A girl in her twenties basks in an apartment in New York City and ruminates on heterosexual love, further intensifying her sense of ennui. She is flooded by one of the following dilemmas: a) existentialism, b) declining mental health mixed with crippling emotional distress, c) alcohol and drug usage, or d) all of the above. She feels her youth and her beauty slowly slipping away, misspent on the pursuit of pleasure or independence.
These are just some of the identifying features of “no plot, just vibes” novels, a genre that’s being celebrated across BookTok, the affectionately nicknamed community of book lovers on TikTok. Over the last few years, BookTok has blossomed as a community for sharing short-form reviews, book recommendations, discoveries, and relatedly, literary categorizations. Per BookTok, the cornerstone of the “no plot, just vibes” canon is Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which documents a woman literally lying around for most of the novel, self-sedating with a potent cocktail of pharmaceuticals. Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations With Friends are also often cited, along with Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, Halle Butler’s The New Me, and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. BookTok users have also reclassified timeless works like Mrs. Dalloway, The Bell Jar, and Franny and Zooey as light on plot but heavy on vibes.
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