Solitaire

Alice Oseman

Solitaire follows Tori Spring, a cynical, depressed teenager at a British secondary school, whose life is upended when a mysterious group called Solitaire begins staging escalating pranks at her school. As she investigates alongside the eccentric, relentlessly cheerful Michael Holden, Tori is forced to confront her own numbness and isolation. The novel is also the origin story for Nick and Charlie, the couple later central to Oseman's Heartstopper series, with Tori's younger brother Charlie appearing here as a secondary character.