The Wildelings
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The Wildelings
Narrated by:
Jessica Regan
Buy Now for $21.99
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Narrated by:
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Jessica Regan
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By:
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Lisa Harding
About this listen
A vivid and compulsive story of obsession, control and guilt, set in Nineties Dublin – perfect for fans of dark academia
'Arrives to fill the Secret History-shaped hole in your lives ... Gloriously entertaining’ Observer, Books to look out for in 2025
'A searing exploration into our deepest desires and insecurities. I adored it' Heather Darwent
‘I was gripped by this dark and thrilling fable’ Dominic West
‘I was hooked from the very start’ Rachel Joyce
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Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school. Both girls are from very different broken homes – and beautiful, wilful Jessica has always ensured their survival.
Now eighteen, the two girls have come to Wilde – an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately, and, with the faithful Linda at her side, finds herself at the heart of a new circle of friends.
But then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend – and how quickly she seems to have fallen under this abrasive, charismatic man’s control.
It turns out that Mark’s influence is not limited to Linda alone; and Jessica soon finds out that her whole group of friends are keeping secrets for him – culminating in a terrible tragedy that strikes at the end of their first year.
Years later, Jessica is still grappling with her guilt over what happened at Wilde. And when Mark resurfaces, she knows she owes it to herself – and Linda – to set the record straight once and for all.©2025 Lisa Harding (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Critic Reviews
With pitch-pure dialogue, and a plot that weaves in and around the theatre until the edges of reality blur, Lisa Harding presents us with a psychologically gripping story about personal manipulation and the imbalance of power in intimate relationships. A powerful performance (JANE URQUHART)
The Wildelings is a shiver-inducing delight. I found myself reading when I should have been doing a million other things, unable to tear myself away from these bewitching characters, Harding’s beautiful prose, and the prickly suspicion that a dark surprise was waiting for me on every page (LAUREN GRODSTEIN)
The Wildelings is a darkly lyrical and compelling novel about power, obsession, and the fragility of intimacy. A thrilling excavation of the blurred lines between friendship and the more dangerous shadows of youth. Harding crafts a masterful study of vulnerability, control, and the uneasy art of self-reinvention. (ELAINE FEENEY)
A vicious, sardonic, cruel book...very dramatic ... I lapped it up (RYAN TUBRIDY)
Lisa Harding’s The Wildelings, in the tradition of dark academia, shocks with the cruelties of belonging, the seductive power wielded in friendships, the impulse to control and subjugate. Impeccably paced, dark and disturbingly honest, The Wildelings reveals campus life as theatre of cruelty; but the real stagecraft lies in Harding’s ability to excavate the still beating heart of a shared past and bonds beneath those brutalities. Riveting, addictive and, ultimately, beautifully human (UNA MANNION, author of Tell Me What I Am)
Obsession, possessiveness, coercion, malice, spite, insecurity, frailty, vulnerability; lurking unease and the wax and wane of tenuous friendship. There’s a bundle of narrative thread to unravel here and Harding does it in a manner as unsettling as it is addictive (ALAN McMONAGLE)
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