Synopsis:
Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.
After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she’s taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.
Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner’s new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 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 the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so 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.
Review:
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I have a confession. This is my first Olivie Blake book. And, I actually honestly really enjoyed it. Taking a sorority and telling it’s story through the eyes of both a student who has just been accepted into The House, and a professor who agrees to be the academic liaison meant that you saw both sides of the indoctrination. And how it can affect different people.
This is a deeply feminist book, and it uses horror-like moments to really cement that these young women are doing awful things to make themselves powerful and important. But, if everyone around you is doing the bad thing to become powerful, why wouldn’t you? It’s a case of if you can’t beat them, join them. If you have to engage in arcane rituals, including cannibalism, to keep up with your peers, the book makes you question if you’d really actually decline to get involved.
I enjoyed both characters perspectives. Nina Kaur is a student who desperately wants to join The House, and once she’s accepted she quickly and easily falls into their world. She gains sisterhood, and power, she gains friends and lovers, and at no point does she question the methods. She is fully indoctrinated, but yet I never blamed her. Sloane Hartley is a professor who as returned to work after giving birth, and I think I resonated the most with her story as she struggles to balance work and life, and the pressures put on women to both have a successful career and take on all of the home/parental duties. It’s her involvement with The House that I think really made me think, and while I don’t think she made all the right decisions Olivie Blake does a great job of making you think.
Girl Dinner mixes thriller with feminist literature in a way that is easy to understand and appreciate, it isn’t forcing anything onto the reader. You’re welcome to take your own understandings and life experiences into the book, it touches on sororities, careers, social media etc so even if you’re not American (like me) and sororities are something of a mystery you’ll still come away with some way to relate it to your life experiences.
It’s a fascinating and captivating look into the current world, and how in the name of progress women can be forced to do insane things in order to keep up. The setting isn’t so much important as the relationships between each character and their relationships with The House. Nina has a sister who is very anti-The House, and you see their relationship change as Nina gets deeper into The Houses’ rituals and lifestyle.
Read this if you want something dark that will get you thinking about your life.
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