Are You Ready For It? Books for Fans of Taylor Swift

Whether you're a die-hard fan or a casual listener, it's hard to escape the chatter surrounding the release of Taylor Swift's 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl. I'm the same age as Taylor Swift, and it has been fascinating growing up alongside her, from the country twang of her early years to the folk pop of the pandemic to her most recent double album that doubled as a diary. I'm excited to hear what she's done with The Life of a Showgirl alongside 1989's producer Max Martin. And what better way to celebrate than by reading a book!? Check out this list of Taylor Swift inspired reads!

I can't lie. I was (positively) taken aback by how orange the marketing was for The Life of a Showgirl, which is exactly how I felt the first time I saw the cover of Leila Mottley's Booker Prize nominated Nightcrawling. The cover is so striking that I couldn't help but read the inside page; a faceless woman's braids whipping across the cover, the movement of the woman wholly evident. Kiara is young, not yet a woman, and trying to get by while living in Oakland with her older brother, who dreams of becoming a famous rap artist. She's struggling to pay the rent and finds herself nightcrawling on the streets in order to keep a roof over their heads and is caught off guard when her name comes up in an investigation during a massive scandal at the Oakland Police Department. Dark, gritty, and beautifully written, Nightcrawling is a book that will stick you long after you've finished reading.

Taylor Swift's song "Clara Bow" was my first introduction to the actress Clara Bowl, and she seems like the type of woman the main protagonist in Sash Bischoff's Sweet Fury would have liked. Lila Crayne has it all; she's a beautiful and talented actress engaged to one of Hollywood's most visionary directors, Kurt Royall. They're Hollywood's "It Couple" and have just started working together on an upcoming project: a feminist retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Lila wants to fully immerse herself in preparation for the leading role and starts attending therapy sessions with one of Manhattan's top therapists, Jonah Gabriel, so she can come to terms with her childhood trauma in the hopes that it makes her delivery as Nicole Diver even more believable. As Lila begins journaling about her life in between sessions, it slowly becomes clear, amidst all the glitz and glamor of her life with Kurt, that not everything is as it seems. Sweet Fury is a deliciously twisty novel with an ending that will have you picking up the book to read it again.

I'll be honest. I'm one of those Swifties quietly applying her clown makeup hoping that the Reputation vault tracks are headed our way soon (could you tell from the blog post title?). You can't talk about Reputation without talking about snakes, so why not read a book about snakes while we wait, rainbow wig on and all? Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe is a funnily macabre reimagining of the Chinese folktale "The Legend of the White Snake." Su and Emerald are sisters but couldn't be more different: Su is the prim and proper wife of a conservative politician living in Singapore while Emerald is a flighty but beguiling sugar baby living rather impulsively in NYC. Really, the only thing they have in common is that 1000 years ago they were snakes, living in Tang dynasty China, and it's been decades since they last got along amicably. A violent encounter in Central Park brings them back together, and suddenly wild Emerald is upending Su's tidied life in Singapore. Horror, satire, and female rage? Sign me up!

I imagine it would be hard to deal with the media as a celebrity and can understand why Taylor Swift would write the biting "Mean," and feel like Katee Rose, the main popstar in Elissa Sussman's Once More With Feeling, probably feels the same way. Katee Rose was a teen pop sensation, performing to sold out crowds of adoring fans and every tabloid detailing her every move, with the front-runner of the most beloved boyband, Ryan LaNeve, as her boyfriend. Her life was a dream...until it wasn't. One night is all it takes for her relationship with Ryan to crumble, her fans to turn on her, and the tabloids do the same. Now it's a decade later, and Katee is trying to live a normal life. But when Cal Kirby, Ryan LaNeve's old bandmate, reaches out to ask if she would like the starring role in his Broadway play, Katee has to reckon with everything that happened so long ago. Can she put the past (and her anger) behind her? Was Cal meant to be her endgame?!

We'll end with a book by a different Taylor: Brandon Taylor, the award winning writer of many novels, though here we're going to focus on his collection of short stories: Filthy Animals. The stories are linked, not unlike the linked lyrics within an album, and I really love Taylor's integrating stories about a group of young creatives set in the Midwest. We meet a once-suicidal man trying to find himself again, couples trying to figure out how to stay together, a young girl driving her babysitter up a wall, and many others. The collection is infused with a fraught tension between violence and love, and is an intimate depiction of how people can respond and react to trauma. It's a quiet and loving portrayal of how bleak life can be, and the desire we all have to both find and feel love. 

Do any books remind you of musicians you enjoy listening to? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to read them!