14 Books Every Woman In Their 20s Needs To Read

If your 20’s are known for anything, it’s that weird gap between being a teenager and being a, like, real adult. While it’s wildly confusing, kind of lonely, and sometimes embarrassing, there’s also a whole lot of magic to be found in the chaos. Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald, creators of the award-winning pop culture podcast Shameless, are two of the many twenty-something women just trying to make sense of it all. They don’t have all the answers. but they do know that mapping out our place in the world is a little bit easier when we do it together. Filled with comforting wit and brutal honesty, these are their personal stories from heartbreak and mental health challenges to overcoming career setbacks and letting go of fear—but there’s a good chance you’ll find pieces of yourself in there, too.

Contrary to popular belief, not every must-read needs to be a non-fiction, self-help moment. In ‘The Idiot’, Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard and signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the confusion of a first love, and with the growing consciousness that she may be bound to become a writer, even though that’s not what she’s envisioned for herself at all.

I think the cover of this book truly says it all. When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In this memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. This incredibly funny and occasionally heartbreaking book is everything we’ve ever needed regarding bad dates, good friends and—above all else— realizing that you are enough through all of the terrifying yet hopeful uncertainty.

Growing up is always hard, but especially when so many think you’re a washed-up has-been at twenty-two. Jena Chung, who was once a violin prodigy, is now a selfish, badly-behaved, full blown sex addict. Her professional life comprises of rehearsals, concerts, and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing family demands, those of her creative friends, and obviously, lots of sex. But then, she meets Mark– and he sweeps her off her feet. Not only that, she gets the perfect internship with the New York Philharmonic at the same time. Thinking that she finally has the life she’s been dreaming of, everything is brought to a halt when Trump is elected and everything about New York, and herself, changes at the drop of a hat. Jena comes to learn that there are many different ways to live and love and that no one has the how-to guide for any of it–we’re all just trying to become the people we hope to be.

Love, while beautiful in all its forms, is really f’ing hard to comprehend and navigate. After years of feeling that love was always out of reach, journalist Natasha Lunn set out to understand how relationships work and evolve over a lifetime. She turned to having intimate conversations with authors and experts to learn about their experiences, as well as drawing on her own, asking how we find love, how we sustain it, and how we survive when we lose it. And we’re not just talking romantic— this richly layered novel covers the loneliness of loss, the psychology of being alone, parenthood, and more.

Alix is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So, she’s taken aback when her babysitter, Emira, is confronted while watching Alix’s toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. Emira is furious and humiliated as it’s caught on video by bystanders, and Alix wants to do everything to make things right. As Emira has no clue what to do with her life, and the video brings forth some baggage from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves and one another. It flawlessly explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up through a story surrounding race and privilege.

One rude awakening of my twenties thus far is that I don’t know how to “be good” with money to save my life. If I only buy two $7 iced lattes in a week instead of five, that’s a win. However, this book takes the conversation beyond saving money and budgeting and introduces us to the power of investing. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a successful wealth management adviser, Alice Finn shares five simple and proven strategies for a woman at any stage of their life, whether starting a career, staying home and raising children, or heading up a major corporation. She also provides the tools you need to achieve long-term success no matter what the markets are doing or what the headlines say. So even in the face of uncertainty, you’ll know how to thrive, earn, save, and grow your bag.

There’s no rock bottom quite like drunk calling your therapist, and Tara Schuster can attest to that herself. By the time she was in her late twenties, Tara was a rising TV executive who had made a name for herself in the industry. By all appearances, she had mastered being an adult. But beneath that shiny image of success, she was a chronically anxious, self-medicating mess whose road to adulthood had been paved with depression, anxiety, and shame. In this story of Tara essentially re-parenting herself through simple daily rituals, she shares insight and advice she wishes she’d received in her early twenties: words that are candid, practical, and hilarious, while still teaching the importance of self-love and acceptance.

The process of healing is one that is indescribably hard to work through, but this book gives insight that can make each step of the way feel a bit more manageable. It tackles the gut-wrenching but relatable experiences of moving on and self-love through beautifully written poetry, prose, and compassionate encouragement you would expect only from someone who relates to the exact situation you’re going through. Ultimately, it comes together to show us that the things in our lives that leave scars do not destroy you—they are moments in which we survived, and in that is a sense of hope.

As we grow, it can sometimes be easy to lose touch with where we came from. Michelle Zauner shares her story of growing up as one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon, and how that planted the seed for a need to forge her own identity. She touches on her struggles with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her and on a painful adolescence, yet also on the pureness of bonding with her mother and grandmother during those same years. As she grew up, moving away for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band led her Korean heritage to feel ever more distant, even though she felt like she was finally discovering the life she wanted to live. However, after receiving news of her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis while in her mid 20’s, Michelle had a reckoning with her identity and reclaimed the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

As many women enter the “real world” workforce in their early 20’s, being underestimated, under-appreciated, and underpaid is sadly a universal experience most of us will face, especially in male-dominated fields. Despite all of the progress we’ve made toward equality, we still fail, more often than we might realize, to take women as seriously as men. In this fascinating book, journalist Mary Ann Sieghart provides a startling perspective on the gender bias at work in our everyday lives and reflected in the world around us, whether in pop culture, media, school classrooms, or politics. With precision and insight, Sieghart gathers from a variety of disciplines—including psychology, political science, and sociology—and talks to pioneering women from a wide range of backgrounds to explore how gender bias intersects with race and class biases. Through her conversations and other findings, she offers insights on how to counteract systemic sexism and ways to narrow this toxic authority gap.

Say it with me: we don’t owe men sh*t, especially being pretty. Exploring all progressive corners of the feminist conversation from insecurity projection and refusing to find comfort in other women’s flaws, to deciding whether to date or dump them, all the way through to unpacking the male gaze and how it shapes our identity, this book really does not miss a beat. It’s an accessible leap into feminism for people at all stages of their journey who are seeking to reshape and transform the way they view themselves. In a world that tells women we’re either not enough or doing way too much, its time we stop directing our anger and insecurities onto ourselves, and start fighting back to reshape the structures of our toxic patriarchal society.

This was actually the first self-help type of book I ever personally read, and I’m not being dramatic when I tell you that it quite literally changed my outlook on life. It’s been almost two years since then, and to this day, I still go back and read over some select essays when I feel like I need to. This compilation of Brianna Wiest’s published work features pieces on why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life. You’ll find pieces of wisdom you’ve been waiting to hear for years, and even better—ones you had no clue you needed but are so grateful you found.

While figuring out self-love and romance are definitely the big themes of your 20’s, the importance of genuine friendship cannot be forgotten. A close friendship is one of the most influential relationships a human life can contain, but for all the cutesy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul. Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming “big friendship” in this honest and hilarious book that documents their first decade in one another’s lives through all of the joys and pitfalls.
An inspiring testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, this book invites you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved, and when it’s time to fight for them or let them go.