What happens when a nanny starts a passionate, secret affair with the father of the children she is paid to look after? That is the intriguing beginning of the diaryofananny.com which Nadine S wrote over the course of seven months on the internet. Not only does she confide in her internet audience about the confusing double life she is dragged into by her rich, reckless lover, she also tries to come to terms with the drama that is being played out within her own family which pushes everything right to the edge. In her diary Nadine doesn’t shy away from dialogue with her internet readers but in spite of their advice, tips and warnings, her life goes completely off the rails. She gradually sinks deep into a maelstrom of destructive and irreversible situations till there is no way back. Nadine has to recognise the truth: she gambled and lost. But then, in a last attempt to save her doomed life, she gambles one more time.

After reading the diaries of Jude Law’s nanny as printed in the Sun newspaper, the author realised that if only the nanny had been able to write there would be a spectacularly interesting story here. She (Nadine S is a pseudonym) started to write regularly on an internet forum, interspersing the fictitious nanny’s love affair story with the true story of her own mother’s cancer and subsequent euthanasia. Her blog received enormous numbers of visitors, all of them believing they were reading a true story. And it is a story so well told, so multi-faceted and so revealing of the lives of people in their early twenties and thirties today (Nadine is early 20s, her lover in his late thirties. On publication in the Netherlands, the author’s true identity was revealed (she is the well-known author Karin Overmars). Funny, intriguing, revealing and brutally honest about the games people play with others, the highs and lows of life, the humour to be found in the darkest situations and the motivations that drive us, everything about this book touches on issues crucial to the world we live in.

‘A beautiful book. It grabs you immediately. I recommend it to everyone.’ Girlscene

‘5 STARS. Read this book!’ Chicklit.nl

‘The story reads like a soap opera in the first instance but touches on profound themes.’ Mind

‘Karin Overmars writes really well and has a wicked sense of humour.’ Algemeen Dagblad

Rothschild & Bach NL;

Serialisation in The Drawbridge Magazine

Material: Finished copies of the Dutch edition (334pp); sample in English