Chasing Harry Winston: A Novel
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend The bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada and Everyone Worth Knowing returns with the story of three best friends who vow to change their entire lives...and change them fast.Emmy is newly single, and not by choice. She was this close to the ring and the baby she's wanted her whole life when her boyfriend left her for his twenty-three-year-old personal trainer -- whose fees are paid… Product details and pricing info |
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122 Customer Reviews Posted
- Chasing Harry Winston dazzles!
- This was absolutely the best end of summer read! It was light, fun and amusing, not to mention easy to read -- I read it in one day! I've given this title five stars because it did what Ms. Weisberger intended -- it entertained and I felt as if I got what I paid for.
- 2008-09-21, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Really bad
- This was a truly terrible book. The story line was very formulaic, nothing here that hasn't been written in MANY other chick lit books. The characters are one-dimensional, and the reader is left not liking/relating to any of them. The author's propensity to fall back on vulgarity and swearing is really pitiful. I'll never understand why authors feel the need to pepper their manuscripts with cursing and swearing. It's very distasteful. I enjoyed "The Devil Wears Prada", but this book was really awful. I wouldn't recommend it at all.
- 2008-09-21, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Same Old, same old...
- Every chick lit book has the same sort of format: a 20 to 30 something girl (or girls) with one or more dilema - in her love life, her job, or in her diet, most likely. The only thing that seperates good chick lit from bad one is how well written the story is. We love our chick lit when we can identify with the protagonist, while laughing at the extremes that she reaches in attempting to work out what she needs to work out - which is actually pretty similar to what we have to deal with in our real lives. Originality, of course, is also a must - while avoiding the pitfall of too extreme plot twists (especially towards the end of the book). And let's not forget the lessons the protagonist learns by the end of the book, which make the ending so satisfying (& usually happy) for us.
This isn't the case here. All three girls seem to already have a charmed life right in the beginning of the book: they all have good jobs, no money problems, no problems attracting guys (& very eligible guys, at that), they all look more than reasonably well, they all have great friends. So all their problems seem to be small & petty, and don't really require that much whining over. And what's even worse - they all do the most shallow & predictable things in order to get their lives "in order", and I hadn't felt that any of the, grew or came up with any conclusions after all those trials & experiences they went through... - 2008-09-20, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Chasing contrived plot details and hackneyed characters.
- This book is a major departure for Lauren Weisberger-- in that it is terrible to the point of nearly being unreadable. Don't get me wrong-- I don't take my chick lit too seriously. If a book has a pink cover with stilettos on it, there's a slight chance it might have reasonably good writing and character development, but usually the best you can hope for is a cheesy but fun, quick read. This book, however, crosses the threshold from silly to painful. The characters are one-dimensional, stereotypical, and derivative of every other mainstay of chick culture-- she might as well have named Adriana Samantha. Oh, and the way that she defined one of her characters as ethnic-- she made her say "querida" in every other sentence, because you know, that's how Latinas talk. And by the way, I live in NYC, and it's not too often that you stumble across world famous actors/ directors/ sportscasters/ authors who are just dying to go out with you. Or, for that matter, that you suddenly get movie deals dropped into your lap. I was also annoyed by the title, which as it turns out, applies only vaguely to only one character-- it's almost as if she chose the title because she thought it sounded good and not because it had any huge relevance to the book.
But perhaps what drove me the most crazy was how they kept waxing poetic about how old they are. The characters are all 29 year-olds who turn 30 over the course of the book, and they all act like they're turning 60. In one scene, they're out to dinner celebrating one of their 30th birthdays, and the waitress says something to the effect of "I hope I look like you when I'm your age." The characters roll their eyes, saying the waitress couldn't be older than 24, as if that were a zygote in comparison to their many years. Because in the six years between 24 and 30, you go from being a naive cheerleader to being a mature, condescending crone. The book was peppered with phrases like "when you get to be our age, you rush into marriage for the wrong reasons" [paraphrased] and it just wore on me after a while. I'm 29 myself, and it just doesn't fit with reality.
If you're so desperately curious and need to read this book, please, do yourself a favor, and visit your local library. - 2008-09-20, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- So cliche, not even in a so bad its good way
- I hated this book, the 3 women are something out of a bad lifetime movie. I did read the Devil WP which I liked but that was probably due to the fact that it was the authors life experiences. There are much better books out there with women being written as 3 dimentional characters not this one though. Seriously skip it!
- 2008-09-19, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
