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When we heard the news that there was a new Taylor Swift album on the horizon, our initial thought was simply: thank god, we have been starved for far too long. But as she released the artwork, the individual track names, and the occasional song description, we couldn’t help noticing just how literary all of it seemed. Take the album covers, for example: Rachel Cusk, anyone? And so many of her song’s descriptions reminded us of our favorite books — books where the narrators, caught in the complicated mess of love, predictably make that mess even worse; books where there’s no easy way forward, but the character still manages to choose the path of most resistance; and books where, y’know, the character is just a vibe.

So we decided to have fun with it. Below, you’ll find a list of the books that we matched with each of the 13 tracks on Midnights.

Without further ado, we present: Midnight’s (Powell’s Version).

“I'm damned if I do give a damn what people say” — T.S.
“It´s so much easier to cry when there are arms around you.” — L.K.

Writers and Lovers perfectly captures a specific, short season in a writer's life. Casey scrapes by as a waitress while working on her novel, she grieves her mother's recent death while considering her future. My coworker Charlotte S. described this better than I can: "The writing so beautifully captures the beauty and burden of human existence, emotions, and love. It’s not easy to protect your creativity and dreams in our capitalist world. To me, this book was never about the love interests, but rather about Casey learning to love and trust her art, and by extension, herself." This book was going to make the list no matter what — Swift is an artist, and one of the best examples of what happens when you learn to trust your art. (And it's not really about the love interests, but it's not entirely not about them.) — Michelle C.

“The mark you saw on my collarbone, the rust it grew between telephones” — T.S.
“I had made myself too easy to leave, stashed away like a spare part, I had asked for too little, and now it was too late.” — K.K.

I feel like the title of Katie Kitamura’s incredible Intimacies gives away the reason I paired this book with “Maroon”: so much of Swift’s music is about the liminality of intimacy, and how a moment can seem one way up close and another way when you take a few steps back. Which is exactly how this book felt, reading it — like I was being given such a close, caring, often uncomfortable look at the life of a translator living in The Hague and the love affair she finds herself caught up in. There is pining and confusion, arguments and righteousness and silence. An absolutely incredible book that digs into all of the intricacies of intimacy. — Kelsey F.

Honorable Mention: Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

“Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby / And I'm a monster on the hill” — T.S.
"I cry for a second, but I’m faking it. Waaaaaaahhhhhh. Poor me, poor me, who cares. This is what I wanted." — H.B.

Oh god, the visceral discomfort I felt while reading The New Me, and not just because the main character finds herself in this depressive, malignant rut, but because so much of how she described her experience trying and failing to exist as a capable human in the world felt so familiar. Which is also how it feels like listening to certain anxiety-centric Swift songs (hello to you, “this is me trying”) and "Anti-Hero" truly delivers on its promise: “when my depression works the graveyard shift.” What happens when you’re an Anti-Hero not just to others, but also to yourself? Halle Butler and Swift have some ideas. — Kelsey F.

Honorable Mention: Bunny by Mona Awad

”Life is emotionally abusive / And time can stop me quite like you did” — T.S.
“My heart is a thin thing, these days—shred of paper blown between the spaces in my ribs.” — J.A.

“Snow on the Beach” is a song about the impossibility of falling in love at the same time (I mean, imagine!), but I veered a little left with my recommendation, because if you have something as rare as love, it becomes that much scarier to potentially lose it, which is the world faced by Miri and Leah in Our Wives Under the Sea. Leah has recently returned after a disaster at sea, and Miri is doing her best to care for her, even though Leah doesn’t always seem like the Leah that Miri originally fell in love with. The book is as suspenseful and terrifying, thoughtful and impossible, as any relationship that Swift written songs about. Just remember to breathe as you’re reading this one; it’s easy to forget. — Sarah R.

Honorable Mention: Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

"I play it cool with the best of them / I wait patiently, he's gonna notice me” — T.S.
“An amazing sight, someone you’re infatuated with trying to fish something out of a jeans pocket.” — E.B.

When I first read The Idiot, it gave me palpable discomfort, with how familiar it was, and how much it seemed to just get that freshman-in-college, naive-but-eager, smart-but-also-dumb, I’ll-just-tag-along-beside-him-and-hope-he-likes-me feeling. Add that to the healthy dose of nostalgia via the early days of email (the book is set in 1995), and wow my heart ached for Selin, a freshman at Harvard, who becomes infatuated with the often difficult-to-understand but fascinating Ivan, an older student who expresses an intellectual interest in Selin that she hasn’t experienced before. An intoxicating feeling! Even secondhand, wafting off the page. You’re On Your Own, Kid,” gets at that feeling of realizing that the story you’ve been crafting in your head is just in your head, and you’re alone in sorting your way back toward reality and settling into a new normal, without that fabricated other. Which is a long way of me saying: oof. — Kelsey F.

“A deep portal, time travel / All the love we unravel” — T.S.
“She is that sliver, she thinks, drowning in the dark.” — S.F.

“Midnight Rain” is a mood; Tides is a mood. Having moods is a mood. It all ties together!

Tides is a lyrical, fragmented book about grief and the world around us. After an unimaginable tragedy, the narrator of Tides retreats from the world, no longer able to bear anyone around her. She finds refuge in drifting around, not putting her roots in particular place, not letting herself be known by others. Among her many fears is finding herself lost in a relationship with someone else, and the loss of control that brings with it. Or, as Swift sang: “The way you change your heart / It’s like the weather.” Like I said — they’re a mood! — Sarah R.

"Good girl, sad boy, big city, wrong choices" — T.S.
“I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time.” — B.S.

This pairing is an immediate title-to-book connection — I Want to Die But I want to Eat Tteokbokki is one of the great question books of our time. Primarily told through transcripts between Sahee and her psychiatrist, IWTDBIWTET looks at ongoing, low-level depression (it's a book that shines with familiarity, in a way that makes me feel complicated!). How do you even identify when things feel not great, but also not dramatically cataclysmic? How do you fix something that is quietly, persistently, bad? Reading this calmly perfect stunner of a memoir isn't a bad place to start. — Michelle C.

“They say looks can kill, and I might try” — T.S.
“I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart." — R.Y.

Just from the title, I knew “Vigilante Shit” was going to be a ride. I mean, wait, no, I actually meant: just from the title, I knew Nightbitch was going to be a ride. Both are true!! Nightbitch is about a new mother who realizes she is starting to change — she has a taste for raw meat, now, and her veins are filling with an unfamiliar, feral rage. As she tries to track down what’s happening to her, and what may be the precedent of generational, feminine anger, she has to continue taking care of her baby because her husband is either away on work or in need of some alone time. Who wouldn’t turn into a ravenous wolf in those all-too-common circumstances? I like to think that Nightbitch would spend her days listening to “Vigilante Shit,” while preparing for her next shift as a wild creature. — Kelsey F.

"They ask, Do you have a man? / I could still say, I don't remember” — T.S.
“Men, who can be so oblivious in most arenas, are very good a knowing when a woman’s heart has left the building.” — S.C.

I struggle to talk about how much I love Cult Classic without going into too much detail on this glittering gem of a novel. Know this: it's realistically unsettling, it's mystical but grounded, it's got a real-deal cult and a keyed in sense of everyday events that can straddle the line between fun and chore (e.g., a dinner with old coworkers). Crucially, it has Lola, our protagonist, running into so many exes, and grappling with that experience in the lead-up to her wedding. There has been a lot of discourse-blood spilled over Swift and her exes (and what it means to write about past relationships, how that's viewed differently when you're a professor or a pop star, and on and on), but my favorite scholar on the matter is Taylor Swift herself. (And if there was ever a case of a woman prevailing over powerful people who are a little too involved in her life, it would be the author and owner of all things "(Taylor's Version)".) — Michelle C.

Honorable Mention: Luster by Raven Leilani

”I'll be getting over you my whole life” — T.S.
“In the moment, she only felt happy to be there, slightly damp and still somewhat young, side by side with her best friend.” — A.C.

I don't know what it says that so much of what I'm loving right now is "unsettling vibes." End of the World House is a trapped-in-a-time-loop story, a literary exploration of shifts in the most important relationship in your life, an all-too-realistic view of a slightly different apocalypse. Bertie and Kate are best friends on a last hurrah trip to Paris, and get the unusual opportunity to explore the Louvre while it's closed to the public. Things get more unusual! There are moments in this book that feel like A24 horror (the non-gory variety), that feel like the best song on a break-up album, that feel like laughing so hard with a friend that your eyes hurt. Are you looking for a twisted maze (sometimes literal!) and meditation on love, with a driving slightly futuristic heartbeat? Listen to “Labyrinth,” read End of the World House. — Michelle C.

“Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend” — T.S.
“Witch is just their nasty word for anyone who makes things happen, who moves the story along.” — A.K.B.

It’s pretty clear from “Karma” that Swift spent plenty of midnights plotting her revenge. (Worthwhile? Maybe not! But I do always tend to side with pettiness.) Much of The Manningtree Witches exists in a similar spirit, in a town where neighbors harbor festering suspicions about one another and the women have to walk that tightrope of hiding who they are in order to stay safe while honoring who they are in order to live truthfully. The book is about the persecuted, but it still manages to be wry and sharply observed, and if anyone deserves to do the observing (or the karmic plotting), it’s the accused witches put in jail for a year. If there’s one thing I know, I would never want those witches (or Swift, honestly) to turn their sharp eyes toward me. — Kelsey F.

"They said the end is comin' / Everyone's up to something” — T.S.
“You always think your pain is the most painful. You always think it's uniquely awful.” — M.N.

Oh, that feeling of falling into the orbit of someone you know you shouldn’t be anywhere near. That feeling of knowing you should and could do better, that the situation is both toxic and escapable, but actively choosing to stay put, despite the loud sounds of your better judgment that churn through your thoughts. These relationships are sometimes the most intense — often because the people involved know that the end is inevitable — which Megan Nolan and Swift both know all-too-well. — Sarah R.

"What if I told you none of it was accidental?” — T.S.
“We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.” — O.B.

This book just needed to be on this list, and “Mastermind” was the perfect fit. My Sister, the Serial Killer combines suspense and murder with deep empathy and love, a particular cocktail that seems right in line with some of Swift’s recent discography. The bonds between the sisters in this novel — one a nurse, the other a killer — are tested, pulled tight, put through everything possible, to see if they endure. Very similar to the vibe of Swift singing, “I laid the groundwork and then, just like clockwork / The dominoes cascading in the line.” Her song is about romantic love, not familial, but the urgency and subtle manipulation to get through to the other side intact is all too familiar. — Kelsey F.

Honorable mention: The Lightness by Emily Temple