Only Ever Yours - Tapa dura

Winner of the 2014 Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year Award at the BGE Irish Book Awards

"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

"Deep, dark and frighteningly believable. This story will stay with you for a long time."--Marie Claire

"[A] terrifying but captivating book."--Company magazine

"An ingenious exploration of gender roles, female identity, and female competition."--Buzzfeed

"Disturbing, provocative . . . I was utterly captivated from beginning to end."--Gabriel Byrne ("In Treatment," "The Usual Suspects," "Miller's Crossing)

"Dark and thought-provoking... There are some good Logan's Run shivers, and it is beautifully written."--Tara Flynn, The Irish Times

"Only Ever Yours is a chilling dystopian fantasy... It has the bleakness of Catcher in the Rye, the satire of The Stepford Wives and it made me recall how scared I felt reading Nineteen Eighty-Four... But by far the best thing about Louise O' Neill's book is that it is well written, by a fresh and original talent."--Anne Cunningham, Irish Independent

"A witty and unsettling story...Hopefully Only Ever Yours will be read widely."--The Telegraph

Where women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl. In Louise O'Neill's world of Only Every Yours women are no longer born naturally, girls (called "eves") are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age. Freida and Isabel are best friends. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year, they expect to be selected as companions--wives to powerful men. All they have to do is ensure they stay in the top ten beautiful girls in their year. The alternatives--life as a concubine, or a chastity (teaching endless generations of girls)--are too horrible to contemplate.
But as the intensity of 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.