In 2020, amid peak isolation and a need for connection, BookTok was born. Most of the books veer into the genres of romance or fantasy, and oftentimes a combination between the two (e.g. A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas or The Cruel Prince – Holly Black). I’m not here to dissect the origins of this community, or explain its legitimacy. Instead, I want to explore what I like to think of as the “anti-BookTok,” a movement created entirely to promote ‘real literature.’ This campaign popularized a specific type of book: I call this the Cool-Girl Novel.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen a spike in literary fiction novels about unfulfilled women, failed relationships and incredibly flawed people. BookTok, which celebrates escapism and swoon-worthy plotlines, is painted as elementary compared to the ‘Cool-Girl Novel,’ which demands introspection and reckons with life’s raw edges.
These novels don’t belong to a distinct genre, but they often intersect with contemporary, coming-of-age and literary fiction. Instead, they are a cultural phenomenon, exposing us to societal disillusionment and pervasive senses of melancholy. Books like Boy Parts, My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Cleopatra and Frankenstein are some of the most popular books in this genre, but nearly every other novel that’s based in literary fiction falls into this category.
A defining characteristic of Cool-Girl books is that the protagonists aren’t likable – that’s essentially the point. The women leading these stories are oftentimes apathetic, even cruel and are forever grappling with their personal struggles. Mostly, they come from privileged backgrounds, often marked by fractured relationships or dysfunctional family dynamics. This style of characterization is meant to appeal to a specific audience: women who reflect the characters they read about. They resonate with readers who see echoes of their own struggles in these flawed, melancholic characters.
So what exactly makes this the “anti-BookTok?” This type of novel is a quiet rebellion against the bright colors, simplified writing and engagement of BookTok—Cool-Girl Novels rely on elaborate prose, plain yet beautiful covers and introspection. These books themselves are a way for people to establish themselves as ‘real readers,’ and a method of discerning themselves from the ‘common reader.’
However, I argue that these types of novels are intertwined with aesthetics themselves and often prioritize the energy of the book rather than the plot behind it. That in itself isn’t a bad thing, as literature thrives on diversity of form and content, but the detached characters and existential angst feel performative, especially considering how often they are repeated.
Additionally, these books often blur the line between being real about unhealthy lifestyles and unknowingly—or sometimes knowingly—promoting them. Most of the characters in these novels are economically secure, spend their time lounging in Manhattan or abroad and typically develop forms of addiction, whether to drugs, alcohol, love or beauty. Not only does the sheer amount of these books regularize this lifestyle, they also romanticize it. This has become a clear trend nowadays—with the re-emergence of trends like Indie Sleaze, hedonism as a lifestyle, glamourizing partying and aestheticizing burnout.
At its core, this trope is both alluring and potentially dangerous: beautiful, tragic women who ruin their lives, yet always emerge unscathed. Most readers are unlikely to experience this glamorous chaos firsthand, and for young women, who make up a huge portion of the audience for these books, these characters can seem like idealized versions of themselves. While this doesn’t directly encourage harmful behavior, it can make destructive lifestyles feel more like a “rite of passage.” The line between realistic depiction and passive promotion is incredibly thin here, and it poses the question of how exactly to tell stories like these without giving indirect endorsements to living this way—an answer left up to the author. We as readers can use these novels as a way to stretch our thinking and understand what situations and circumstances lead to someone to take on this way of being.
However, it is important to note that idolization of risky manners of living has been normalized, and whether or not they intend to, many of these books now slot themselves, and the people who read them, into a certain aesthetic. I’m not saying that we should never read books like this in fear of them making us unhealthy—that’s limiting the stories we could surround ourselves with. Instead, we need to understand the difference between reading Cool-Girl books amongst many types of novels, using them to expand our outlook, and reading only books like this, entirely because of fads. When reading these books the second way, it surrounds us with an echo-chamber of sorts, where we only consume specific novels marketed towards us, and do this only for the vibe that is connotated from it.
These books becoming trends is leading to further and further overproduction of one specific genre. Production of literary fiction novels increased by 25% from 2020 to 2021, and as “Cool-Girl Novels” are a subset of them, we can safely assume that their making has significantly increased. Additionally, marketing of novels in this genre has exponentially grown over the last few years, specifically targeting teenage girls and young women. Currently, carrying around a book like this is almost a fashion trend, and is becoming a performative act, with readers using them to signal taste. Initially, performative reading described men reading ‘female literature’ to seem more intriguing. However, performative reading has now severely expanded, and these books have taken on a kind of social cachet – becoming less about the substance of the stories and more about the status associated with reading them.
Using novels as a way to increase your social status and sort yourself into a specific category goes against the fundamental basis of artistic expression; it limits your view and renders you unable to inhabit different mindsets and see through multiple lenses. Creating the same copy-paste novel repeatedly only to cater to a singular audience waters down the point of creating these books in the first place. It flattens the experience and makes every work we read feel as though they are duplicates of each other. The market dictates exactly what we read: producing and aggressively marketing the same books takes away the actual nuance and originality of the original novels in the Cool-Girl genre.
However, these books themselves aren’t entirely bad. Some works, like Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow or Intermezzo, are not only beautifully written, but they also display stories that are far more developed than just their energy and atmosphere. Genres of novels like these aren’t all pretentious, but it’s all about balance between the stories we tell.
Ultimately, Cool-Girl Novels and their BookTok counterparts exist as contrasting expressions of the same literary landscape. One offers escapism and indulgence; the other promises gritty realism and reflection. Yet when literature becomes a trend, it risks losing its depth and is reduced to an accessory or a status symbol. Instead of treating books as aesthetic props or cultural markers, we should embrace their true purpose: to challenge, expand and connect us. Whether through fantasy or literary fiction, the value of stories lies in their diversity, reminding us that great literature is not about fitting a mold but breaking it.