Lauren Weisberger

This was absolutely fantastic and I stand by that, even though I started explaining one of the major subplots to a male friend who's into action movies and he kind of looked at me like "what on earth are you on?" Women's fiction, it's great.

This was really sweet, quite funny, and had a great plot to keep the story moving (although I really I would have even enjoyed just reading about their maniacal lives because Weisberger can make anything fun.) I appreciated the female comraderie, though I show more was very concerned about the amount of vaginal plastic surgery that was spoken of frequently.

The references to DEVIL WEARS PRADA were interspersed quite well--the author knows it's been 15 years and that we don't remember every detail, but she's aged up the characters respectively and has thrown in some Easter eggs for those of us who remember.

Thanks, Simon & Schuster, for the e-galley! I think it's time for me to catch up on all the Weisberger books I have yet to read. show less

I daresay i recommended this book all over Facebook and to friends this summer - but didn't share my review here, so time to rectify the situation!!

Emily Charlton might have been my favorite character from The Devil Wears Prada, so this book was a delight! Lauren Weisberger delivers her usual snappy dialogue, in a light, fun, fast paced read. Emily is her snarky self, and we meet two friends: former model Karolina, who gets herself in a bit of a pickle and needs Emily's help as an image show more consultant, and former attorney-turned-stay at home mom, Miriam, who joins the fight to help Karolina. Told alternately from all three points of view and set in the Greenwich, Connecticut, it's filled with the over the top stereotypes of lunching ladies clad in Lululemon and views of ridiculous wealth and privilege.

The story is hilarious, but underlying the humor Karolina is the victim of lies and deception, and the trio handles it in the only way you would expect them to. This is all over the top, eye-rolling fun.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book. All opinions are my own! show less

I don’t think novels like When Life Gives You Lululemons are for me. Actually, I don’t think novels like When Life Gives You Lululemons are very entertaining anymore. I get that the story is supposed to be mocking the very milieu it describes, and yet, given everything that is happening in the world, the story felt inappropriate.

There are two specific areas which bothered me. The first is the obscene amounts of wealth, privilege, and their trappings discussed ad nauseam within the story. show more I get that it is fun to get a glimpse of how the other half lives, and normally I can have some fun with those stories. When Life Gives You Lululemons to me crosses the line between funny to just plain sad. We don’t need examples of people in positions of power abusing that power to affect others. We have that almost every single hour of every single day and have had that every day since November 6, 2016. We don’t need examples of over-the-top birthday parties where all the girls get $300 blowouts. We don’t need to descriptions of cars that cost $100k or people who have nannies and housekeepers and chefs. Most importantly, we do not need another story about someone in power using it to make the life of someone else miserable because it helps him achieve his goals and because he can. Again, we get too much of that in our daily lives to want to read a story about how wealthy the wealthy really are and how the powerful keep trying to screw over the less powerful.

The other area that bothered me is with the obsession with outward appearances. Between Emily mocking those wearing athleisure wear, Miriam bemoaning her baby weight, and Karolina being described as too thin and sexy – all of which occur numerous times throughout the novel, the mystery of why women have body image problems is a mystery no longer. In fact, so strong is the message that being extremely thin is the only way to be happy and have a healthy sex life that I finished the novel feeling deeply uncomfortable about my own body. I began to question my love of leggings as well as what I wear around the house versus in public. Even worse, I felt disgust at my weight. Novels like When Life Gives You Lululemons only perpetuate negative body stereotypes, and I feel like they have no place in this world anymore.

The thing is, while I suspect Lauren Weisberger is mocking the Greenwich community for its first-world, one-percenter problems, I am not certain this is the case. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion When Life Gives You Lululemons is meant to be a supposedly fun glimpse into the lives of the über rich, where we find out they are just like us except with a lot more money and people to do their work for them. This is not The Devil Wears Prada with its story of someone who eventually turns down the trappings of the wealthy and fashionable in order to obtain personal happiness. This is a story specifically about those people Andy left – people who are wealthy and fashionable and, let’s face it, petty. While ultimately all three women have to go down paths previously mocked in order to obtain their happiness, the story is just not the same. It is not inspirational but discouraging on many fronts.

Maybe this type of story is your thing. Maybe I just don’t get the genre. But I cannot ignore the way When Life Gives You Lululemons made me feel both while reading and after I finished it. What is supposed to be amusing is disgusting. Plus, the lesson about opening yourself up to happiness where you least expect it gets lost behind the bombardment of top-tier brand names and unending discussions of weight, clothes, and general physical appearances. The entire story is distasteful on many levels, and it is going to take me a long time to get over the feeling of repugnance I feel just thinking about it. show less

Do you know that feeling when you're turning in an essay and you've written all the points you wants to hit but was still a few hundred words short so you fill your essay with a bunch of filler? This book read like that. I loved the movie and was so excited to read the book but I had to trudge through the title because of how boring, repetitive, borderline offensive, and extremely unlikable the main protagonist was. The movie was a much more entertaining and endearing story.

The main show more character, Andrea, was just as entitled as the antagonist, Miranda, was. At some point in the book they challenged this only to be dismissed and prove it right! The main character whines throughout the whole book about her job but doesn't acknowledge she's miserable because she constantly cuts corners and makes excuses for her shortcoming. She's an awful employee, friend, and girlfriend throughout the whole novel and never once learns anything through her experiences. The most infuriating part was that she got rewarded for it.

If you want to read chapter after chapter about a girl complaining about the high demand job she signed up to do be my guest. If you want to read a book that actively tells you in great detail how to develop an eating disorder while taking pages from the story to convince you a US size 8 is fat be my guest. If you want to read a story where the main character tells you that her Indian roommates are indistinguishable and caused her clothes to reek of curry but simultaneously says they're never home be my guest. If you want to read over a dozen pages displaying stereotype after stereotype about gay men be my guest. This title wasn't for me and I'm so sad I hated it so much. show less