Everything that happened in the Jacqueline Wilson Girls series

You couldn’t pay us to be a teenager again: the crippling self-doubt, the heartbreaks, the friendship fallouts... Everything felt like the end of the world, and no adult understood what you were going through –  except, perhaps, for Jacqueline Wilson.

Wilson has amassed a legion of lifelong fans because she’s an author who gets it. While the majority of her 100-plus novels are aimed at younger readers, she also penned a series that gained a cult-like following for its depiction of the messy, complicated and occasionally joyous experience of being a teenager. We’re talking about the Girls series: Girls in Love, Girls Under Pressure, Girls Out Late and Girls in Tears.

If you read the series as a child, you’ll probably have a vague recollection of the girls in question: awkward, artistic Ellie; impulsive, gothic Nadine; stylish, boy-obsessed Magda. They were 13 and, over the course of the four books (set in one school year) they fell in love, had their hearts broken, discovered the downsides of alcohol, escaped dangerous situations and remained best friends.

To mark Jacqueline Wilson’s adult sequel, Think Again – which sees Nadine, Magda and Ellie at 40 – we’ve put together a little refresher on everything you need to remember from the Girls series about the trio of best friends.

Ellie

Ellie is the main character in the series – an artistic, sensitive 13-year-old who is still grieving for her mother who died when she was young. She lives with her Dad, her young stepmum Anna and six-year-old stepbrother Benedict (but everyone calls him Eggs). Her Dad, an art professor, is jealous of Anna’s success as a knitwear designer, which causes tension at home. Ellie dreams of being a graphic artist when she’s older.

In Girls in Love, Ellie invents a boyfriend as she’s jealous that both Magda and Nadine have kissed boys. She claims his name is Dan and that he’s a gorgeous older boy. Little do they know, Dan is an over-enthusiastic, 12-year-old family friend.

Ellie’s lies catch up with her when Dan shows up at a party when she’s with Nadine and Magda. She’s initially mortified, but when a bunch of teenagers crash the party and make a scene, Dan comes to the rescue and everyone fawns over him. Later that night, Ellie and Dan kiss – but their relationship is short-lived, as, in the next book, he gets a new girlfriend.

In Girls in Love, we see Ellie constantly criticising her body, but this ramps up in the second book. In Girls Under Pressure, Ellie develops an eating disorder, partly triggered by a stranger saying she is “too fat” to be a model. She skips meals, enters binge-purge cycles, and exercises obsessively.

Ellie becomes friends with a girl called Zoe who is anorexic. When Zoe collapses after suffering from heart failure, Ellie visits her on a psychiatric unit. This frightens Ellie and, although she still has symptoms of body dysmorphia, she starts eating again.

In Girls Out Late, Ellie meets Russell – her first serious boyfriend, who is also an artist. He is a boy with many red flags: he is jealous of Ellie’s friendship with Nadine and Magda, condescending about Ellie’s art, and keeps trying to pressure Ellie sexually.

In Girls in Tears, Russell copies Ellie’s trademark illustration – a cartoon elephant – and submits it into an art competition. Ellie is distraught and enters with a new cartoon character, Myrtle Mouse (partly inspired by her mother’s creation). Famous illustrator Nicky Sharp sends her a letter telling her to be an illustrator when she grows up.

At a party in the fourth book, Ellie gets drunk for the first time. When she wakes up, she finds Magda and Russell kissing on the stairs. At school, Ellie refuses to forgive Magda. Ultimately, however, they make amends when Magda and Ellie unite to save Nadine from an unsafe situation with an older man. Russell sends Ellie an illustration of a ring engraved with the word “sorry” and she forgives him.

Nadine

We all worried about Nadine. She was the one who drove the plot forward throughout the series – often in the most terrifying of ways.

In Girls in Love, 13-year-old Nadine announces she has a boyfriend called Liam, who is 17. She keeps coming into school with love bites and admits that she and Liam have been sexually intimate, but he is pressuring her to have penetrative sex. She considers it but she’s not ready yet.

While on a night out at Seventh Heaven nightclub, Ellie and Magda run into Nadine, who has taken drugs with Liam. In the bathroom, Nadine overhears some girls telling Ellie and Magda to be wary of Liam – he has a pattern of sleeping with really young girls and then dumping them. He even got a girl in Year 9 pregnant and then abandoned her. Nadine overhears this and leaves the club with Magda and Ellie. When she later confronts Liam, he is cruel to her in front of his friends.

In Girls Out Late, Liam returns – this time, dating a Year 8 girl in their school. Nadine warns the girl and makes her see Liam’s true colours.

In Girls Under Pressure, Nadine is scouted to be a model, and a photographer says he’ll take photos for her portfolio for a discount. Ellie warns her against it and the pair fall out. Ultimately, Nadine goes to his studio – but the photographer thinks her younger sister is a better model.

In Girls Out Late, the girls trek to central London to go to a concert, but it’s cancelled. Three older boys claim they’re in a band and invite them back to their house to see them rehearse. Nadine likes the look of one of the boys, so agrees to go with them in their van, and Magda and Ellie reluctantly accompany her.

It soon becomes clear the boys have sinister intentions – the “10 minute drive” takes over half an hour and, when they arrive in the flat, one of the boys locks the front door so they can’t escape. Magda and Nadine pretend to drink beer and smoke weed in the flat, while Ellie pretends to be sick next door so the girls can help her, and they all escape through the window.

The girls are out of danger – but not for long. In the fourth and final book, Nadine starts chatting with someone on an internet chatroom, who claims he is 19. They share intimate messages and agree to meet in person. But when Nadine arrives, she finds a man who’s old enough to be her grandfather. Thankfully, Ellie and Magda are hiding nearby and come to her rescue.

Magda

Magda is the stylish friend, with blonde hair, designer clothes and a borderline obsession with boys. “If there’s one thing Magda likes better than shopping, it’s boys,” Wilson writes in Girls Under Pressure. Case in point: to mask her jealousy that Nadine has a boyfriend in Girls in Love, Magda immediately asks out a boy, Greg, from the boys’ school.

In Girls Under Pressure, Magda starts dating Mick – an older personal trainer, who invites her to watch him play football. After the match, he and Magda go for dinner but, after the meal, he tries to sexually assault her. She manages to push him off but then she bumps into his friends, who threaten to assault her. Thankfully, an older couple come to her rescue.

The experience destroys Magda’s confidence. She cuts off her blonde hair and dyes it brown, trying to blend in, but she feels miserable about how she looks. After some reflection, she decides to go back to her glamorous look: she cuts her hair even shorter and dyes it red. Because why, she wonders, should she have to shrink herself?

In Girls Out Late, Magda has a crush on their new art teacher Mr. Wilson, who has a soft spot for Ellie and her art. Magda keeps hanging back after class to talk to him. One night, she finds his address in the directory, goes to his home and tells him she loves him. He is kind but tells her that she’s too young, and that he has a girlfriend.

In Girls in Tears, Magda and Ellie fall out when Magda kisses Ellie’s boyfriend Russell at a party. She later explains that she felt insecure, thinking the boys were only interested in her for her looks. Ultimately, Ellie forgives her and Russell, and the girls are reunited.

If you’ve enjoyed this nostalgic trip down memory lane and want to know what happened next to the girls, we highly recommend reading the adult sequel Think Again – which sees Magda, Nadine and Ellie navigating the highs and lows of adult life by each other’s sides. The book is out on 12^th September but is available to pre-order now.