Louise O'Neill: All we wanted from Love Island was sun, sex and silliness — that's not what we got

After 18 months of lockdown, we were yearning to see a new generation of Bright Young Things in uncomfortable bikinis (they must all have yeast infections) making inarticulate declarations of love

Faye was a volatile character — and I use the word character deliberately.

I remember watching the first iteration of Love Island. It was 2005, I was living in Trinity Halls, and my housemates and I were obsessed with the show — primarily because Rebecca Loos was a contestant, and we were curious to see what charms had allegedly lured Becks away from Posh. I didn’t watch the show when it returned in 2015, this time featuring members of the public rather than ‘celebrities’ but its popularity moved up a gear in 2017 and by the following year, it had become must-watch TV. 

It was two years later that I decided to give in to peer pressure and that was mostly because everyone was talking about the Irish contestant: the one-and-only Maura Higgins. 2019 has been the peak of Love Island’s success to date, with more than six million viewers per episode — the most for any ITV2 broadcast. It introduced the public to an incredible cast of characters — the aforementioned Maura Higgins, whose self-possession, humour, and authenticity has proved impossible to imitate.