"Daisy Jones and the Six meets Patricia Highsmith in this addictive, intense novel about the brutal and ferocious road to glory, from the award-winning author of My Husband.

Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the years, to everyone's surprise but her own, she overcomes every obstacle and becomes a global superstar with millions of dollars, countless awards, and several Los Angeles villas to her name. But as any celebrity will tell you, getting to the top is one thing; staying there is another.

Now thirty-three years old, Cléo is taking her first real vacation in years, on a remote island with no one else in sight. With the never-ending spin cycle of her life finally on pause and no paparazzi peeking out from behind the coconut palms, she can work on her fourth album in peace. Except that with so much time to think, she can't help but ruminate on her past - including how, just six months earlier, things started to go very, very wrong...

Taking place between New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and the South Pacific, Make Me Famous is a brilliant sophomore novel from Maud Ventura that dives intoxicatingly deep into the machinations of one woman's complicated mind, and her relentless pursuit of fame."

I'm here for the Patricia Highsmith of it all!

Well, this was a delightfully entertaining novel that grew more and more deranged as it reached its surprising conclusion.

3.5 rounded up to 4

I'm a huge fan of Maud Ventura's debut novel, My Husband. You should've seen me advertising it like a used car salesman towards my book club. I thought it was hilarious, fresh, and overall a very entertaining experience. Safe to say I was immensely hyped for this when I saw it was announced.

And it was good. I liked it but I'm not blown out of the water like I was with My Husband.

We follow the story of Cléo, a singer who has decided to take a very remote vacation alone on an island. While there she's recharging, writing her fourth studio album, and is also looking back over her life and how it has spiraled out of control.

There are some very note-worthy conversations to be had over this novel. Fame and the prices you have to pay in order to achieve star status. Maud Ventura does an amazing job showing us Cléo's progression as a person over her career. Her obsession, her anger, her sadness, it's all fascinating seeing it come to head as the novel progresses. Ventura writes obsessive women so well, I can't wait to see what else she has cooking for us in the future.

My issues stem mostly from the last few chapters and how abrupt the epilogue is. What happens is interesting and engaging and I have no issues with the story whatsoever. But with how short the chapters are, everything happens so fast and the climax and ending aren't excluded from that. When it was over I wasn't shocked like I was at the end of My Husband, I was mostly just thinking "that's it?".

Overall, Ventura's sophomore novel is still a worthy successor to My Husband. Even if it falls a little flat towards the end I would still recommend it if you're a fan or even if you're looking for a new lit fic book to read. There's a lot here to keep you engaged and a lot to think about after it's over.

This was smart and sharp and a little too triggering for my tastes, but still another bold and memorable novel from Ventura. I look forward to seeing what she does next.

I was so drawn to the story of Cléo. Though flawed, her passion and drive to becoming famous kept me riveted. Her belief in herself while still acknowledging her many flaws made for a very interesting story, and the end left me wishing for more! I’m a lifelong Ventura fan!

When given an exclusive invite to a remote island for only the most elite celebrities, Cléo, one of the most famous pop stars in the world, decides that she must go. During her three-week stay, with nothing but time on her hands while she writes her fourth album, Cléo reflects on her rise to fame and the price she paid to get to where she is (quite literally, $500,000 for the trip!).

Cléo is one of the most unlikeable characters that I have ever come across in a book. She is narcissistic, selfish, and overall a deeply flawed person, yet I found myself unable to look away. Ventura’s depiction of the rise and fall of stardom made me feel as though I was reading an actual celebrity’s autobiography (although had this been an actual autobiography, I can only imagine the amount of hatred the celebrity would get... yikes!).

I absolutely loved Make Me Famous! I previously read Maud Ventura’s debut novel, The Husband, and while it didn’t quite click for me, I was very surprised by how quickly I devoured this book. Although there were moments where I felt the plot dragging a tiny bit, the ending absolutely made it all worth it. Make Me Famous perfectly captures just how far some will go in the pursuit of success.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperVia for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Maud Ventura is the queen of obsession and insane epilogues. Once I was sucked into this book, I couldn’t put it down.

Cleo was insufferable and miserable but in a way that was fun to read. While I assumed what happened in the epilogue from the beginning, it still felt like a gut punch to read. But also, satisfying in a sick way.

I’ve been so burnt out on famous people in general lately and this book really solidified the reasons why. The phoniness of it all is just too obvious nowadays and I loved the way Make Me Famous spelled that out clear to see. I loved that Cleo stayed consistently unlikable and miserable from before her rise to fame, all the way through.

Truly can’t wait to read what Maud Ventura puts out next.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you NetGalley and the publishing company for an early copy of this book!

Maud Ventura’s writing style is engaging, fast-paced, highly descriptive, and one of a kind. Just like her other novel, My Husband, readers follow along with an unhinged narrator. Moments of this story are hard to read, shocking, appalling, yet captivating and highly intriguing.

The plot is fun and Wattpad-like (imagine you get to hang out with Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift). I loved the connections to real events and people in pop culture. It made the book feel even more real. Also, Ventura did a great job of detailing the demanding life of a celebrity.

The island plot fell short for me. I would have rather read about her life story from beginning to end. The island moments were so sparse that I often forgot she was even on an island (although I do see how it contributed to the plot and made for a twist at the end).

Overall, I would recommend if you’re looking for an unhinged and unique story. Sign me up for Ventura’s future works!

Unfortunately the story fell flat for me and became boring about 65% through the book. I enjoyed it for the time being but I honestly wouldn’t re-read it

This book is all about fame and the consequences that come with it! It is a fictional novel that is about a thirty-three year old woman named Cleo, who always wanted to be famous ever since she was young. This book gave me dark mystery vibes aded with a shock factor. I did not relate to the female main character Cléo. While there are positives about becoming famous, there’s also a lot of negatives that come with it. This book is written in first person point of view . Cléo begins to get obsessed with fame and starts spiraling downwards. Overall, I find this to be a reasonable read and found it to be well written! I give this book a 3 out of 5 stars rating.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Maud Ventura and HarperVia Publishing for this digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book is expected to be published on May 13, 2025!

Thank you to Netgalley and HaperCollins Publishers for this ARC of Make Me Famous.

One thing Maud Ventura knows how to do is write a wildly absurd, unhinged main character. Most times reading this, I didn't know whether to be shockingly amused, downright flabbergasted, or deeply concerned. I felt them all at once sometimes. There were moments the story felt kind of slow and repetitive in Part II specifically, but there were several insightful moments woven into the chaos. I think Part III redeemed the storyline for me. The ending was jaw dropping, heart wrenching, and satisfying. Overall a very enjoyable read! 4.5/5 stars.

First off, I would like to thank @netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC to read and review!

Maud Ventura’s second novel follows an intensely cold French woman, Cléo Louvent, who dreams for glory, fame, and wealth. The novel frequently switches between flashbacks of how Cléo earned her fame to her current whereabouts on a mysterious island. Throughout the novel, Cléo’s apathetic attitude through instances of how she views people with less fame than her, similar-statused colleagues, and her management team. There are instances where she praises her work and how she is so much better than others around her. Cléo’s dedication to achieving her dream is highlighted by how she may react when she feels her work was inadequate and/or the perception of her work through occurrences that are out of her hands.

Make Me Famous was particularly a really fun read for me and there were things within both Make Me Famous and My Husband that imprint what Maud Ventura’s writing style is like. Though this novel is slightly longer than My Husband, it felt particularly short because of how easy it was to get through the chapters. I liked both novels equally and I think they both highlight two female main characters that are unwell. But what sets Cléo apart from the unnamed narrator of My Husband is how well Cléo is fleshed out. She is a character full of personality and flaws that highlight the plot of the store. I also incredibly appreciate the unreliable narrator trope which is not out right the case in Make Me Famous but as Cléo becomes angrier and vicious towards herself and others, she begins to align with the trope.

4.5/5

Cléo Louvent knew who she was from a very early age. As the daughter of a French statistician and an American Egyptologist, Cléo’s main passion is to become a famous singer. She understands that to make it in this cutthroat industry, she must be ruthless and make sacrifices to get to the level that she wants. Written in first-person, Make Me Famous is a deep dive into Cléo’s head as we go through her journey into stardom from struggling to have a viral video on TikTok to selling out arenas on world tours. Now that she’s a household name, Cléo decides to go on an exclusive retreat to a remote island to escape the paparazzi and rush of day-to-day life as a celebrity to focus on writing her fourth album. With no connection to the outside world, Cléo has nothing to do but reexamine her past and how she got to where she is today, including how six months earlier, things started going downhill for her when she hit her breaking point.

I loved Maud Ventura’s debut novel, My Husband, so when I saw she had another book coming out about a narcissistic French woman, I could not wait to get my hands on it! It’s clear that one thing Ventura knows really well is how to write an objectively bad character so humanely that we, as the reader, can almost understand their selfishness and manipulation as a means to an end. Cléo is a terrible!!!! person but I still couldn’t help but love her and found her kind of relatable.

One of my favorite things about the book is just how much research went into the life of a pop star and its generalizability to our real world. Obviously the story was about this fictional Cléo Louvent, but anyone versed in today’s music culture can point out the allusions to our current pop girlies like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan. That made it all the more enjoyable for me, imagining if sweet little Miss Espresso was actually a raging tyrant behind the scenes. References to how singers don’t make money from album sales anymore but instead create makeup lines had me cackling at the Rare Beauty shade of it all.

My one gripe is that I feel that it ended a little too abruptly. As with My Husband, you get a mic-dropping moment in the epilogue that reframes the entirety of the story, and although I think that it was great karma, I wish that we got to see the fallout from it.

Overall, Ventura does it yet again with a quick and fun read! Gripping from beginning to end, if you’re a fan of morally grey female characters, this is definitely the one for you. Merci beaucoup to Netgalley, HarperVia, Maud Ventura, and Gretchen Schmidt for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for this ARC!

I was a big of My Husband and I was excited to read more by Maud. Her writing pulls you right into the life of our main character, Cléo. We get to see her rise to fame as a famous singer and how much she will do to become a star.

I sometimes found Cléo to be insufferable, but I believe that was the point. The ending blew me away and was a cherry on top of a great story.

Highly recommend to lovers of music and celebrity culture!

I absolutely loved Maud Ventura’s first book, My Husband, and I was thrilled when I received an e-ARC of her second, MAKE ME FAMOUS. Although it’s very different than My Husband, I enjoyed it just as much.

This story follows Cléo, who is in self-imposed exile on a remote island, completely cut off from the world. While there, she recounts her ascension from dreaming of fame during her girlhood in Paris to eventually becoming one of the most famous singers in the world.

Cléo is not a likeable narrator - at all (honestly, that’s putting it lightly). At one point in the book, she googles herself to see if she meets the definition of a sociopath because of her lack of feeling.

But even though Cléo is truly reprehensible at times, I kept coming back to something Michael Hobbes said on the You’re Wrong About podcast: fame is abuse. I’m not surprised that the author cites the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana as one of her reference points. I often think about how trapped someone with that level of fame must feel. You can’t go anywhere without being “on,” because someone is always watching. People always thinking you owe them something - a favor, a selfie, a kind interaction. Cléo behaves horribly, but also: the world is sort of awful to her. It’s no excuse for her behavior, but I hope this book will make make some people re-examine their relationship with celebrities.

I loved this! It read like a thriller (and there is one twist!) but also made me think. Five stars!

WHEW! Maud Ventura, author of the hit MY HUSBAND, is back with MAKE ME FAMOUS, a completely different book but with the same unique vibe and writing style. Following the inner voice of a French-American woman who desperately wants to be famous at all costs, the reader is taken on a roller coaster of psychopathic behavior as she makes it happen. Cleo becomes a pop star, but she would have been fine being any type of famous. Celebrity is her ultimate goal, and boy does she achieve it.

I thought at first this was going to be about a singer in the 20th century, but it is very much contemporary. I was trying to figure out who would be as famous as Cleo in the real world, and the only person I can think of is Taylor Swift (even though she is mentioned in the book). It's hard to be as famous as Cleo is these days, since we no longer have a monoculture, so it was hard trying to find similarities but I suppose in the end, I should have just suspended my disbelief. It's fiction!

It seems like Ventura's calling card will now be a fun twist in the last chapter of the book, because she does it again in MAKE ME FAMOUS. It may not be as satisfying as the fun twist in MY HUSBAND, but I will say I definitely didn't see it coming and it just made me want the book to be longer - I need to know what happens! It's a light book, though dark in tone because of Cleo and her obsessive personality (I think her and the wife in Ventura's debut would def be friends, or mortal enemies). I can see this being a hit (pun intended!)

Last year, I read the author’s DEBUT novel, “My Husband”, and despite a low average rating on Goodreads, I was part of a “niche audience” who found the glimpse into this particular French marriage, utterly fascinating. So, I was excited to see that award winning author Maud Ventura had a new novel translated from French to English.

Both book covers feature a glamorous Parisian woman, wearing signature red lipstick.💄

And, they share some other similarities as well…

In “My Husband”, we have an unlikable, narcissistic French Wife, who is OBSESSED with her husband, and shares the story of her marriage with us in the first person POV.

In “Make Me Famous” we have an unlikable, Narcissistic French/American Pop Star who is OBSESSED with FAME (and herself) who shares with us, in the First Person POV, the story of her rise and fall in the brutal World of Music.

Both books also feature a “MIC DROP” final scene as the book closes!

“My Husband” earned 5 stars from me because I was fascinated by the dynamics of the marriage and remained curious throughout the narrative about where the story was going.

“Make Me Famous” earns 3 stars from me because I am NOT as intrigued in the ups and downs of the Celebrity lifestyle, and this reads like a self indulgent Memoir, shared by our Pop Star Cléo from a Private Island where she is vacationing alone to recharge and write her next album. 💿

Which subject captures your fancy more, will determine which of the two books you prefer.

Expected Publication Date: May 13, 2025

Thank You to Harper Via for providing a gifted ARC through NetGalley. As always, these are my candid thoughts!

i read this as an arc from Netgally.

i would rate this a lower three stars. there were parts i was very interested in and felt like i couldn't put down the book but those parts were much smaller than the duller parts. as soon as i would put this book down i would have to force myself to pick it back up, hence why it took so long for me to finish.

i was so much more interested in what was happening in present time on the island than what her past was. I think i personally would have liked it more with more present time chapters and then flash back chapters in between.

the main character: cleo, is insufferable!! she just shocked me how much worse she was getting! and that was her exact point so for that, bravo! she was truly a rotten human. i mean seriously it was hard to read at times with how awful she is.

i liked my husband much more than this, but i will still be reading maud venturas books that come out after this. i just think that the formatting of how much past POV we got is what threw me off this book. it is well written and beautifully translated.


i also was not a fan of the ending. realistically i ask: how. it made me suspend my belief further than the rest of the book was having me, so it threw me off. i think there could have been a better way to reveal what's been happening than what was written.

i would say this one is definitely not for everyone but i see how a lot of people will enjoy this.

3.5 stars rounded up.
Make Me Famous is a grappling novel that takes place inside the deranged and obsessed mind of an A star singer-songwriter. Like Maud Ventura’s other work, My Husband, her strong suits are incredibly similar in this novel.
Ventura has a talent for writing nuanced and complex characterizations of female protagonists. If there’s one person I’d trust to write an enthralling villain you can’t help but root for, it’s Ventura. The highlights of the book were definitely Cléo as a whole and the detailed descriptions of her material possessions.
Make Me Famous, much like My Husband, suffers from pacing issues. The first 2 acts are delectable and really propel the story forward and in theory should’ve set the precedent for an excellent ending. However, I found the ending to be quite rushed and not nearly as fleshed out as I would’ve liked it to be. It simply does not match the rest of the novel as a whole. And it unfortunately diminishes the integrity of the novel.
Nonetheless, Make Me Famous is a very engaging read that’s difficult to put down. Ventura has an incredible future and so much potential to harness. I’m humbled to have been able to read this as an advanced copy and I can’t wait to read more from her soon. Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins for the wonderful opportunity.

After reading My Husband, I knew I had to get my hands on Maud Ventura's newest novel. I think she purposely makes her characters unlikable but that works for me! I felt like the main character was self righteous and I can't deny that she was driving me crazy in the first quarter of the book but then all of the sudden it just worked. Maud Ventura will be an auto buy/auto read for me from now on.