3 Comfort Books for Your Quarter-Life Crisis Era

Anyone in their 20s understands the chaotic, often discouraging struggles we all face during the relentless decade. From job hunting to tumultuous relationships to uncertainty about the future, this time in our lives can feel impossible to navigate. In fact, it’s such a relatable struggle that people now refer to it as a “quarter-life crisis.” 

As a 30-year-old woman who somehow survived her messy 20s, I owe much of my growth to reading. If you’re looking for support and relatability in the form of a novel, here are three books that feel like a quarter-life crisis.

1. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh tells a story we all wish we could lead: one of a self-chosen, year-long solitude/hibernation. 

The narrator is a young woman who seemingly has it all. She’s young, rich, gorgeous, thin, intelligent, successful, creative…but still, that doesn’t seem like enough to fulfill the deep hole in her heart. She’s deeply flawed, incredibly privileged, and oftentimes outright cruel—far from the “perfect” female narrator, which is intentional on the author’s part.

Her solo journey through self-exploration, growth, and emotional healing is certainly unconventional, but it makes for quite the intriguing story.

“Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be,” the synopsis reads. “Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.”

2. Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey

Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey paints isolation with such depth that you can feel the discomfort through the book. The story follows Amy Hanley, a young woman who’s working as a maid while studying for an EMT exam that she keeps failing. 

However, it’s hard to imagine a brighter future for yourself when you’re completely alone, anxious, unfulfilled, and seething with self-loathing energy. In an attempt to change, she embarks on a self-prescribed “placebo” program, where she will seemingly trick herself into becoming happy and successful. 

As Goodreads puts it, this book is “a moving and darkly comic debut novel about an anxious young woman who administers a self-made ‘placebo’ treatment in a last-ditch attempt to rebuild her life.” Don’t we all wish for such an opportunity? 

“Tender and laugh-out-loud funny, Nobody, Somebody, Anybody explores the shadowy corners of a young woman’s inner world of grief, delusion, and self-loathing, revealing the creeping loneliness of modern life and our endless search for connection,” its synopsis reads. “Kelly McClorey captures the hilarity and heartbreak of American ambition.”

3. Worry by Alexandra Tanner

Worry by Alexandra Tanner is another deeply relatable yet uncomfortable read—one that makes you feel like you’re literally being dragged through a young woman’s mundane life. While that might not exactly sound like an appealing beach read, the book is one of the most painfully realistic portrayals of a quarter-life crisis I’ve ever read.

As Goodreads describes it, “Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two twenty-something siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world about to suffer great change—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.”

You might not fall in love with the characters in Worry, but you’ll definitely empathize with their experiences. Think: newly single and highly anxious 28-year-old invites her depressed younger sister to move into her small city apartment with her. The two face mental health struggles, complex family dynamics, health concerns like recurring hives and uterine polyps, financial issues, relationship trouble…the list goes on. I think most people in their 20s can relate.

“Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction,” its synopsis reads.

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