The wildelings by Lisa Harding

I had never heard of Lisa Harding before or knew of this book coming out but once I read the description I knew I was going to love it and once I received it, I read it straight away and absolutely adored it from the very beginning.

The main character Jessica is very easy to dislike but yet I still find myself relating to her and feeling bad for her depending on the situation. Her side kick, Lisa, was always happy to stand back and let Jess bask in the sunlight whilst supporting from the sidelines and Jess enjoyed the attention too. Once they start college and Lisa begins to date a boy named Mark, things soon change and her grip on Lisa starts to falter.

Mark did not deserve Lisa. Let’s get that straight out of the way, just because Jessica didn’t deserve her it doesn’t mean that Mark did. I hated him so much, in fact I think I somehow hated yet loved every character in this book (which is how you know it’s a good one), he did encourage Lisa to spread her wings a bit but it was all under his supervision and what he thought was right.

I can relate to Jessica when it comes to slowly loosing your childhood friend to a relationship that is very obviously not going to last and reading about her trying to make Lisa see sense and failing was also painfully relatable too. In fact I think pretty much every reader would at some point see a part of themselves in Jess and that’s a major reason why I love this book so much, it’s really raw with how humans can feel and kind of calls you out a bit.

Throw a group of troubled students into a book and you’ve got be hooked for life, I loved everything about this book and I will definitely be buying a physical copy when it’s released on April 24th (I think). Jessica is my new favourite unreliable narrator and the book as a whole was a really brilliant way to get back into the academia type setting I haven’t read about in so long.

In keeping with the dark academic tradition, Lisa Harding's The Wildelings shocks with the insidious power of friendships, the drive to dominate and control, and the cruelties of belonging. The Wildelings is a dark, frighteningly honest, and flawlessly paced book that exposes campus life as not what it seems. Addictive, captivating, and finally exquisitely human, The Wildelings is a psychologically compelling tale about power imbalances in intimate relationships and personal manipulation told through pitch-perfect dialogue and wonderful writing.

with the description of dark academia, I was definitely excited when I received the ARC of The Wildelings - with a somewhat unreliable and dare I say, unlikeable narrator, I was hooked! in two timelines, we learn of Jessica and Linda's time at Wilde - a time punctuated by drinks, drugs, sex and toxic friendships.

Jessica proves an unlikeable narrator - which I did, sometimes, struggle with - but the ending vindicated her - with her and Linda's friendship ready to fixed once more.