freida and isabel have been best friends their whole lives. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year at the School, they expect to be selected as companions - wives to wealthy and powerful men. The alternative - life as a concubine - is too horrible to contemplate. But as the intensity of the final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty - her only asset - in peril. And then into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride. freida must fight for her future - even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known...
'A dark dream. A vivid nightmare. The world O'Neill imagines is frightening because it could come true. She writes with a scalpel' Jeanette Winterson
. 'Utterly magnificent ... gripping, accomplished and dark Marian Keyes
. 'Gripping ... like all the best dystopias, Only Ever Yours is about the world we live in now Irish Times
. 'Compelling writing ... this only-too-real dystopia grips from beginning to end SFX
. 'The Handmaid's Tale meets Mean Girls The Vagenda
. 'The bleakness of The Catcher in the Rye, the satire of The Stepford Wives and it made me recall Nineteen Eighty-Four ... a fresh and original talent Irish Independent
. 'Deep, dark and frighteningly believable, this book will stay with you for a long time Marie Claire
. 'Deserves to be read by young and old, male and female, the world over in the same way Harry Potter and The Hunger Games were Sunday Independent
. 'Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale with a post-millennial twist The Journal
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Author
About Louise O'Neill
Louise O'Neill was born in west Cork in 1985. She studied English at Trinity College Dublin and has worked for the senior Style Director of American Elle magazine. While in New York, she also worked as an assistant stylist on a number of high-profile campaigns. She is currently working as a freelance journalist for a variety of Irish national newspapers and magazines, covering feminist issues, fashion and pop culture.
