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“This world wanted her to suffer, all because a woman in a story ate an apple in a garden–because a woman somewhere got hungry.

Because a girl could still starve and nobody would care, but a woman had to eat.”

From the author of The Atlas Six, Masters of Death, and One For My Enemy comes a new darkly funny novel about what women really hunger for, Girl Dinner.

Girl Dinner follows the seemingly separate lives of two women, Nina and Sloane. They only seem to have one thing in common, that they are both on campus at The University, one a student and one a professor. As the story continues, their lives intersect in more ways than one (some more surprising than others), and at the center of it all is The House, the sorority of everyone’s dreams. All girls who are accepted into The House are not only beautiful, but go on to do great things. Things that matter. Things that could make a difference in the world. Every single one of them.

No one knows how, but it all seems to stem from a wellness trend worth dying for.

Killing for.

Because a girl’s got to eat, and you might be next on the menu.

Sloane vs. Nina: a multifaceted story

Girl Dinner is two stories in one, and I’m so glad that Olivie Blake decided to split the POV of her story between two characters instead of focusing on just Nina and her experience rushing The House. Instead, we get the chance to see two different women, in two different stages of life, both struggling with how to succeed as a woman. It is the same root struggle, though it presents itself in different ways within each of the characters.

Sloane, who has recently had a child and is adjusting to life as a working mother, is trying to reconcile what it means to be a Good Woman, a Good Mother, and a Good Wife while remaining a sane and functional person. Whereas Nina, who has just entered her sophomore year in college, has always known women are systemically at a disadvantage and is looking for her ticket to success in this male dominated world. Both have found themselves drawn in by The House.

Who knew the answers to their struggles would be in the hands of cannibals who like to party.

Because of the choice to broaden the scope of the story outside of Nina and her experience, Girl Dinner appeals to all kinds of women. The mother, the working woman, any woman who has left the loving arms of college (or high school or the safety of her parents’ home) and has been thrust into the real world only to discover that people are assholes and not everyone is operating under the feminist agenda.

“‘The future isn’t female!’ Sloane screamed, pulling away from Alex in a sudden burst of pain. ‘I can’t be expected to girlboss under these fucking conditions! And what the fuck is a She-E-O?’”

While I did originally find Nina’s POV more exciting to read (who wouldn’t be excited to watch Nina discover the secrets of The House first hand?), I actually ended up finding Sloane’s POV more compelling in the end. As a sociologist, I thought that her POV and her personal struggle added a lot to the story, pushing it past the boundaries of satire and into something more philosophical. And what isn’t more relatable than reading about an adult woman crashing out when she discovers her new best friend is a cannibal, but also a really good person and an amazing single mother?

So, is this really satire?

“‘You’d like them,’ Nina said. ‘They’re your people.’

‘Why,’ Jas sighed, ‘because they knit pussy hats?’

‘No, because they slaughter men and eat them,’ Nina said.”

The short answer is yes, absolutely! There isn’t anything more ridiculous than a sorority that kills men to eat them as some kind of holistic, wellness ritual or a Trad Wife TikToker who is secretly the most brutally feminist of them all (in her own, twisted way).

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to Girl Dinner than a silly little story about cannibal sorority girls. There’s real struggle here, real problems that so many women face in the real world. And that’s the beauty of Girl Dinner. It’s fun and silly, but is still able to bring attention to real problems and point fingers at the people who cause them: men who take what they want.

“Nina’s was last year. He had a name, but she hadn’t asked it. She’d been the one wearing that dress, she’d been the one drinking to excess, she’d said yes to everything–except for the thing that she hadn’t.

And for that, she knew there would never be justice. There would only be dinner.”

So, what would happen if women took back?

Of course, the real answer isn’t to kill men and eat them (though that certainly makes for an excellent book premise), but that’s why you picked up a book of fiction rather than a dissertation or even a memoir. Girl Dinner is catharsis, watching women do what they want for a change. Watching women take power. And power comes in many forms. We see this through Nina and Sloane, through Fawn and Alex. Even through our favorite bloodthirsty influencer, The Country Wife. All of them have taken back power, though perhaps not all in the right way (I’ll leave that for you to decide), and isn’t it oh, so delicious to see.

To girlboss or not to girlboss

At its essence, Girl Dinner is about women taking back power. There isn’t a single way for women to do this, as we’ve seen with Nina and Sloane, but throughout the course of the story, they are both able to find ways to find power within being a woman. Sometimes it isn’t enough to be a Good Woman. Sometimes, you have to take.

“‘I wanted to be beautiful,’ Nina croaked, unable to stop herself, the truth wrenching out of her like an uncontrollable sick. ‘No, I wanted to be untouchable. I wanted to be hot. I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be tough.’ Now the truth was a marching rhythm, a slapping pulse. ‘I wanted to count for more, I wanted to be unbreakable, and I just wanted more–’

‘Power.’”

And isn’t that just, so… relatable?

But even Sloane, who has conquered college, pursued a career, found a ‘feminist’ man to support her until “death do us part,” and given birth to a beautiful baby girl, who has fulfilled the role of woman, wife, and now mother, is still left with the sensation of needing more. Not to be hotter or smarter or tougher (though who doesn’t think those things when life just doesn’t seem to be going your way?), but to just be better. To be perfect. To be a Good Woman. A Good Mother.

It just doesn’t seem to end, no matter how old you are or how much you’ve accomplished. The world just seems to be against women, no matter how hard they try.

So why not fight back?

“What you’re tasting is revenge. Tessa’s voice was laced with Fawn’s sweetness, or maybe the other way around. It’s reprisal. It’s violence. It’s the guns they won’t ban no matter how many abusive assholes kill their wives. It’s the choices they strip from us and the formula they lock up so the babies they forced on us will starve. It’s every time you were called a bitch for saying no and a slut for saying yes.”

Girl Dinner is for people who want to take a visceral look at women fighting back. Because, sure, it is coated in the sweet tones of satire, but that’s not what it’s really about. I would recommend this book to fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Rouge by Mona Awad, A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers, and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang.

So grab a plate and take a seat. Dinner is about to be served.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for a copy of an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Girl Dinner comes out on October 21st, 2025.