Read This to Look Cool Essays and Overthinkings

By: Maeve Dunigan

Published by Sourcebooks, Incorporated, 2026-05-12

This book won't fix you, but imagine how cool you'll look carrying it around...

Maeve Dunigan has poured a lifetime of effort into seeming effortlessly chill. The results have been... mixed. Nonetheless, Maeve still believes she's one pair of leather pants, one perfect use of the word "bespoke," and one jar of expensive olives away from self-actualization. She'll never stop trying, no matter how bespoke things get. (Nailed it!)

With razor-sharp wit and unflinching honesty, Maeve shares her own misadventures--like the time she quietly and painfully endured a ruptured appendix at McDonald's so she wouldn't come off as dramatic--and explores the universal desire to belong (along with the comedic pitfalls of trying to do so). She invites readers into her world of One Direction fanfiction authorship, passive-aggressive yogurt mind games, and the everyday anxieties that come with living in the age of constant visibility.

As cringe-inducing as it is uproarious, Read This to Look Cool is a deeply relatable testament to the hilarity and vulnerability of modern life and a meditation on the everyday absurdity inherent in the constant performance of ourselves, offering a fresh perspective on self-acceptance and the true meaning of cool.