Selfish Girls

by Abigail Bergstrom

NOTHING HURTS LIKE FAMILY.

Ines is reluctantly moving home on the edge of a breakdown, her childhood sweetheart in tow. He's only ever wanted what was best for her.

Gwen is elated that her prodigal daughter has returned.

Dylan is still licking her wounds from a rejection she can't forget.

And Emma is quietly suffocating in the perfect marriage she wanted so badly.

They were inseparable once. But that was a long time ago. Now, they're back in the Welsh town where they grew up, peeling back the layers of a once forgotten, haunting past. What they find may be the end of them...

Uninhibited, claustrophobic and emotionally complex, Selfish Girls spans generations, buried resentments, and an unexpected love story. It is a clear-eyed portrait of a dysfunctional family and the pain we inflict on those we love most.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Ebooks, Novels, Romance

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2025

Reviews

[Ceinwen Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently soapy, domestic Welsh litfic was exactly what I was in the mood for, because I loved this. Nuanced, often unlikable characters navigating the present under the burden of their co-dependent, complicated past, and fighting against the certain but tempting doom of repeating their mothers mistakes.

I'm not sure if it wass intentional, or if it's just the apparent universality of sister roles and the complications of cute boy neighbours, but this often felt like a modern exploration of Little Women free of the burden of American Christianity. Either way, I loved it. Messy, charming, emotive, and full of a sense of time and place.

4.5 rounded up.

[Lucy Jagger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spent the first 70% of this confused and pissed off that I couldn’t figure out who tf Edi was

[Nia Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about three annoying Welsh sisters… is this fucking play about us??

Slightly annoyed that the younger sister was the most annoying one though, not good for my brand

[Rojda · Rating 4 out of 5]

sisterhood is complicated 💔

[suzannah ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i enjoyed this more than the authors previous book but it still felt like it was lacking something for me

[Lauren Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️ The Wyn sisters would have loved Apple by Charli XCX

[Robyn Connelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved loved LOVED this one. Soared through it like a holiday read but it had a lot of bite too. Sisterhood and motherhood! Messy ramifications. I wish I was still reading it!!

[LX · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and Hooder & Stoughton for the ARC!

2.5 stars!

I really liked how this started and the premise. I was so ready for this and really wanted to get deep into the sisters relationships, the relationship with their mum, and their own lives.

The writing is great! But the way it jumps from different past, present, and even Gwen's past, just seem to stop me from really getting deep within the story and connecting with any of the characters sadly.

Definitely worth checking out if you love family dynamics and relationships and realistic fiction, but sadly the execution wasn't a fit for me but maybe for someone else!

[Abbie ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars ⭐️

I loved this. It's sharp, emotional, and totally unafraid to ask what it really means to be a selfish girl and whether that's such a bad thing after all. It digs into friendship, family dynamics, shame, desire and choosing yourself, even when it's messy.

Abigail's writing is so smart and honest, and I felt really seen in so many parts, even though i didn't grow up with any sisters!

I was lucky enough to meet her last week and she was just as cool, kind and thoughtful as you'd expect.

[Joanna]

Spoilers: It was bad!

I actually don't even know where to start, and I'm fighting every cell in my body to try and not write a pithy single-sentence review. The only reason I finished was because I hate myself more than I hated reading this, and I needed something inanimate to fixate on instead of thinking about what it might be like to start a fist fight with the man I'm stood next to in the train vestibule who is on his phone and yet continuing to venture deeper and deeper into my personal space.

Let's start with the characters. Emma, Dylan and Ines are sisters who for one reason or another find themselves back around the family home in Wales with their mother, Gwendoline. Emma is unhappily married to her husband, Kit, alongside their two small children. Ines is a failing actor who has just suffered a severe trauma and moves back from London with her fiancé, Noah, who Dylan's best friend and secret long-time crush. Nothing I have told you just now matters because all of these people are interchangeable and apparently made of cardboard. If you put a gun to my head and asked me who Kit and Noah were throughout 90% of reading this I would've asked you to just pull the trigger instead. Their characterisation specifically is 'garbage husband' and 'garbage cheating fiancé but it's fine because he gets the girl he should be with in the end' because, I guess?

There is also nothing redeemable about any of these people. They all fucking suck in a multitude of different ways, but the worst part is about it is that they're boring about it. I'm not even awarded the pleasure of being interested in why these people are terrible. The main crux of this book was obviously the impact of generational trauma, but only if you took this theme and photocopied it over and over again until it's illegible, faded, and looks like shit. It's like, a groundbreaking character portrait of generational trauma, I guess, you know, the heavy burden of grief, mothers with mothers, needing their mothers to be mothers, and so on and so forth, yadda yadda yadda.

Bergstrom, who I understand is Welsh, also really wants you to know that they're all Welsh, particularly Gwendoline and her parents. This is done by the occasional use of Welsh, which I did actually enjoy the addition of because it's a sorely underrepresented language, but the main way we know this is because inexplicably throughout the book Gwendoline's accent is written out phonetically for only very specific words, sometimes at the most odd and inappropriate moments ('you-er' for 'you're', 'yer' for both 'here' and 'hear') which was cute for the first ten pages I guess but oh my god if I had to sit through J.K. Rowling doing this I have now had my fill for a lifetime. I don't know why people do this, because it's lazy, jarring, looks terrible, and starts to feel suspiciously like caricature. Becauze, you see, 'ow else will we know if zis weuhman iz French, par example, non? If this is somehow a Welsh thing, I'm happy to be corrected, but as of writing this review, I'm not convinced.

The writing, and subsequently the pacing, is a fucking mess. When I was younger my mum once saw me reading Catch-22 and said it was like somebody had taken the book's chapters, thrown them onto the floor, and picked them up in a random order and put them back into book format. This book is exactly like that, apart from it's terrible. We get chapters from the present. We get chapters from the past. Sometimes they're the kids, sometimes it's Gwendoline. Sometimes it's Gwendoline as a teenager. Sometimes it's Gwendoline as an adult. Sometimes it's in 1999, sometimes it's in the '80s. We get lists! We get a chapter right near the end with just Kit and the couples therapist, for some reason! Nothing is in order, nothing really makes sense, and you are constantly trying to re-orient yourself to understand what the fuck is going on. At some point we are introduced to a fourth sister, Edi, who as it turns out doesn't exist, but this is disclosed in the most cryptically bizarre way and it is so difficult to understand what is happening that it took me going back to re-read to actually get what happened because I thought I'd missed something, and completely ruined the reveal.

Bergstrom also seems to want to sacrifice clarity and legibility for idk, the vibes of ~writing~, I guess, because this book is overburdened with awkward abstract personifications, metaphors and similes. It is crammed so full of them that you can barely read for stumbling haphazardly over yet another incomprehensible metaphor, and by god will Bergstrom be damned to make sure she includes it even if that metaphor makes no fucking sense, to the point where they read as parody. Some very selected highlights:

His smell is like knowledge in her body.

Satisfaction undoes itself on her face.

They still expelled themselves through her as if the constellations of her daughter’s births were glowing through her skin.

He had reinserted himself into the pocket of their marriage one last time to make sure there was nothing left to find in it.

Abigail, with the deepest of respect, you are a literary agent , what the fuck are you actually talking about?

There also seem to be issues throughout with the syntax. At many points it was incredibly difficult to know who was even speaking, because Bergstrom did not think it was necessary to signpost who was talking or performing the action by adding their names, which is truly a challenge when all the characters in the room have she/her pronouns. Sentences are sometimes constructed so awkwardly that it's hard to parse the correct meaning. Through this you get such gems as:

He’s grabbing her arse, rough and groaning.

Which sounds like it's describing the arse, not the man, and frankly for a sex scene I can't think of anything less sexy than a rough and groaning arse?

A final point to make is the epilogue chapter. Everyone has settled down, the drama is over, Ines got her acting gig, and Emma the 2.5-kids-with-a-mortgage-and-white-picket-fence wife has finally divorced her garbage husband and turns up to the family cookout with a girlfriend. I jokingly thought to myself 'this book would be way better if it was gay', and somewhere out there a finger curled on the monkey's paw and brought me this. If I had a penny for every time I saw lesbians used as a prop for ostensibly straight women 'finding themselves' and showing 'growth' I could probably afford my own 2.5 kids and a mortgage. I don't know what the name is for this trope but I do know I hate it, thanks.

I'm not even rating this because it doesn't deserve a whole star. Awful.

[Kate Flannigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so beautifully written. It’s a character driven novel which highlights the relationship complexities between the three sisters and their mum. Will be reading the author’s debut now!

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know what, I really loved this book. I didn’t feel like I needed to rush through to the end to make it be done (which often happens) and I enjoy stories about the complexities of sisterhood. I will caveat that my own sisterhood doesn’t resemble those in this story. But J’adore sisters and unpicking the relationship generally (a sister is a true gift from the universe, love you Flick and thanks for never shagging my boyfriend).

[Lucy Skeet · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

Abigail Bergstrom has done it again!! Wow I loved this one. It’s so different to What A Shame but just brilliant. The way she managed to write this blows my mind. I’ve seen some people on here say that it didn’t flow well but couldn’t disagree more. Out in July, preorder!!

[Silke Drevel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Bergstrom's writing, how she builds characters and unravels trauma in a story. I found the book very moving but there was too much going on for me. Six different points of view, all the different time lines, all the different secrets upon secrets and so much trauma. It was just trying to be too much. It had good bones; interesting characters, the different traumas and of course the beautiful writing but it was difficult to really appreciate it because of the abundance of all of it. It is a shame because I think if she had been more sparingly with the different ingredients, it could have been a great book. And everything she then hadn't used for this book (storylines, characters,etc) could have been the foundation of her next book(s).

[Emer Tannam · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
This kind of book is usually right up my alley, but I didn’t enjoy it. It’s mainly about the relationship between three sisters, and their mother, but the sisters were mostly horrible to each other so it was a dispiriting read. I found the style a bit overwrought too, and the book was basically humourless. Ines wasn’t a very well-drawn character, and a bit of a drip. Considering their disadvantaged background their lifestyles worked out a bit too easily, so it seemed that the author really couldn’t be bothered with fleshing out something more substantial. Two of the sisters depend on their husbands, although one (sister) is trying to be an actor, and the other sister is a wildly successful jewellery maker.
So it was readable and there were some engrossing moments but I didn’t like it too much overall.

[Gabriella Niles-Ewen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book so much!

Favourite quite: She “understood how pearls formed: it only took a tiny organism to invade the shell and co-opt its world, disrupting the peace in the mantle. It was an irritation, something the oyster couldn't shake, a defence mechanism that, over time, layered to form a so-called gem.”

[Helen Temple · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this . The bonds of sisters and of family that are strong but not always unbreakable.
Sometimes I didn’t like the sisters very much sometimes I did but in the end I was rooting for Dylan and Noah.

[Alice Cunniffe · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 75% which i NEVER do !!! i read bad books sometimes and just suffer through but i wasted nearly a month of good cosy winter reading with one of the worst books ive picked up in a very long time

i actually read lines of this out loud to my boyfriend because it was that bad

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abigail Bergstrom ily and your mind so bad

[Kaysha · Rating 3 out of 5]

modern day little women except the first half is boring and the girls are all unlikeable

[Lauren Ayers · Rating 4 out of 5]

really really enjoyed - all about the fucked up trauma bonds of sisterhood

[Charlotte Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars ✨
I loved the writing, the chapter format and how involved in these Welsh sister lives I became.
I was waiting for a big reveal, a big shock or surprise and it never came…but perhaps that was the point.
It depicted complex family life wonderfully.

[Therri Tait · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5

[Ben Dutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abigail Bergstrom's second novel is the story of three sisters in Wales. Ines, Dylan and Gwen navigate life, it's complexities, and their childhood bond stretches into adulthood. Bergstrom's novel shifts through times and perspectives, and the brevity of some of its chapters often gives little time to fully orientate oneself. However, when Selfish Girls pulls itself into a cohesive whole, there is real beauty and honesty here. Bergstrom is a very fine writer, and draws the characters on the page well. The story is engaging and a pleasure to read - it also helps I'm a sucker for novels with a Welsh theme to them (I love to see Cymraeg on the page.).

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

[Elly Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really not sure how I feel about this book. It has given me a stomach ache that I feel as though I need 3-5 business days to process.

This felt like a book of two parts, I enjoyed the writing style but it felt maybe disorganised at times, which made it hard to follow on a couple of occasions. As someone with crippling youngest child syndrome, I did become attached to Ines and had to resist the urge to just like full-body ugly cry for her, that epilogue was a punch to the gut.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Claustrophobic, messy & deeply intimate - how else would you describe family?

Abigail Bergstrom's writing is pacey, and at times a little chaotic, but her description of family, of sisterhood, of motherhood, of love and friendship and heartbreak is so truthful it can be painful to read - in the best way.

I loved this book and could identify with almost all of the characters to some level (Ines however...) I'd definitely recommend.

[zara]

read for work!

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

Very realistic to the way families interact and the issues surrounding each relationship for the most part

I didn’t overly like any of the characters but I think that was the point we were meant to see then at their worst as a sibling would, the way each sister interacted with each other showed how we are often stuck seeing our siblings for who they used to be and not who they are now making it difficult to see clearly when it comes to them

I think some times the characters blended into each other that may have been purposefully done to show how sometimes sisters in particular tend to pick up mannerisms of their sister and take them however in this book it made it so each character kind of felt the same and didn’t have a distinct voice.

I think the mums point of view added very well to the overall story and while I didn’t find it the most interesting it further showed and explained the relationships between the sisters and their mother

I didnt like the way what happened between Dylan, Noah and Ines was treated by the family it was kind of just accepted and not at all condemned Ines was the only one not in the wrong and yet she was kind of the one who was spaced out from the family it just felt weird and not like something than any of the characters would do it felt very out of character

Overall I don’t think this was the overly interesting book however I think it was very well written and very clearly showed the complex dynamic within sister relationships especially when there are multiple sisters

Thank you Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the digital arc

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read. I was quickly pulled into the lives of the Wyn sisters, each with their own distinct voice and frustrations, bound together by the complexities of sisterhood. I could identify with each sister in some way, which made it all the more engaging.

The backstory of their mother, Gwendoline, adds an interesting connection across timelines and gives more depth to the theme of generational trauma. I was intrigued by Edi’s storyline. However, while it has a strong build-up, it seems to end quite suddenly, which felt a little anticlimactic. While I understand the intention - perhaps reflecting the reality of growth and change between sisters - I still wish that thread had been developed a little further.

Bergstrom’s writing is descriptive and compelling. I enjoyed the non-linear timeline and thought the shifting perspectives were done well, though I occasionally had to stop and check which sister I was following (maybe this will be clearer in the formatting of the final release).

Overall, an engaging and thoughtful novel. 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton, and Abigail Bergstrom for the ARC!

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abigail Bergstrom’s Selfish Girls is a compelling exploration of sisterhood, trauma, and the emotional residue of early life. The story of three Welsh sisters, Ines, Dylan, and Emma, is intimate and raw, tracing how childhood fractures echo into adulthood. Bergstrom captures the contradictions of family bonds: how they can both comfort and confine.

The non-linear structure and shifting perspectives add texture, though occasionally require close attention. Gwen’s chapters, while quieter, deepen the generational themes. What stands out most is the emotional honesty with each sister flawed, relatable, and vividly drawn.

This isn’t a story about tidy resolutions. It’s about recognition, survival, and the courage to choose yourself. The author's writing is sharp and emotionally intelligent, making Selfish Girls a thoughtful, resonant read.