Hot Girls Read, But What Are They Reading?

Switzy by Emma Cline

For: the girl who likes her luxury with a side of existential dread.

Emma Cline, the author of The Girls and The Guest, turns her famously sharp gaze towards the final chapter of a very wealthy man’s life. Switzy, released in September 2026, follows David, a retired executive travelling through Europe in what becomes an increasingly strange final pilgrimage. He moves through private planes, hotel rooms and old relationships, accompanied by his young assistant Cody, while his once-familiar world begins to feel increasingly unknowable. Zurich is the final destination, but the real journey is into David’s relationship with ageing, privilege, memory and mortality.

There is plenty here for anyone fascinated by the theatre of wealth: private aviation, heirloom watches, expensive hotels and the insulated world of the ultra-rich. But Cline is less interested in glamour than in what happens when the lifestyle that once made someone powerful stops protecting them from time. The book has already been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize, making it one of the season’s more talked-about literary releases.

The Disappearers by Marlon James

For: girl who likes her literary fiction ambitious, political and impossible to casually put down.

Marlon James returns to Jamaica with a sprawling new novel set largely in Kingston in 1988. Eight gay men meet while rehearsing an openly queer play; then a mob attacks them, killing one man and leaving the survivors to deal with the physical and psychological aftermath. Some turn towards revenge, some try to bury what happened, and others disappear altogether.

At 640 pages, James uses the scale to explore far more than one act of violence. The novel examines queer life, masculinity, homophobia, friendship, rage and survival in Jamaica across the 1980s and 1990s, while moving between the intimate and the epic. It is already longlisted for both the 2026 Booker Prize and National Book Awards, putting James firmly back in the centre of the literary conversation.

If A Brief History of Seven Killings made you appreciate James’s ability to turn a specific place and moment into something sprawling and cinematic, this is his latest reason to return.

Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson

For: the reader who wants a mystery but refuses to sacrifice good writing.

Fresh off the press on September 15, Kate Atkinson’s Our Noble Selves takes us to London in 1951, where the country is attempting to rebuild itself after the Second World War. Former crime reporter and war correspondent Harry Flynn is working around the Festival of Britain when a French woman disappears and he finds himself pulled into the mystery.

But this is Kate Atkinson, so expect something more layered than a straightforward whodunit. The post-war setting becomes a character in itself: a country eager to celebrate progress while still carrying the ghosts of the war. Atkinson brings her trademark dry wit, period detail and narrative gamesmanship to a story about reinvention, memory and the inconvenient persistence of the past. It is also particularly appealing if you loved Life After Life and want another Atkinson world to disappear into.

Château Rouge by Amit Chaudhuri

For: the overthinker who would rather wander a city than tick off its tourist attractions.

Published in August, Amit Chaudhuri’s Château Rouge follows a writer invited to Paris for a residency who ends up living in the Château Rouge neighbourhood rather than the postcard version of the city. What begins as displacement slowly becomes a different way of seeing Paris and, in turn, of thinking about travel, belonging and the act of observing a place.

This is the quiet one on the list. There are no elaborate twists demanding that you turn the next page immediately. Instead, Chaudhuri is interested in the tiny things most travel writing skips over: side streets, conversations, unfamiliar neighbourhoods, the feeling of being an outsider and the strange process through which a foreign city becomes less foreign. The novel is deliberately fragmentary and meditative, making it an ideal companion for anyone who believes the best way to know a city is to get slightly lost in it.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

For: anyone who has ever attended a wedding and thought, this could absolutely become a novel.

Yes, this one came out in 2024. Yes, you should still read it.

Alison Espach’s The Wedding People begins with Phoebe Stone arriving alone at an extravagant Newport hotel in a green dress and gold heels. She has deliberately left her luggage, and much of her old life behind. Unfortunately, the entire hotel has been taken over by a lavish wedding, and everyone assumes Phoebe is one of the guests. She isn't. But the bride, Lila, soon discovers that Phoebe is there for reasons considerably more complicated than a missed RSVP.

What follows is part wedding-weekend chaos, part unlikely female friendship and part sharp examination of what happens when the life you thought you were supposed to have falls apart. There are champagne-soaked celebrations, awkward encounters, complicated relationships and enough wedding drama to make every seating-plan disaster you've witnessed look positively amateur. Beneath the glossy Newport setting and comic premise, however, Espach is writing about grief, divorce, loneliness, reinvention and the strange people who can enter your life precisely when you least expect them to.

The book became a New York Times bestseller, a Read With Jenna pick and a #1 Indie Next Pick, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies.

So, what does the week's TBR say? That literary fiction is currently having a particularly glamorous existential crisis. Which one are you starting first?