Started this book before bed to wind down and ended up staying up until 3AM to finish it! Kaplan's novel is witty and made me laugh out loud with descriptions of the main character running to buy absurdly named salads for her boss and the humorous frenemy-type relationships between coworkers; at the same time, I felt her depiction of the mother-daughter relationship in the novel as well as the exploration of the darker workings of Hollywood networks, the many different forms of exploitation at work, to be deeply penetrating and realistic. The novel is fast-paced and delightful to read, definitely one to pick up!

A fresh, interesting and gripping read detailing the difficult lives of interns and assistants at a major Hollywood TV studio. Thank you to Penguin Michael Joseph for sending me a proof copy! I flew through this book! I found the narrator incredibly compelling and it was filled with twists and turns to keep me reading. I love a story about a young woman attempting to carve out her own space in the world, and this one felt incredibly grounded and realistic without pushing into boredom. Kaplan does an incredible job weaving this story, and I’ve already recommended it to colleagues. Looking forward to its publication in August!

Set in the pre-#MeToo era of the 2010s in Hollywood, ‘Not Safe for Work’ follows an unnamed twenty-something narrator who is fresh out of college and starting a new job as an assistant at a television network - a patriarchal industry rife with unequal power dynamics and whispers of sexual misconduct. This is one of those books that can’t be separated from the time it’s set in, as its context of the ‘pre-#metoo and Harvey Weinstein scandal’ era is tantamount for its commentary on the ambivalent workplace politics of the time.   It’s a time when the women in the workplace are expected to just laugh off so-called ‘jokes’ and comments about their appearance, when it should be accepted that ‘sometimes things just go too far’ but should all be forgotten about by Monday morning, when there are countless rumours, and even allegations, about the behaviour of the powerful men in charge, but they remain in their ivory towers regardless.  The novel leaves the reader with a lot of complex questions, none of which can ever truly be answered (at least not simply or without layers of nuance), but it’s definitely a lot to reckon with.  I don’t necessarily think ‘NSFW’ says anything groundbreakingly new about our current sexual politics/the #metoo movement, but it still makes for a compelling read that touches on a lot for such a short book. It’s just a shame that when scrolling through reviews on goodreads, the majority of them are by women, when really it’s men who should be reading books like this.