Bonding

Electrifying, sharp, and darkly funny, Mariel Franklin’s first novel, Bonding, is a story of sex, tech, and pharmaceuticals in the tangle of our digital age.

Adrift in her early thirties, Mary is exhausted by an endless cycle of casual relationships and unstable work. When she loses her job, she books a spontaneous trip to Ibiza and meets Tom, a brilliant chemist on the verge of launching a new antidepressant: a drug called Eudaxa that claims to be able to cure the anxieties of modern life. Back in London, Mary runs into the volatile and driven Lara, who has channeled her ambitions into Openr, an innovative dating app designed to revolutionize the industry. Mary and Lara have a complicated past, and as Mary begins working for Openr and falling for Tom, tech and pharma collide with shocking consequences, forcing her to question what love and success mean in a world that is hurtling out of control.

Mariel Franklin lives and works in London. She has an MA in English from Edinburgh University and later went on to study fine art at Goldsmiths. After graduating, she spent several years working in data administration in the tech industry. Bonding is her first novel.