)

Everything I Need I Get From You, Kaitlyn Tiffany

This funny, thoughtful, compelling book explores “how fangirls created the internet!” It is part ethnography, part memoir, and partly (only partly!) about One Direction, may they rest in peace. It will make you laugh, then make you think. (Zoe)

An essential part of the hot/sad girl’s personality is obsession. There is major crossover here. (Aatia)

Tier 2: You’re Scaring Me

Dreaming of You, Melissa Lozado-Oliva

This novel in verse, a poet named Melissa summons the one and only Selena Quintilla from the dead. Also involved: supernatural karaoke, sensual fish, and the beholding of absolute wonder. A strange, joyous book of longing and redemption. (Teo)

The Guest, Emma Cline

The poster girl of being hot and sad (and, at times, gloriously delusional), Alex roams around the beaches and backyards of the Hamptons while trying to fix multiple broken relationships. This book is stressful and sublime, full of desperation in the very best way. (Amali)

Big Swiss, Jen Beagin

This is my favorite read of 2023 so far! A therapists transcriptionist falls in love with a client! How can you get more original than that?! Also, there’s a dog romance, so if that doesn’t sell it, I don’t know what will! (Isabella)

Tier 2: You’re Scaring Me, Girl

Couplets, Maggie Millner

Mixing poetry and prose, this book explores the feelings of first love post-coming out, or “second first love” as the narrator puts it. Simple and sexy and supple, Millner glides through the ups and downs of this new relationship, and shows that despite the heartbreak and the wreckage, discovering queer love is priceless. (Amali)

Ripe, Sarah Rose Etter

Phew, this book hits a bit too close to home! Ripe is for all the hot girls just trying to survive in this era of unprecedented events and late-stage capitalism—a page-turner full of the horrors and absurdities of existing as a woman in today’s world. (Amali)

Getting Lost, Annie Ernaux

Diary entries from Ernaux’s wild affair with a Russian diplomat, some 15 years younger than her, at the fall of the USSR. I’m obsessed. Just trust me on this one. (Bex)

Pure Colour, Sheila Heti

Come get trapped in a leaf with Heti’s narrator and grieve her dead dad. There’s no mind like Heti’s mind. I’d get trapped in a leaf with her forever (and likely emerge smarter and more enlightened because of it!) (Alexa)

Heti’s Pure Colour earned a spot in “You’re Scaring Me” for her narrator’s communication with the dead and her scary good prose. (Aatia)

Bunny, Mona Awad

Awad lifted me up and dropped me in another world with this one. Bunny follows a writer - starving to be seen - during her MFA program who befriends a horrifying group of sorority girls whose traditions and routines oftentimes go too far. Highly recommend this mind-bending, sad, twisted, trippy novel. (Isabella)

Tier 1: I, Too, Languish

Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector

Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector is THE sad girl book. Growing up impoverished in northeast Brazil with an abusive aunt, our protagonist, Macabèa, is absent minded to her struggles. The narrator is a man, telling this woman’s story, who names himself as the “most important” character from the beginning. This story told through his eyes is illuminating to the ways that women are seen and viewed and is Lispector’s final and I’ll argue, most important work. (Isabella)

Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho

This debut is about TWO hot/sad girls! Friendship, growing pains, being an Asian American teenage girl in Los Angeles, a wild and electric read! (Emma)

Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion

A founding text of the hot sad girl canon! Didion's razor-sharp prose introduces us to Maria, an actress recently aged out of ingenue roles, recently separated from her second husband and missing her young daughter who is being treated for a mysterious health condition. Naturally, she spends her days driving the Los Angeles freeways. A book as brutal and stunning as its desert setting, it shimmers with a distinctly late 60s flavor of existential dread and female rage. (Margaret)