Lisa Harding

‘A shiver-inducing delight’ LAUREN GRODSTEIN‘A dark and thrilling fable’ DOMINIC WEST‘A campus novel with a twist’ ROISÍN O'DONNELL‘Gloriously entertaining’ OBSERVER‘I adored it’ HEATHER DARWENT‘I was hooked from the very start’ RACHEL JOYCE‘Deliciously dark’ IRISH TIMESA girl so desperate to belong that she lets herself be remade…Jessica and Linda have been inseparable since childhood. At Wilde, an elite Dublin university, they arrive determined to remake themselves. Jessica, her fierce ambition set on the theatre, is used to leading. Linda, more fragile, follows. But when they meet Mark, an older student with a magnetic presence, the balance between them begins to shift. Linda becomes Mark’s girlfriend, then his project. Jessica becomes his actress, her ambition pulling her deeper into his orbit. Under Mark’s influence, reshaped by his attention, old loyalties between the girls begin to fracture. By the end of that year, under the sway of his influence, a line is crossed that leads to devastating consequences. A compulsive and gripping story about exploitation and control, toxic female friendship, desire and shame, The Wildelings is your next dark academia obsession.

Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school. Both girls are from very different broken homes - and beautiful, wilful Jessica has always ensured their survival. Now eighteen, the two girls have come to Wilde - an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately, and, with the faithful Linda at her side, finds herself at the heart of a new circle of friends. But then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend - and how quickly she seems to have fallen under this abrasive, charismatic man's control. It turns out that Mark's influence is not limited to Linda alone; and Jessica soon finds out that her whole group of friends are keeping secrets for him - culminating in a terrible tragedy that strikes at the end of their first year. Years later, Jessica is still grappling with her guilt over what happened at Wilde. And when Mark resurfaces, she knows she owes it to herself - and Linda - to set the record straight once and for all.