'IDOL is fresh, glamorous, and surprising, taking an issue we all care about and with a deft twist, recalibrating our position. It dazzles us before revealing the darkness at its heart. Louise O'Neill is not afraid to take on a taboo but somehow always makes it utterly compelling. This is such an exciting book.' Marian Keyes
'Follow your heart and speak your truth.'
For Samantha Miller's young fans - her 'girls' - she's everything they want to be. She's an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their 'truth'.
And her career is booming: she's just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she's appearing at sell-out events.
Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she's written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She's never told a soul but now she's telling the world. The essay goes viral.
But then - years since they last spoke - Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn't remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It's Sam's word against Lisa's - so who gets to tell the story? Whose 'truth' is really a lie?
'You put yourself on that pedestal, Samantha. You only have yourself to blame.'
Review
An absolute page turner; addictive and refreshingly twisted. - Cecelia Ahern
By turns utterly gripping and unsettling, this gorgeously written novel is a fascinating look at the ills of influencer culture. A book for our times. - Lucy Foley
IDOL is darkly delicious and asks important questions of fame, influence, self-help and what it really means when we click "follow". Louise O'Neill is one of those rare authors whose writing grips you from the first page, but who also makes you think. I will read anything she writes. - Elizabeth Day
Louise O'Neill steps into areas that lesser writers are daunted by. She is a pioneer. - Marian Keyes
O'Neill continues to push at the murk around contemporary taboos, shining a compassionate and compelling light on what drives our appearance-obsessed society, marking us all as complicit. IDOL is a gripping, shocking read I could not put down. - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
About the Author
Louise O'Neill grew up in Clonakilty, a small town in West Cork, Ireland. Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was released in 2014 and won the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Eilís Dillon Award for a First Book and the Bookseller's inaugural YA Book Prize. Her second novel, Asking For It, was published in September 2015 to widespread critical acclaim. It spent 52 consecutive weeks in the Irish top 10 bestseller list. Both novels have been optioned for screen.
Louise's first novel for adults, Almost Love, was published in 2018, followed shortly by The Surface Breaks, her feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid. Her second novel for adults, After the Silence, was published in 2020 and was an instant bestseller in Ireland. It won Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and has also been optioned for screen. Idol is her third adult novel.
Louise contributes regularly to Irish TV and radio, and has a weekly column in the Irish Sunday Times.
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