Solitaire

"Nothing. I am a vacuum. I am a void. I am nothing."

That's how Tori Spring describes herself on page fifteen of Alice Oseman's *Solitaire*. She's a seventeen-year-old returning to sixth form after Christmas break, and she wants you to know exactly what you're dealing with: a girl who has emptied herself out. No interests worth mentioning. No enthusiasm to fake. No point in pretending otherwise.

But here's the thing about vacuums. They don't stay empty forever.

Tori's bleak self-assessment lands in the middle of a conversation she's having with her best friend Becky, who's just asked what Tori wants to do with her life. The question is ordinary enough. Most teenagers get asked it. Most teenagers mumble something vague about university or travel or "figuring things out." Tori can't even muster that. She's not being dramatic for effect. She genuinely believes there's nothing inside her worth sharing.

This opening establishes the central tension of the entire novel: Tori Spring has built a fortress out of indifference, and she's convinced herself it's the only honest way to live.

The setting reinforces her worldview. Higgs School's sixth form is a world of casual cruelties and meaningless chatter. Her friends debate whether actor Michael Cera is attractive. They argue about who's most internet-famous. They talk about boys and parties and clothes. Tori watches them the way you'd watch fish in an aquarium—curious but disconnected, behind glass. She describes it as "watching them through a dirty window." The dirt is hers. She knows that. She just doesn't know what to do about it.

Then something breaks the routine.

On the first morning back, Tori finds a sticky note on her locker. It points to another. And another. The trail leads her to an abandoned computer room with old machines from the 1990s, where the final note displays a single URL: Solitaire.co.uk. She opens the site. It's blank.

A boy with thick glasses appears behind her. He's followed the same trail. He introduces himself as Michael Holden, and he claims someone sent him looking for Tori. She doesn't know him. She doesn't know the boy who sent him. But she's suddenly part of something—a mystery, a game, maybe a trap.

The Solitaire blog doesn't stay blank for long.

Within days, it starts pulling pranks. First, it interrupts an assembly by projecting a video of the deputy head, Mr. Kent, photoshopped onto various *Star Wars* characters. The video ends with the Solitaire URL. Then it starts blasting songs on repeat over the school speakers. Then it releases cats into the hallways. Each prank is small, almost playful. But there's something unsettling beneath the surface. The blog's subtitle reads "Patience Kills." Whoever's behind it seems to be building toward something bigger.

Tori should walk away. She's built her entire identity around not caring. Getting involved would mean admitting she cares about something—the mystery, the pranks, maybe even the strange boy who keeps showing up. But she can't stop thinking about it. The blog feels personal, like it was designed specifically for her. And maybe it was.

Meanwhile, the world keeps pressing in. Her younger brother Charlie is struggling with an eating disorder and other mental health issues. Her parents are emotionally distant. Her best friendship with Becky is fraying at the edges. And Lucas, an old childhood friend, keeps trying to reconnect, forcing Tori to confront who she used to be before she became a "vacuum."

The novel opens with a girl who has chosen emptiness as a survival strategy. She's not dramatic about it. She's not secretly yearning for rescue. She's made peace with the void. "I am going to die someday," she declares in the first pages, and she means it as a statement of fact, not a cry for help.

But vacuums have a way of getting filled. The sticky notes, the blog, the boy with thick glasses who grins too violently—they're all pulling at her edges. And somewhere beneath the indifference, something is stirring.

The question that drives the rest of the novel is simple: What happens when someone who believes they're nothing starts to feel something again?