Bernadette Soriano

Unhinged and reckless reads for the girl who hasn’t stood up since Tuesday.


Say you’ve remained supine for approximately 47 hours. The sun has completed three celestial commutes. You’ve scrolled so far through TikTok and you’re now engaging with relics from 2020. The only things you've ingested are a stale cookie and the crushing weight of existence.

Congratulations: you are firmly entrenched in your bed-rotting era.

We are no longer subscribing to hustle culture or aspirational wellness influencers peddling 5 a.m. green smoothies and cardio euphoria. Instead, we're awakened at 2 p.m., make prolonged eye contact with the ceiling, and muse, “Perhaps I’ll read today.” We don’t. But it is, as they say, the intention that matters.

Yet, should the impulse to read flicker — not for productivity, God forbid, but purely for ambiance — these five novels will cradle you gently. These books do not demand movement. They whisper, “Stay right there, babe. Just turn the page.”

For the girls who live one wistful playlist away from a mood board-worthy meltdown. For the sentimentalists of their own ruin, as though starring in a Lana Del Rey B-side. For the soft, sleepy, faintly feral spirit within us all.



What if your Master of Fine Arts (MFA) workshop was, in fact, a pastel-drenched blood cult — with your self-doubt wouldn’t let you opt out? Meet Samantha: friendless, terminally mediocre, and suddenly seduced by a girl gang so sugary it’s either friendship or diabetic shock.

Bunny tastes like cotton candy cough syrup — pretty, disorienting, and slightly off-kilter. Upon finishing, you’ll be unsure whether you liked it, but certain you’ll revisit it during your next identity-flavored existential detour.

For the girls who minored in creative writing, major in self-loathing, and still call their friends “my little freaks.”


This novel evokes the sensation of sipping cheap wine in a 2 a.m. bath while texting someone whose emotional range replies with “lol.” Cleo, 24, is chaos wrapped in silk; Frank, 44, an ad executive with the emotional availability of a decorative rug. Together, they form performance art in slow collapse.

It’s marital entropy rebranded as aesthetic. It’s trauma draped in cashmere. Mellors writes as though documenting your most lyrical delusions and least unreadable messages.

For the girls who quote Phoebe Waller-Bridge, thrift vintage fur, and flare up instantly at the mere mention of emotional security.


Here, Lucy — spiritually decaying and physically sweating — flees a collapsed PhD and defunct relationship for Venice Beach, only to entangle herself with Theo, a literal merman who cannot survive on land. And yet, you’ll find yourself pleading for his gills.

Broder tempers saltwater surrealism with a piercing undercurrent, distilling grief and yearning into a narrative that feels less a romance and more a submersion.

For the girls who deconstruct their attachment style like a dissertation, mythologize emotionally unavailable men, and yearn for a partner physically incapable of ghosting.


A tender, devastating coming-of-age: Yunjae, born without the capacity for fear or fury, and Gon, a boy who feels in relentless excess — chaotically, urgently, achingly. One dulled to sensation, the other burning at the seams. Together, a portrait of fractured boyhood.

No spectacle — only hushed ruin and empathy so delicate it splinters at touch.

For the girls who whisper “I’m fine” while queuing up one Mitski song and subsequently free-fall into a six-day crisis.


In a tucked-away Tokyo café, time travel exists — but only within strict confines. Sit in the designated chair. Return before the coffee gets cold. And above all, accept that the present remains unchanged.

Less a science fiction than an emotional archaeology — an excavation of regret, unsaid words, and the unbearable ache of wanting to say what was never spoken.

For the girls who, despite wisdom, would still choose rewind over fast-forward; who dwell in the recursive pull of ‘what if’; who sip on lukewarm coffee because even the thought of getting up feels like a Herculean feat.

Comfort between the covers

In a world that often glorifies constant motion and productivity, choosing stillness can feel like an act of rebellion and reflection — an escape not through running away but by flipping the pages. These novels are not just stories, they are soft places to go to when the world feels too much.

So, if you find yourself nestled in bed, wrapped in blankets, and contemplating the complexities of life, know you are not alone. These books are here to accompany you, offering solace, understanding, and a gentle reminder that it is okay to pause, reflect, and simply be. 

Embrace the stillness, for in it, there is much to discover.