Study up so you can ask them about it.
We’ve reached peak social media fatigue. Exhaustion with the algorithm has created a boon for screenless activities—we’re touching grass, hosting craft parties, and restarting The Artist’s Way. In a sea of offline hobbies, reading reigns supreme among the coolest women you know (performative, tote bag-wielding men be damned).
The goal might be to log off, but even “analog” activities are commodified on TikTok, where users can turn a simple task into a trend just by branding it with internet-savvy vernacular. “Hot girl,” a phrase popularized by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, has served as a prefix that turns ordinary pastimes into feats of baddie achievement. A dopamine-boosting stroll is a hot girl walk. In 2025, Hot Girls for Zohran canvassed for New York City’s next mayor. According to Cosmopolitan, the phrase “hot girls read” was recently trademarked by small business Allie Rose Co. It’s generated controversy among BookTok users, who feel the phrase belongs to not one, but all hotties with an appreciation for the written word.
Drama aside, hot girls do, in fact, read, and many have gone so far as to start their own book clubs. Countless celebrities and influencers have built digital platforms around their reading lists, often hosting video chats with authors. We scoured this literary It girl side of the Internet for summer’s buzziest books, and we’ve rounded up six of them below. They span across genres and cultures, but each has earned an endorsement from the likes of Kaia Gerber, Natalie Portman, and other well-read hotties you need on your radar.
Ruins, Child is the latest recommendation from Kaia Gerber’s Library Science book club, which she co-founded with writer Alyssa Reeder in 2024. The novel, released in April, follows six women living in a run-down apartment tower, set in an unspecified time that could be the future. Of the novel’s main characters, Scodellardo told Gerber, “I love thinking about their multiplicity, their shared existence, and physically, what they’re doing with each other.”
Dua Lipa hosts a book club as part of Service95, her “global style, arts and society venture.” Her June pick is a story of homecoming, identity, and evolving family dynamics. “I’ve long admired Kae Tempest for his body of work, which includes plays, fiction, essays, poetry, five studio albums and electrifying spoken word performances” Lipa wrote on Service95’s website. “Having Spent Life Seeking, his groundbreaking new novel, contains something of all of them.”
TeaTime Pictures is Dakota Johnson’s entertainment production company. It’s also home to the TeaTime Book Club, which selected Mare as its book of the month. The novel is Hayworth-Booth’s adult fiction debut, and chronicles the relationship between a struggling woman and the horse she leases part-time. “Mare radiates life and feeling—and introduces an irresistible literary voice,” reads an Instagram post from Johnson and TeaTime.
To no one’s surprise, Harvard-educated actress Natalie Portman is an avid reader. Natalie’s Book Club chose The Serviceberry by indigenous scientist Wall Kimmer as its June pick. In the book, Wall Kimmerer examines reciprocity in nature and juxtaposes the natural world’s “gift economy” with manmade capitalism. Portman has called it “magical.”
Kierra Lewis is the hottie behind some of BookTok’s best-received recommendations. She told TikTok that her summer reading list includes this playful romance about two cursed young adults who learn that dating each other will cancel out their respective curses. Lewis crowned it the “perfect beach read.”
BookToker Hina is known for her taste in literary fiction. Her summer reading rec was originally published in 1943 and challenged the form with a raw recounting of its protagonist’s innermost thoughts. She told TikTok that it’s “the perfect choice for those who cannot decide between poetry and philosophy for their next read.”