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Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in the Blue Mountains. They've always had a close - sometimes too close - friendship. Now in their twenties, Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains and falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu.
One fateful day, Finn, Daphne and Magdu go rock-climbing - and Magdu falls to her death. Is it suicide, a terrible accident - or something more sinister?
Bold, dramatic and utterly compelling, Girl Falling forces us to confront the stories we tell ourselves about the people we love. Displaying all of Hayley Scrivenor's razor-sharp skills for character, landscape and narrative, this is a breathtaking read.
Author: Hayley Schrivenor
Paperback Published 27 May 2025 304 pages
Read and recommended by Charles:
"Hayley Scrivenor’s Girl Falling is a queer crime novel that unfolds with quiet intensity in the gorgeous but wet backdrop of the Blue Mountains. A story of lifelong friendship, buried truths, and fractured families, it centres on two girls – Finn and Daphne - best friends since childhood, whose bond is tested after the tragic death of Finn’s girlfriend, Magdu, during a climbing expedition. The novel opens in the aftermath of the fall, then peels back the layers of tension and grief that have long existed between the two protagonists.
Scrivenor writes with control, her tone steady and unhurried, drawing the reader into a psychological landscape shaped as much by what’s left unsaid as what is revealed. The pace is deliberate and forensic and allows the emotional weight of each moment to build with a kind of quiet dread. This isn’t a crime novel driven by forensic clues or procedural twists, but one that locates its mystery within people—how they hide from each other, and from themselves. The suspense lies in the slow unfolding of long-held secrets between the girls, and the ways in which their respective family histories—marked by silences, care, and quiet violence—intersect.
The emotional resonance of Girl Falling brings to mind recent novels like The Guest by Emma Cline or Hanna Johansson’s Antiquity—not for thematic similarity, but for the way each explores the claustrophobia of close relationships and the complicated inner lives of young women. Scrivenor’s prose holds its tension with subtlety, and her portrayal of queer adolescence is as tender as it is unsparing.
Girl Falling is a satisfying, slow-burn thriller—never flashy, always emotionally precise—and confirms Scrivenor as a writer of sensitivity and depth. A compelling, quietly haunting read."
Praise for Girl Falling
'Compassionate and clever, with perfect tension and atmosphere throughout. A great read' - Dervla McTiernan
'An enthralling excavation of truth, with a vivid, human heart' - Benjamin Stevenson
'Fiendishly clever, deeply unnerving, and packed with tension' - Ashley Kalagian Blunt
'A riveting and psychologically complex exploration of grief and complicated female relationships. Taut, compelling and unputdownable' - Dinuka McKenzie