Reading Radar - BRAT Summer Edition
Be more BRAT with this recommended reading list inspired by Charlie XCX
Calling all BRATS! We've curated the ultimate literary playlist to pair with Charlie XCX's Brat album. These reads are for the rebellious, unapologetic, fearless, and unfiltered—just like the tracks that inspired them.
This curated reading list is for those who thrive on stories that push boundaries and explore the complexities of desire, power, and identity.
Whether you’re entranced by the dark sorority of Mona Awad’s Bunny, captivated by the raw intensity of Sheena Patel’s I'm a Fan, or intrigued by the seductive world of Celine SaintClare’s Sugar Baby. These books are the perfect companion to the rebellious, high-energy anthems that define Brat Summer. Each novel pulses with the same unrelenting spirit, inviting you to indulge in narratives that are as daring and unforgettable as the music itself.
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Come & Get It By Kiley Reid
Just as Brat Summer captures the unapologetic, high-energy vibe of living life on your own terms, Come & Get It dives into the messy, complicated dynamics of ambition, privilege, and friendship in a way that’s equally vibrant and sharp. Reid’s novel explores the razor-thin line between what we want and what we’re willing to do to get it, all set against the backdrop of modern-day societal tensions. With its biting wit and keen observations, Come & Get It is a story that feels as bold and unapologetic as a summer anthem, making it an essential read for anyone who loves a story that doesn’t pull its punches.
‘Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for.
Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She's slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance.
Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie's dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors.
As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they soon become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue - and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want.
Sharp, intimate and provocative, Come and Get It takes a lens to our money-obsessed society in a tension-filled story about desire, consumption and bad behaviour.’
Purchase Come & get It by Kiley Reid and add it to your #tbr list here
Happy Hour By Marlowe Granados
🎵 Apple | CharlieXCX | BRAT
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados radiates effervescent energy, capturing the essence of youthful exuberance and the thrill of chasing life’s pleasures. Happy Hour follows two young women navigating the vibrant social scenes of New York City, revelling in the joy of spontaneity, friendship, and the art of living in the moment. Just like Apple it’s a celebration of life’s most glamorous—and sometimes messy—adventures. Granados’ witty and stylish prose makes Happy Hour the perfect companion for anyone looking to savour the sweetness of summer with a side of sass.
‘With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning début brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City.
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time.
In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a world that wants you to do neither.’
Purchase Happy Hour By Marlowe Granados and add it to your #tbr list here
Black Swans Eve Babitz
🎵 Rewind | CharlieXCX | BRAT
Babitz’s collection of essays captures the essence of 1970s Los Angeles with a blend of wit, charm, and irreverence. Black Swans is a nostalgic yet sharp exploration of a city in flux, brimming with Babitz's signature cool-girl attitude. Through her stories of love, loss, and reinvention, Babitz invites readers into a world where glamour and grit coexist—a world that’s as dazzling and unpredictable.
‘Black Swans is a collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s—decades of dreams, drink, and stoned youth turning Republican. Babitz prowls California, telling tales of a changing world. She writes about the Rodeo Gardens, about AIDS, about learning to tango, about the Hollywood Cemetery, about the self-enchanted city, and, most important, about the envy and jealousy underneath it all.
Babitz’s unmistakable voice drives these stories, weaving together themes of sex, rage, the Château Marmont, youth, beauty, Jim Morrison, men, women, and black swans. This thrilling reissue amplifies the enduring phenomenon of Eve Babitz, solidifying her status as the definitive voice of a generation.’
Purchase Black Swan By Eve Babitz and add it to your #tbr list here
Sugar Baby By Celine SaintClare
🎵 Everything Is Romantic | CharlieXCX | BRAT
If this novel had a musical alter ego, it would be 'Everything Is Romantic’ from Charlie XCX’s Brat Summer. This novel pulses with the same rebellious spirit, offering a sharp and unapologetic exploration of desire, power, and the complexities of modern relationships. Sugar Baby dives into the world of transactional love with a protagonist who navigates this provocative landscape with wit and daring tenacity. SaintClare’s writing is as fierce, making Sugar Baby a must-read for anyone who craves a story with edge, attitude, and a touch of glamour.
‘From the high-rises of Canary Wharf to the turquoise pools of Miami, Sugar, Baby is an intoxicating, darkly funny and shocking debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction.
Agnes Green is turning 21 and her life is heading nowhere. Still living at home with her devoutly religious Caribbean mother in a lifeless suburb, she works as a cleaner by day and spends her nights secretly going to clubs and dating Toby - who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts.
That is until she meets Emily, the daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model - and a sugar baby. Emily's lifestyle is the escape Agnes has been longing for: tasting menus, private flights to Paris and Miami, rich older men who shower her with compliments and designer gifts.
Agnes' new life is beyond her wildest dreams, but it comes at a cost. As she begins to stray further from her mother's holy teachings, she must decide how far she is willing to go to be adored.’
Purchase Sugar Baby By Celine SaintClare and add it to your #tbr list here
🎵 Von Dutch | CharlieXCX | BRAT
I’m A Fan is a sharp, daring exploration of what it means to be infatuated—with people, with power, and with the idea of who we think we should be. This novel channels the same raw, unfiltered energy, diving into the messy, obsessive side of desire and social dynamics. With its biting wit and keen insights, I’m A Fan captures the essence of longing and rivalry in a world where image is everything.
‘A searing disquisition on human interaction viewed through the prism of one seemingly toxic relationship, Patel's remarkable debut encompasses social media, patriarchal systems and status anxiety into an emotionally visceral whole.
Examining the complicated hold we each have on one another. With a clear and unforgiving eye, the narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal heteronormative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
In this incredible debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour - Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice.’
Purchase I’m A Fan By Sheena Patel and add it to your #tbr list here
Raving By McKenzie Wark
🎵 Club Classics | CharlieXCX | BRAT
Wark’s novel takes you on a disorienting journey through the pulsating heart of the rave scene. Raving is a deep dive into the chaotic beauty of nightlife, capturing the fleeting euphoria and the darker undercurrents that thrive when the sun goes down.
Much like the electric beats that define the rave culture, this book pulses with a rhythm of its own—raw, intense, and unfiltered. Wark’s narrative is a wild ride through spaces where identity dissolves, and the night becomes a canvas for new possibilities. It's a fitting literary anthem for those who live for the night, pushing boundaries and embracing the chaos.
‘What is an art of life for what feels like the end of a world? In Raving McKenzie Wark takes readers into the undisclosed locations of New York’s thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures.
Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave’s sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.’
Purchase Raving By McKenzie Wark and add it to your #tbr list here
Bunny By Mona Awad
🎵 Mean Girls | CharlieXCX | BRAT
If Charlie XCX’s Brat Summer was a novel, it might just be Bunny by Mona Awad. This dark, twisted tale of obsession and identity dives headfirst into the surreal and satirical world of graduate school, where the line between reality and fantasy blurs with every turn of the page. Just as Brat Summer celebrates the playful yet chaotic energy of embracing your inner mean girl, Bunny revels in the unsettling exploration of female friendships, creativity, and the bizarre rituals that bind us together. In this novel, expect a heady mix of saccharine sweetness and sinister undertones, making it the perfect companion for those who love their stories with a side of sharp edges and a hint of madness.
‘We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.
Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny'.
But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.
Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny provides a hilarious look at the dark side of female friendship from one of fiction's most original voices.’
Purchase Raving By McKenzie Wark and add it to your #tbr list here
Down The Drain By Juila Fox
🎵 365 | CharlieXCX | BRAT
A raw, unfiltered memoir Down The Drain by Julia Fox revels in the chaotic, rebellious spirit of youth. Fox’s memoir dives headfirst into the gritty realities of fame, heartbreak, and survival. With unapologetic candor and a voice that’s as sharp as it is vulnerable, Down The Drain chronicles Fox’s tumultuous journey through life, capturing the highs and lows with fearless energy. It’s a story of resilience and reinvention, perfect for anyone who’s ever felt the push and pull of a world that’s constantly trying to define them.
‘Julia Fox is famous for many things: her captivating acting, such as her breakout role in the film Uncut Gems; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows, exaggerated eyeshadow and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media. But all these share the trait for which she is most famous: unabashedly and unapologetically being herself.
This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain. Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural supremacy: her parents’ volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist”; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son.
Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience―it’s all here, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.’
Purchase Down The Drain By Juila Fox and add it to your #tbr list here
Adult Drama By Natalie Beach
🎵 Sympathy Is A Knife | CharlieXCX | BRAT
Drenched in irony and introspection, Adult Drama by Natalie Beach captures the essence of chaotic youth, Adult Drama unpacks the messiness of growing up, spotlighting the tangled web of relationships, ambition, and self-discovery. Beach’s memoir-esque narrative peels back the layers of her experiences with biting wit and vulnerability. For those who revel in the melodrama of life and the bittersweetness of coming into their own, Adult Drama is perfect.
‘From the writer whose New York Magazine piece "I Was Caroline Calloway" broke the internet comes a fresh, incisive, laugh-out-loud funny memoir-in-essays about the frenzied journey to adulthood.
Natalie Beach became an internet sensation when her essay on her toxic friendship with Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway went viral. Now, for the first time, and in her own indelible voice, Beach offers a revelatory glimpse into her own life alongside a broader cultural criticism of the world today. Through stories of heartbreak, odd jobs, political activism, existential crises and low-rise jeans, Natalie Beach explores the high stakes and absurdist comedy of coming of age in a world gone mad.’
Purchase Adult Drama By Natalie Beach and add it to your #tbr list here
I love that you included Natalie Beach's Adult Drama! I was surprised it didn't get more attention when the book first came out. I especially like her essay, How May I Help You?