Recs if you like The Seas...

Books that are atmospheric, emotionally unsettling, beautifully written, a little weird, and linger long after you finish them.

Books recommended by musician Lucy Dacus, a solo artist and member of the band boygenius. Pulled from her goodreads list.

🍃✨ books where the real setting is somebody’s unsettling or off-kilter brain/perspective (with exceptional prose quality)

Inspired by the sea fog, whistling winds, and the dark sea crashing against the rocks in summer

Short-ish Novels inviting consideration of novel characters in novel situations. Are we on a war ship? An airplane? Dedicated to a niche passion? Practicing a little known, long-ago tradition? Choosing a seemingly reasonable path in life that is nonetheless judged “unconventional” by others? Curated through my ACE lens!

texts about generational curses within families, featuring a touch of strangeness/surrealism/wonder/magical realism.

idek man. i love this genre and vibe though

These are books that dissolve the edges of reality...quiet, uncanny, and often profound. You’ll find yourself suspended in dream logic, where time is slippery, identity flickers, and language floats like fog. Perfect for when you crave something liminal, lyrical, or just plain weird in the softest way. Read them when the world feels too loud and you want to disappear...but beautifully.

or lakeside…or pondside…books that immerse us in a haunting, strange, beautiful, decadent, or unsettling coastal or waterside atmosphere

the books that are most interesting, inventive, and complex for the girlhood studies grad student in me. whose “girlhood” are we talking about? i’m thinking of girlhood as a liminal, queer, socially constructed, often traumatic, uncanny space.

It’s always nice to feel like a normal person by reading about those more unhinged than you 😌 These are all women focused books. Some I’ve read and some I’m going to read. Apologies in advance if it gets long. Recommendations are absolutely welcome!! So please feel free.

I know a couple are written by men which might be taboo for some but I’ve included because I thought they were appropriate or the author has a track record of writing women well.

Ongoing. Fiction and non-fiction exploration of grief: anticipatory, grieving death of a loved one (including pets), loosing pregnancy, etc, and how to live with it.

Complete! Every book longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction since it was founded in 1996, under its current title and previous sponsored titles of 'Orange' and 'Baileys' Prize for Fiction. I want to hear your percentage overlap in the comments!

a selection of literature that has somewhat an eerie vibe, that focuses on oceans, rivers, ... any bodies of water, really. Water as transformation tool, water as a home or water as the thing giving life or killing it off. Sometimes water is a main character, sometimes it's just a presence, sometimes it's the lover, the friend, the family member, but other times it's the dream that can never be reached.

Books with themes of water, the sea, sea creatures, otherworldly creatures, grief, longing, loss.

these are stories that feature children and their coming of age stories in which they are being treated like 'the bad child', as if they're bad seed, spoiled grain, or sometimes even as if they're of the devil. the horrors of childhood are a central theme.

i've decided to only feature literary fiction, some speculative fiction or autofictional titles, and against including horror or fantasy. recs always welcome!! ♥

when the prose is so achingly gorgeous it Hurts