These Mortal Bodies - a gripping and atmospheric dark academia novel about toxic female friendships and obssession

I’m ready to be part of something bigger, I told myself, whispering the words over and over, visualizing myself at the centre of things, never alone again.

Leaving behind her childhood in coastal Scotland, neurodivergent Ivy Graveson arrives at a prestigious university and throws herself into the deep end of life on campus.

Though her fellow students all seem to come from money and to have known each other their whole lives, outsider Ivy is determined to belong. She embraces the world of secret societies, and as she discovers the legacy of her college, the parallels between its past and her present become striking. Because however hard she tries to ignore it, Ivy has always felt one with water and her own personal talisman, a heron, is never far away.

In just one life-changing year in these hallowed halls, Ivy will have to decide how much sisterhood means to her and how far she’ll go to become the person she was desti