THE INTERN

An academic overachiever susses out her professional and romantic futures in this Australian import.

Josie—not quite 18 and full of an overachiever’s occasionally awkward, nervy energy—is dreading an unpaid internship at swanky Sash magazine. It’s just one day a week, so she gamely commutes from her sleepy suburb, staying two nights a week with her charming slacker cousin Tim and his butterflies-inducingly cute roommate, James. Braving the city crowds and her intimidatingly cool fellow interns in an outfit selected by her more stylish younger sister, Kat, Josie decides she must win the competition for the $5,000 the magazine is offering to the intern that exacting Editor-in-Chief Rae deems best of the semester. (Money is tight since her father abruptly left the family, and the winnings would help Josie and Kat’s financially stressed mother keep her head above water.) Josie’s gift as a writer and her guilelessly direct way with a bad-boy pop star launch her journalism career, but the consequences of a drunken night out almost ruin her, professionally and socially. In many ways, Josie is a fairly typical 17-year-old, considerate and selfish by turns, facing important questions about how to behave in her family, peer and collegial relationships. New friendships flourish, old ones evolve, and readers will cheer as their small-town heroine finds her way in the big (unnamed) city.

A solid, appealing debut.