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Girl Dinner

A wickedly smart and biting novel about power, lust and female rage

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Girl Dinner

By: Olivie Blake
Narrated by: Stephanie Németh-Parker, Rita Amparita
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Summary

From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller Olivie Blake, this is a powerful and darkly fun novel about ambition, lust and eating your fill – as wealthy moms and sorority girls practice a sinister new wellness trend.

‘Deliciously twisted and lipstick-stained, Girl Dinner serves up a feast of ambition, privilege, and the deadly price of belonging. I loved it’
– Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

Good girls deserve a treat . . .

The House is the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni are beautiful, high-achieving and respected. After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being accepted into The House is the first step to the brightest possible future. The House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as prey.

Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr Sloane Hartley is struggling. After eighteen months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane’s clothes don’t fit right; her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is; and even the few hours a day she’s apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in a level of collective perfection that she desperately craves.

As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.

‘The fever dream I never knew I needed, and I'm going to recommend it to everyone I meet!’
– Ali Hazelwood, bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Bride

 Genre Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction Heartfelt
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Critic reviews

Deliciously twisted and lipstick-stained, Girl Dinner serves up a feast of ambition, privilege, and the deadly price of belonging. I loved it (Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb)
A book that whets your appetite before devouring you whole. Girl Dinner is cunning, charged and – just as you’re comfortable – a profound shock. Perfect for the era we live in (Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Longings)
Narrators Rita Amparita and Stephanie Németh–Parker add emotional depth to this academic thriller . . . Listeners will find themselves entranced by their performances
Whip-sharp, nuanced and highly propulsive. I will be thinking about Girl Dinner for a long time (Hildur Knútsdóttir, author of The Night Guest)
At once hilarious, scathing, insightful, and heartbreaking - I devoured Girl Dinner! Olivie Blake never pulls any punches, defies genre boundaries, and this book cements her as one of the most unique voices writing at the moment. I live for her commentary on motherhood, relationships, and above all, academia. This book is the fever dream I never knew I needed, and I'm going to recommend it to everyone I meet! (Ali Hazelwood, bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis)
A female-fueled tumbleweed of bloodthirsty seduction. A decadent dive into the dark depths of ambition and toxic relationships. Deliciously addictive (A. R. Torre, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lie)
Seriously, WHAT did I just read?! And when can I have seconds?! A brilliant head-trip of a book, Olivie Blake constantly comes at timely topics from new and interesting angles. I can't wait to see what she does next! (Katee Robert, New York Times bestselling author of Neon Gods)
As always, Blake eats! Girl Dinner is truly brilliant – a precise and ruthless novel about the impossibility of being a woman and a mother, it also answers the question of what it takes to win when you start from a losing position. I savoured every morsel of this wickedly fun and deeply satisfying interrogation of sisterhood, sorority life and the true cost of success (Ling Ling Huang, author of Natural Beauty and Immaculate Conception)
Girl Dinner is a crackling, tense journey between the ravenous teeth of feminine rage and sorority power struggles. Overflowing with creeping dread. I devoured it and loved every second (Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays)
An exploration of the many hungers of the female heart and the pain behind the drive to be everything to everyone, Girl Dinner shaves pearls into teeth and bites deep. As a woman, as a mother, as a wife, as an artist – I felt this story in my bones (Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence)
All stars
Most relevant
This book started out strong and captured my interest early but the story never really took off. There were also a fair few mispronunciations in the Nina chapters that really took me out of the narrative (eg “scarcity” pronounced like “Scar City”.). This was particularly jarring as Nina is meant to be an elite student.

Promising start but overall meh

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Did not finish, it is very repetitive, was about 3 hours in and still didn't get the point of the story

Could not finish

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It was a bit dated I felt with a lot, a very lot of repetition about motherhood and vagaries of being female in academia, just get a backbone already. The big secret is a bit silly and again dated. Well performed though.

Girl dinner

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I can hear the voice of Olivie Blake her writing is very specific to her. But this story I could just not get along with. I didn’t love this the way I wanted to. It very girl power. And the ending, I was not a fan of

Want to love it but just didn’t

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Girl Dinner is one of those books that feels almost impossible to summarize, not because it lacks focus, but because it contains so much—emotionally, thematically, and narratively. There are layers constantly folding into one another, and trying to pick a single favorite aspect feels like missing the point entirely.

Sloane, as a main character, completely captured me. Her internal monologue—especially around motherhood, womanhood, and independence—felt painfully sharp and deeply honest. Blake explores how women are expected to be strong, self-sufficient, and liberated, yet somehow still end up enabling men to perform independence while being utterly dependent themselves. The irony of men posturing as autonomous when they can’t find a spoon they’ve been told the location of repeatedly is both funny and infuriating—and devastatingly accurate.

The book also examines sex through a lens that feels particularly true to womanhood: it’s something we’re encouraged to celebrate, yet punished for enjoying too openly. There’s no “correct” middle ground—only constant recalibration, judgment, and contradiction. Blake doesn’t moralize this tension; she lets it sit uncomfortably, which makes it hit even harder.

Motherhood, too, is dissected with brutal clarity. The way it fundamentally alters women—socially, physically, emotionally—while men can still opt out or remain largely unchanged is one of the book’s most biting observations. It’s not loud or preachy, but it’s relentless.

Nina took longer for me. I didn’t fully connect with her until the second half of the book, when her complexity began to surface in a way that made her feel less opaque and more human. By then, though, the payoff was worth the wait.

And yes—there’s cannibalism. Delightfully, grotesquely so. Because sometimes a girl’s gotta eat. Rather than feeling gimmicky, it works as a darkly effective extension of the book’s themes: consumption, desire, survival, and what women are expected to give up piece by piece.

The ending left me completely baffled—in the best way. I did not see it coming, and that shock is exactly why Olivie Blake is such a mastermind. She trusts her readers to sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and unanswered questions, and Girl Dinner is stronger for it.

This isn’t a book you simply read. It’s one you chew on long after you’re done.

Girl Dinner

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