Off The Record by Camryn Garrett

Summary:
When Josie, a teen journalist who dreams of life after high school, wins a contest to write a celebrity profile for Deep Focus magazine (think Rolling Stone), her only concern is that her parents insist she bring her sister as a chaperone. But as Josie joins the cast on a multi-city tour and gets to know the subject of her profile, Marius, she senses that something is off. It’s not long before she learns that a celebrated director has been harassing girls on set and apparently getting away with it for a long time. Josie is reluctant to speak up–she’s not sure this is her story to tell. What if she lets down the women who have entrusted her with their stories? What if her big break ends up being the end of her journalistic career? There are so many reasons not to go ahead, but if Josie doesn’t step up, who will?

Review:
Off the Record is an eARC I was gifted after attending a virtual event that this author was a part of. Thanks to NetGalley for providing the eARC. We follow Josie, the youngest of three sisters, who is a journalist. She’s done mostly work for her school newspaper, but she’s also done some freelancing work for magazines. She’s waiting to hear about a few things. One is whether or not she won the celebrity profile for Deep Focus and the other is if she’s been accepted to her dream college. I liked getting to see a bit of Josie with her whole family before she and one of her sisters, Alice, goes off to follow along on the press tour for the celebrity profile. We get to see a bit of why Josie feels the way she does about things mentioned later in the story. I really liked Josie. She’s a loner who doesn’t really have friends. She’s a dedicated writer. She’s also bisexual, fat, and has anxiety. Her anxiety is pretty prevalent throughout the book and I really liked how it was portrayed. We see her try different coping methods where some worked sometimes and others worked better another time. I really liked the anxiety representation.
While Josie and Alice are on the press tour, Josie is interviewing the cast and crew of the movie. She ends up making friends with the two younger members, Penny and Marius. Marius is who Josie is writing a profile about, so the two develop a relationship with all of the time they spend together. Penny and Josie end up friends, which leads to Josie learning about a director who has been sexually harassing women he’s worked with. Josie and Penny start working together to get in touch with others who have been harassed by this director and writing a story about it. I really liked this aspect of the story. It didn’t shy away from the details and really talked about how stuff like this is overlooked in the industry.
Overall, I really liked this one. I liked how we got to see Alice and Josie’s relationship change after they managed to communicate better. I liked the little bit of romance that was included. I also liked that when Josie reacted poorly to someone’s story about this director, she was called on it for saying shitty things. I would definitely recommend this one.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda