One Nightstand with Tinx

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

“I read an article a year and a half ago about how romance books are the only category of books that are growing right now,” says Tinx, the influencer and author who’s first book, a self-help guide called The Shift, became a NYT bestseller. “Then I started reading a lot of romance and I was like: I love how this makes me feel. It's so fun, it's so cheeky. It feels like a little secret.”

But there was a problem. “I didn't always connect to the protagonists in romance novels because there's always this neat ending,” she says, so she began working on a solution. “I write these rich mom characters — there are hundreds of them on my Instagram — and it kind of started like that.” Hotter in the Hamptons, a queer love story about a cancelled influencer who has an affair with the writer of a profile about her, drops this week.

“I think most women who follow me are straight,” she says. “A big part of my inspiration is that I would always get comments that said: ‘Do you think it's normal if I watch Girl On Girl? And: ‘Sometimes I think about kissing a girl when I'm with my boyfriend.’ And I'm like: yeah, everybody does. It's so normal. So I wanted to tap into that fantasy that a lot of women have in a way that felt fun and approachable.”

The book, which has already been optioned by the Foster sisters for adaptation, might best be described as an erotic beach read. “I want everyone to be horny by the pool,” she says. “I love reading smut. I like to read very spicy books and I also like to listen to audio porn as well. There's an amazing app called Quinn — it's female founded — that's really, really doing great work. And so I wanted it to be five flame emojis in terms of spice.”

For fans of her work, there’s likely more coming. “I have this pipe dream of exploring a different fantasy in a different rich mom place, so that's my plan right now.” In the meantime, read on to discover four of the influencer and author’s all-time favorite books.

Tinx’s first selection is a cult classic: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. “When I think about my college experience and taking classes at Stanford, I think about The Sun Also Rises,” she says. “I love Brett Ashley as a character, and there's this line in the book that she had ‘curves like the hull of a racing yacht.’ I don't know why I committed that to memory, but I always think, wow, I hope some guy one time describes me that way.”

Now, Tinx has her original college library copy to remind her of the experience. “This guy, he and I were English [class] friends — and this is very bad and I don't condone stealing — but he stole this copy of The Sun Also Rises for me and he gave it to me,” she says. “He knew how much it meant to me.”

Her second choice is The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown, a swashbuckling memoir of the British journalist’s exploits leading the magazine during the glory days of Condé Nast. “This has had more of an impact on me than maybe any other book,” she says. “I love Tina Brown. She has the most insane command of the written word of anyone I've ever experienced. I mean, I subscribe to her Substack now and it's getting hit in the face with a bucket of cold water in the best way.”

Her third choice, The Wedding People by Alison Espach, tells the story of a complicated woman who finds herself an accidental wedding guest at an upscale Rhode Island hotel. “I was kind of down in the dumps when I was reading it,” explains Tinx of the 2024 release. “I was going through a... sometimes you get the blues, and I read it and I was like, oh, life is good. Sometimes you need random strangers to remind you of that.”

Alas, her followers didn’t get it right away. “When I recommended it to my community on Instagram, I was like, oh my God, this is so uplifting and warm. And they were like, what do you mean? It deals with suicide... But I thought it was a stunning display of human resilience and love and love in unexpected places.”

Her final choice, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, approaches similar themes — love, grief, and resilience — through the eyes of four college friends as they build their lives in New York and beyond. “I'm a very emotional person, and so whenever I can take the emotion out of myself and put it into watching a movie or reading a book or even listening to music, it feels like a relief. It feels like I'm letting air of the tires,” she says. “A Little Life is so emotionally draining that you literally cannot think about yourself while you're reading it... I remember where I was when I finished it and I cried for three hours. I was so sad and I was so moved. I just was crying on my couch in San Francisco.”

Watch Tinx’s full One Nightstand interview below.