Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The New Girl | 2020 | Harriet Walker | Buy |
| 2 | The Wedding Night | 2021 | Harriet Walker | Buy |
The New Girl opens with a situation many readers will recognize: a woman who has built her professional identity carefully over years suddenly finds it destabilized by someone younger, more polished, and apparently effortless. Harriet Walker uses this setup to examine how much of professional confidence rests on external validation and comparison rather than any internal security. The office setting is drawn with precision, and the narrator’s growing suspicion of her new colleague carries the book into genuinely unsettling territory.
The Wedding Night moves the action to a sun-drenched hotel in the south of France, where a group of old friends gather for a wedding that none of them are fully comfortable attending. Old resentments surface, loyalties shift, and Walker uses the isolation and artificial intimacy of a destination wedding to put her characters under pressure. The two novels can be read in either order, though The New Girl came first and readers new to Walker might find it the more immediately accessible entry point.