Randi Fuglehaug, Anne Gunn Halvorsen and Esra Caroline Røise - Selected Title Authors

Randi Fuglehaug and Anne Gunn Halvorsen

What is your book about?

Starlet is about five young, ambitious teenagers who start a pop group. But the girls all have very different personalities, and just like their biggest inspiration – the Spice Girls – they don’t always get along. Will this new group be all about girl power – or will it only be girl drama?

The first book follows Helene, who has been famous on the internet since birth with an influencer for a mom. Now that she’s starting junior high, Helene no longer wants to be “Hellybaby” on her mother’s channels. She just wants to be herself. Helene secretly dreams of singing onstage – but doing it together with her enemies can quickly turn into a nightmare…

What inspired you to write this book?

We’ve previously collaborated on eight books in the YA series Royalteen, which revolve around the world surrounding a fictional pair of royal twins. When we set out to start a new series, we wanted to place the story in a different, yet still sometimes glamorous, setting: the music industry. Many young people dream of becoming pop stars, and in our digital and global reality, the road to success can be shorter than ever before. But how do you balance ambition and dreams with the everyday challenges of being a teenager: strict parents, demanding schoolwork, faltering friendships, and painful jealousy? That’s what we wanted to explore in Starlet.

Esra Caroline Røise

What inspired you to illustrate this book?

To me, the shift from childhood into adolescence is a particularly intense period. It’s a time of upheaval, when big and overwhelming emotions are felt (and tackled) for the very first time. It’s a period of deep vulnerability, and of searching for identity – a kind of beginning on the road toward becoming the person you want to (or think you should) be.

Teenagers, maybe especially girls, are complex and difficult and funny and strange. Creating something for them in that phase of life is incredibly inspiring, and I do it with the greatest respect.

I loved reading when I was young, and I hope this book can help foster a joy of reading, strengthen identity, and create a sense of representation – not to mention help people understand that it’s perfectly okay to feel different.

I was inspired by my nieces, who are now 12 and 14, and by my own experiences as a teenager.

Read more

See full presentation of the book here

Read more about the authors here
And more about the illustrator here

See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2025 here