If you can remember the Bill Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky
scandal that was big news 15 years ago, you will find this
book reminicsent of those events. The book is staged in an
election year, so there are plenty of politics involved, and
not just by the way of the characters workplace.
Jamie has come from a strained family life. Her father's
battles with alcohol and her sister Erica's temperament
leaves
her mother pulled thin between them, and Jamie craving
attention from anyone.
Authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus plunge readers deep
into the mind of Jamie, a 22 yr old recent college graduate
who has had troubled finding a paying job. However on the
recommendation from a friend's mother, she has been given an
intern position at the White House. During a government
shut-down, she finds herself in the arms of the world's most
powerful man, Gregory Rutland, the President.
Then her world is turned upside down when someone close to
her exposes the relationship between Jamie and Greg. When
everyone she is close to is pulled into the investigation,
their lives literally ruined, Jamie is still holding on to
that sheer hope that Greg will come and save her. Her
naivety is huge and she doesn't really realize that her
actions, however small and limited they may have been, has
destroyed everything not only in her life, but in those
close to her as well.
THE FIRST AFFAIR is a quick read. The beginning is a bit
hard
to get into, but once you are a quarter of the way into the
book, things begin to pick up. The ending is the best part.
I say that because in the last chapter, you see just how
much she and her family have grown and matured through her
entire ordeal.
Jamie McAlister has resigned herself to the fact that in
this job market, her painfully expensive degree might
only get her a position at Starbucks, when she suddenly
lands a prestigious internship at the White House. Although
she doesn’t hit it off with the other interns—lockjaws who
come from so much money that ten weeks without a paycheck
doesn’t faze them—she is eager to work hard and make the
best of the opportunity while it lasts.
An
unexpected encounter late one evening with the charismatic
President Gregory Rutland seems like just a fleeting
flirtation, but when he orchestrates clandestine meetings
and late-night phone calls, their relationship quickly
escalates. Jamie knows what she is doing is wrong: he’s
married, he has kids, he’s the President. Yet each time she
tries to extricate herself, Greg pulls her back in.
With the conflicted desires of the most powerful man in
the world driving her to her breaking point, Jamie can’t
help but divulge intimate details to those closest to her.
But she must have confided in the wrong person, because she
soon finds herself, and everyone she cares about, facing
calculated public destruction at the hands of Greg’s
political enemies, and—perhaps no matter how much he cares
about her—at the hands of Greg himself.