GIRL DINNER

What do super-hot sorority girls and an assistant professor who’s a new mom have in common? Being a woman is hard.

Told from the perspectives of Sloane, a new mother experiencing an identity crisis, and Nina, a pledge sister at The House, the sorority that will be her ticket to lifelong success, Blake’s novel uses sarcasm, wit, and unwavering honesty to view the realities of womanhood—“femininity as a social construct and the ways in which it was an unsolvable curse”—through a satirical microscope. While Sloane and Nina, on paper, could not be more different, their lives are connected via The House when Sloane becomes the faculty adviser—“The House [w]as the ultimate safe place…something of near-magical significance. Sisterhood, Sloane learned, was a proper noun, as in: The House was a hearth for Sisterhood, where The Women grew into themselves.” The master puppeteer of this magical Sisterhood is Alex, a high-powered lawyer, single mom, and sorority alumni mentor who befriends Sloane as a fellow mom during a moment in need and draws her further and further into her influential circle. Alex represents women who have a seat at the table, women who are in control, who rise above the patriarchy. Sloane, jaded by the impossible ideal of the “Good Woman,” and Nina, enthusiastic to the point of desperation, are both drawn to Alex’s bewitching we-can-have-it-all aura, the unspoken mantra that hums through The House. However, the more they become entwined in the rituals of Sisterhood, the more they understand that beauty is just a facade and what lies beneath is much more sinister and downright surprising—you’ll see! The growing absurdism of the women’s desire to break the system, to achieve more, to rise against their common enemy—men—threatens to engulf itself during one final House dinner.

Endlessly quotable, highly entertaining, bordering on overly absurd, but perfect for book club consumption.