Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake
Narrators: Rita Amparita and Stephanie Nemeth-Parker
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: October 21, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

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.

First of all, do not read the New York Times’ review of Girl Dinner before you read this book. It has major spoilers – I’m glad I read the book first.

Girl Dinner follows Nina, a college sophomore rushing a sorority referred to as The House and Sloan, an adjunct professor at Nina’s university. Both are struggling with what it means to be a “Good Woman”.

Nina finds herself wanting to be perfect to impress her future sorority sisters, especially Fawn, the president. Much to the chagrin of her feminist twin sister Jas, Nina is starting buy into the tenants of the The House. Meanwhile, Sloane, a new faculty advisor for The House is struggling to balance her career and motherhood. She feels like she’s failing at both. Her husband, a tenured professor at the university, is no help. To give an idea of the kind of man he is: one night Sloan forgets to put the silverware on the dinner table. Her husband gets up and gets one fork. For himself.

Both Nina and Sloan wonder about what it means to be a Good Woman. Is that even possible in world full of men content to hoard their power? The characters in Girl Dinner philosophize about this throughout. While all the deep thinking is going on, the sorority is up to some gruesome rituals that also ask the question of how far is one willing to go to become a Good Woman.

I’m still thinking about Girl Dinner weeks after reading it. I’m realizing that I prefer social horror that is on the realistic side – no monsters or demons. Girl Dinner is a great example of this type of horror.

The audiobook is narrated by two women which worked well since there are so many female characters. I think it would have been hard for one woman to have a distinct voice for all of the them.

Highly recommended.

(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)