Rory Gilmore Would Read These 14 Books in 2025

The show references The Year of Magical Thinking, so it’s safe to say Rory would be sat for the publication of Joan Didion’s journals. The book includes detailed accounts of Didion’s conversations with a psychiatrist in a journal created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. It covers alcoholism, adoption, depression, her work, her childhood, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter.

Rory would love the dark academia setting of this novel. It follows Oliver Marks, who, 10 years after his arrest, is finally ready to tell Detective Colborne the truth. Years before, he was one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, where a tragedy occurred on opening night. The fourth-years find themselves facing their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.

Touted as a modern-day classic and shortlisted for the National Book Award, Martyr! is right up Rory’s alley. Cyrus Shams’ mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past, including a painting discovered that suggests his mother may not have been who or what she seemed.

Rory may not have sisters, but she’s no stranger to complicated family dynamics like the ones we see play out in Blue Sisters. The three Blue sisters are exceptionally different. The year after the death of their fourth sister, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.

As a dedicated student, I have no doubt Rory would love an academic-rivals-to-lovers trope. Elsie Hannaway is an adjunct professor, but she also offers her services as a fake girlfriend. Her separate worlds collide when Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. He’s also the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.

Rory is always reaching for books with strong female characters, and today, no one writes them like Kristin Hannah. 20-year-old nursing student Frankie McGrath was raised in idyllic Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. Frankie sees the chaos and destruction of war firsthand, but the real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America.

The Iliad is featured in Gilmore Girls, so I think in 2025, Rory would have sobbed while reading Song of Achilles like the rest of us. It’s retells the story of the Trojan War, following hero Achilles and his childhood friend Patroclus. As they grow up and train together, their bond only strengthens. They’re thrust into a life of battles, wars, and suffering, but with no signs of peace ahead, they’re forced to consider what they’re willing to sacrifice to end the war, and save each other.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Rory would be a Sally Rooney girl, and she would love the messy portrayal of friendship and love in Conversations with Friends. When students Frances and Bobbi meet a well-known photographer at a local poetry performance, the girls are gradually drawn into her world. Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and handsome husband, Nick. But however amusing Frances and Nick’s flirtation seems at first, it begins to give way to a strange—and then painful—intimacy.

Rory is a Little Women stan, and Tom Lake feels like a modern-day version of the cozy classic. In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother.

Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, which (along with seven other Dickens books) is referenced in the show. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer. Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

Rory loves a dystopian book with real societal commentary, and Severance is just that. Candace Chen is content to carry on in her corporate office forever. So, she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Soon entirely alone, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where Bob promises they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit.

Rory will without a doubt be able to relate to the student workaholics in Katabasis. Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to work with Professor Jacob Grimes. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him because even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

Rory read the original The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so this reimaging would definitely be on her shelf. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. Thus begins the journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive promise of the Free States.

The town in this cozy romance book would remind Rory of Stars Hollow, and the author’s name is literally Laurie Gilmore. When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job. When Jeanie’s arrival disrupts local farmer Logan’s routine, he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl. Will Jeanie’s happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won’t fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes.