I’m Not Done with You Yet

The bitchiness we loved in Dial A for Aunties is back with a vengeance. This time, the author takes us, via flashbacks, to the nervous, early days of an American student at Oxford University. Jane Morgan’s mother has drilled into her daughter that she can’t write and can’t do anything else right either, and Oxford isn’t for the likes of her. So it’s a relief when Janemeets the confident, beautiful Thalia Ashcroft. For Jane, it’s obsession, if not love, at first sight. She’ll do anything to keep Thalia’s friendship, and is desperate to keep her from Ami, a blithely rich student who looks like competition for friendship with Thalia. It’s a struggle—everything’s so hard for Jane, who must continually remind herself that her sociopathic behaviors—“antisocial (check), hostile (check), irresponsible (check)”—must be kept under wraps if she’s to get ahead. Then everything unravels, a situation hinted at in the present-day section of the book as the time Jane left Oxford after an unnamed disaster. What happened, and how the women confront each other and the event’s aftermath all these years later, is a thrilling tale filled with twists, unreliable narrators, and absurdness of the best kind. For Dial A for Aunties fans and anyone who likes a friendship drama.