Mindy Kaling’s 6 Favorite Books of 2022, Explained

Mindy Kaling spent years making audiences laugh as a writer and performer on The Office, then created television series including The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever. She is also a lifelong reader—and her six favorite books of 2022 reveal the same combination of sharp comedy, complicated women, romance, and social observation that runs through much of her own work.

How Books Shaped Mindy Kaling’s Career

Kaling has described reading as her main childhood pastime. That early habit eventually fed into a career built around storytelling: she became a writer, actor, producer, and the author of books including Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and Why Not Me?

In 2022, Kaling and Amazon Publishing launched Mindy’s Book Studio, a boutique imprint created to publish stories by both emerging and established diverse voices. The studio’s announced range—romantic comedy, coming-of-age fiction, suspense, and memorable female protagonists—makes her 2022 favorites feel like a reading list and a statement of editorial taste at the same time.

Mindy Kaling’s Six Favorite Books of 2022

1. Kismet by Amina Akhtar

Kismet is a darkly funny thriller set in Sedona’s wellness world. Ronnie Khan leaves New York for Arizona with charismatic wellness guru Marley Davenport, hoping for reinvention. Instead, the desert retreat becomes a landscape of secrets, status games, and murder.

Akhtar’s novel is a good match for readers who like satire with real suspense. It pokes at the expensive promises of the wellness industry while steadily tightening the mystery around Ronnie. The result is funny, unsettling, and difficult to predict.

2. Token Black Girl by Danielle Prescod

Danielle Prescod’s candid memoir examines what it meant to grow up Black in an elite, overwhelmingly white community and later work in fashion and media. Prescod connects her personal experiences to the industries and images that taught her which bodies, faces, and identities were considered desirable.

This is the most explicitly autobiographical and socially critical book on Kaling’s list. It is about race and representation, but also about the exhausting work of chasing someone else’s definition of perfection—and the process of recovering a fuller sense of self.

3. The Goddess Effect by Sheila Yasmin Marikar

After moving to Los Angeles, Anita finds community in an exclusive exercise class called the Goddess Effect. Its promise of transformation is seductive, but a retreat exposes increasingly disturbing secrets beneath the polished wellness brand.

Like Kismet, Marikar’s novel uses humor and unease to question a culture that sells belonging as self-improvement. It will appeal to readers who enjoy stories about female friendship, ambition, and the moment an apparently perfect community begins to look like something more dangerous.

4. The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev

Sonali Dev’s novel follows three generations of Desai women as they navigate first dates, old secrets, family expectations, and new opportunities. Its emotional center is the relationship among Bindu, Aly, and Cullie—three ambitious women who are tired of being underestimated.

The Vibrant Years blends romantic comedy with a multigenerational family story, making it the warmest ensemble novel on the list. It also has a special connection to Kaling: Amazon announced it as the first book published by Mindy’s Book Studio. Kaling selected the novel and wrote its introduction.

5. Somebody That I Used to Know by Dana L. Davis

Dana L. Davis’s young-adult novel is a story of second chances, creativity, and first love. It follows Dylan Woods, a gifted young musician, as a person from her past reappears and complicates the future she has carefully planned.

The book pairs an accessible romance with bigger questions about ambition, overwork, family, and identity. Its exploration of transracial adoption gives the story additional emotional weight, while its youthful voice keeps the novel moving with warmth and humor.

6. Excuse Me While I Disappear by Laurie Notaro

Laurie Notaro turns the indignities and surprises of middle age into comic essays in Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem. The collection looks at a Gen Xer becoming eligible for AARP while confronting changing technology, changing bodies, and the strange feeling of becoming invisible to younger people.

Notaro’s voice is the attraction: self-deprecating, observant, and willing to turn an awkward moment into a story. It is the natural choice for readers who want a funny nonfiction book between the list’s darker thrillers and emotionally layered novels.

What Kaling’s Reading List Says About Her Taste

These six books span thriller, memoir, literary comedy, young-adult romance, and humorous essays. What unites them is voice. Each centers a woman with a distinctive way of seeing a world that often tries to define her first. Several also use comedy to approach uncomfortable subjects, from racism in fashion and media to the commercialization of wellness and the fear of aging out of cultural relevance.

Kaling’s list also gives space to authors and characters from backgrounds that mainstream publishing has too often pushed to the margins. That makes the selections consistent with the purpose of Mindy’s Book Studio: entertaining, highly readable stories led by people who have not always been treated as the default.

You can see Kaling’s original comments on all six books in her 2022 interview and reading guide. Whether you want a sharp thriller, a candid memoir, a romantic family story, or a comic look at midlife, there is a strong starting point here.