Sam O'Reilly lives in Brighton with her husband and two children. A former Cosmopolitan magazine journalist of the year, she is also a runner-up for both the Cosmopolitan short-story prize and the Ian St James Award. Her first novel, The Best Possible Taste, is published by Penguin.

Photo: www.martincox.com

It's 1985. Legwarmers, Goths and Madonna are all the rage, and Netta Royce heads off to Goldsmith College

Bored with living in the shadow of her arrogant sister Jane, she is desperately seeking soul mates. So she falls in with Pilar, an eccentric faux-posh Essex girl, Mel, a wildly hedonistic Greenham person and man-addicted Emily. Netta embraces her new found friendships with gusto, joining Pilar and Melanie on their quest for the perfect one-night stand, quaffing cheap wine, clashing with gloomy peacenik Tom, and even enduring a run-in with the police at Greenham Common.

Women are the mistress race. Men are rubbish. Girls will re-invent the world, and show the unfair sex how it should be done.

And then Netta makes one terrible mistake, which gives the term "sex war" a whole new meaning . . .