Sad Girls, Sea Baths & Sydney: A Love Letter to Everyone and Everything by Nadine J. Cohen
Look, I have a type. If there’s a woman quietly falling apart in a beautiful house while saying wickedly sharp things under her breath, chances are I’m going to love her. Give me a protagonist who is smart and broken and deeply self-aware, and I’m yours.
So it’s no surprise that Everyone and Everything by Nadine J. Cohen made my little sad-girl-lit heart sing.
If you’re a fan of books like Sorrow and Bliss (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), then let me assure you: this book belongs in your hands. It’s clever, quietly devastating, frequently hilarious, and has all the emotional chaos of a descent-into-madness story—with just enough hope and absurdity to keep it from dragging you under.
At the beginning of the book, we meet Yael, our wounded heroine, in a psychiatrist’s office. She’s recently tried to take her own life. The options on the table? Neither is particularly uplifting. She can head to private rehab (where she’ll be forced off her meds), or she can go live with her sister, her three young kids, and a brother-in-law who, to his credit, isn’t a total disaster. But none of this matters to Yael, because what she really wants—really wants—is never to see another human being again.
It’s funny because it’s bleak. Or maybe it’s bleak because it’s funny. Either way, it works.
Sad, but Make It Witty
Yael is a narrator you want to sit next to at a dinner party, as long as she’s not in a depressive spiral. She’s sharp, cynical, self-aware, and (somewhat annoyingly) correct about most things. Her inner world is crackling with life, even as her outer one comes to a screeching halt.
She describes her breakdown with such deadpan perfection: “I always imagined breakdowns as epic, seizure-like episodes with screaming, convulsing, maybe some light mouth-frothing.” Instead, hers is a “sluggish descent” that feels “woefully anti-climactic.” It’s these kinds of lines that make you laugh while also feeling slightly called out. (Is it me? Am I the problem?)
What makes Cohen’s writing sing is the rhythm of the thing—short, vivid, vignette-style chapters that breadcrumb their way through Yael’s slow reconstruction. It’s quietly brilliant. There’s no big breakthrough moment, no giant crescendo. Just a woman doing the tiny, boring, necessary things that add up to survival.
Things Yael Does Instead of Thriving:
Watches hours of pimple-popping and cyst-extraction videos on YouTube. (Disturbing but relatable?)
Orders random objects online during blackout shopping sessions.
Develops a “textlationship” with her best friend.
Becomes semi-religious about daily visits to the Coogee women’s baths.
That last one might not sound revolutionary, but it’s kind of the heart of the book. The sea baths, therapy, semi-consensual check-ins with her sister—it all starts to scaffold Yael’s world again, one small routine at a time. She doesn’t return to the person she was. She becomes someone else entirely, slowly, with resistance, and against all odds.
It’s Not Just About the Breakdown
There’s real depth here, beyond the sparkling prose. Yael is a Jewish woman raised in the long shadow of inherited trauma. Her parents died when she was young. Her life has been shaped by grief, by loss, by complicated love and the kind of men who text “u up?” at 2am and then vanish into the fog. (We all know one.)
The book explores these things lightly, then deeply, then lightly again. It doesn’t wallow, which is part of its charm. Cohen resists the urge to turn Yael into a symbol or a cautionary tale. She just is—messy, funny, grieving, healing.
And all the while, Sydney gleams in the background like a fourth main character. This is a book that loves its city. For those lucky enough to live near the sea, the city becomes a kind of soft landing.
The Verdict? Add It to Your Stack Immediately.
Everyone and Everything is the kind of book with a slow build, but in an unputdownable way. It doesn’t shout. It hums. It simmers. It knows that sometimes the smallest, strangest things are what save us.
If you’ve ever felt like you were falling apart in a world that just kept spinning, or if you’ve ever looked around and thought, “Surely this can’t be it?”—Yael will feel like a kindred spirit. This is sad girl lit, yes. But it’s also hopeful, funny, and entirely free from self-pity.
Highly recommended if you love:
Sorrow and Bliss
Sharp, self-aware protagonists
Mental health stories that don’t flatten or glamorise
Stories set by the sea
Books that make you laugh and ache a little
Add this to your TBR because life is too short to read bad books.