From Sylvia Plath to Donna Tartt: 5 trending books you’ll find in every It girl’s tote bag

Intellectually elite, morally ambiguous and cloaked in a mist of fatalism, A Secret History offers the kind of heady narrative that It girls are known to gravitate toward. Tartt’s tale of a group of eccentric classics students who commit murder and try to rationalise it through philosophy reads like The Talented Mr. Ripley set in New England academia. The book, a trending fixture since TikTok revived it, explores the seduction of aesthetics and ideas taken to extremes. With its gothic sensibility, Greco-Roman references and quietly sinister tone, it’s no surprise this novel has earned a spot on the bookshelves of fashion insiders, models and artists. Tartt’s characters are cold and brilliant—qualities often projected onto the modern It girl, for better or worse.

Few writers have the cultural currency of the infinitely cool Joan Didion, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains her most iconic work. A master of restraint and razor-sharp observation, Didion captures the fragmentation of 1960s America with dispassionate clarity. Her essays blend memoir and reportage, revealing a mind endlessly attuned to chaos beneath surface order. For the It girl who prizes intellect and quiet detachment, Didion offers an ideal model: fiercely articulate, enigmatic and impossible to imitate. The book’s understated black-and-white covers and clean typography make it a favourite among minimalist tastemakers. More than a trending book, it’s a blueprint for cool-headed self-possession.

Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a memoir of bohemian life in 1970s New York, chronicling her artistic partnership with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s romantic but not naïve, poetic without being precious. Smith details their rise from poverty to art-world prominence with an earnestness that’s oddly radical in the age of irony. The It girl reader finds resonance in Smith’s early hunger—for beauty, for expression, for significance—and in her resilience amid chaos. Unlike the curated intimacy of influencers, Smith’s vulnerability feels unfiltered. It’s a book that doesn’t ask for admiration, only attention, and that’s precisely what makes it an enduring favourite.

On the surface, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation might look like satire for the hyper-privileged. A beautiful young woman, numb with grief and aimlessness, attempts to medicate herself into oblivion by sleeping through a year in Manhattan. But beneath its absurd premise is a biting critique of self-optimisation, consumer culture and the fetishisation of wellness. The protagonist is unlikeable, opaque and often hilariously cruel—yet her disillusionment feels cuttingly relevant. With its minimalist cover and sardonic voice, this trending book has become a kind of anti-self-help bible for the It girl who is sceptical of overexposure and allergic to performative healing.

These titles share more than just shelf appeal. Each explores identity, alienation or the tension between public persona and private self—territory that It girls know intimately. Whether it’s Plath’s portrayal of suffocating expectations, Tartt’s intoxicating intellectualism or Moshfegh’s elegant nihilism, these trending books offer a mirror to women living under constant observation. They are aesthetically spare yet emotionally intense, rich with complexity but never overwrought. In a world obsessed with content, women for literature that asks more of her and gives something back.

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