Member Review

Margot is the secret daughter of a French politician and a famous actress. In her final year of school, alongside studying for her exams, she meets a journalist and is drawn into an adult world that she doesn't realise that she's out of her depth in, and makes a decision that will change her future.

This is very, very French - not just in the set up of a high profile politician with a secret family (the scenario here has actually played out more than once in France, where being exposed as having a mistress hasn't been a career ender for decades, if ever) but also in style and writing to the point where I went and checked (more than once) if it was actually in translation because the turns of phrase and everything about it felt so much like a French-language novel.

I had some qualms about the journalistic ethics you see on display here, but while I was reading, I went with it. Now I've finished the book, it bothers me even more but that may be because I'm a journalist and sensitive about how the profession is portrayed in fiction/movies/arts as having very few morals and doing whatever it takes to get the story. PSA: journalists shouldn't behave like this, if you find someone who is, then they are a bad actor and you shouldn't cooperate with them. That aside this is an interesting coming of age novel, albeit one with a fairly hard to like cast of characters.