‘Kids Run the Show’ by Delphine de Vigan     (2024) – 297 pages        Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

I am both the very wrong person and the very right person to review ‘Kids Run the Show’. On the one hand, I have never watched a reality TV show except for a few early episodes of American Idol. On the other hand, I share the same disdain and distrust for these reality shows as Delphine de Vigan displays in this novel.

In ‘Kids Run the Show’, young French woman Melanie Klaux started her foray into reality TV as a contestant on “Meet You in the Dark”.

“Would they find love? Three women and three men, all single, convened in a big villa, the men on one side, the women on the other. The only common room was a dark room equipped with infrared cameras, where the particpants were brought to get acquainted in total darkness. They went on to choose a partner they’d be alone together with in the dark room.”

That show lasted only a few episodes before it was understandably dropped. Now, several years later, Melanie is a young mother with two little pre-school children, Kimmy and Sammy. Melanie has set up a YouTube channel, “Happy Recess”, where she posts videos of her and her children on a daily basis. Her channel has become tremendously popular with millions of subscribers tuning in to YouTube to watch these videos. Now Melanie’s husband has quit his job to help with the videos since they make a very good living through company product placements in these videos. The children Kimmy and Sammy have become YouTube stars.

“And in every corner of the planet, hundreds of families were sharing their daily lives with thousands of viewers.”

But is being filmed constantly having adverse effects on these two small children?

One day the kids have a rare opportunity to play with the neighbor kids, and they play hide-and-seek. Sammy who is “it” looks all over for Kimmy but can’t find her. Has Kimmy hid herself really well or has she been kidnapped? When the parents can’t find her, they call the police. Clara Roussel is a young police officer, assigned to the case after Mélanie’s daughter Kimmy is abducted. Several days pass, and Kimmy has still not been found. Does the disappearance of Kimmy have anything to do with those YouTube videos?

I’m not sure that these YouTube family video channels are as big a problem as Delphine de Vigan makes them out to be, but it’s a great plot for a novel and is well executed.

They “have been confronted, from their earliest childhood, with demands no child should ever be subjected to: they are expected to be charming, promote products, respond to fans, manage their image, and so on. Today many of them are paying the bitter price for it all.”

Grade :     A