Chasing Harry Winston By Lauren Weisberger

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 by Emmy. With her plans for the perfect white wedding in the trash, Emmy is now ordering takeout for one. Her friends insist an around-the-world sex-fueled adventure will solve all her problems - could they be right?

Leigh, a young star in the publishing business, is within striking distance of landing her dream job as senior editor and marrying her dream guy. And to top it all off, she has just purchased her dream apartment. Only when Leigh begins to edit the enfant terrible of the literary world, the brilliant and brooding Jesse Chapman, does she start to notice some cracks in her perfect life...

Adriana is the drop-dead-gorgeous daughter of a famous supermodel. She possesses the kind of feminine wiles made only in Brazil, and she never hesitates to use them. But she's about to turn thirty and - as her mother keeps reminding her - she won't have her pick of the men forever. Everyone knows beauty is ephemeral and there's always someone younger and prettier right around the corner. Suddenly she's wondering...does Mother know best?

These three very different girls have been best friends for a decade in the greatest city on earth. As they near thirty, they're looking toward their future...but despite all they've earned - first-class travel, career promotions, invites to all the right parties, and luxuries small and large - they're not quite sure they like what they see...

One Saturday night at the Waverly Inn, Adriana and Emmy make a pact: within a single year, each will drastically change her life. Leigh watches from the sidelines, not making any promises, but she'll soon discover she has the most to lose. Their friendship is forever, but everything else is on the table. Three best friends. Two resolutions. One year to pull it off. Chasing Harry Winston

I got this book from the library. I quite enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada and wondered what the author was writing now. I wish I hadn't.

Now I suspected as much, but I still had to double check to find out that Harry Winston was an American jeweler, and the Harry Winston empire is known for diamonds. Uh Oh.

Quick plot synopsis (some minor spoilers): three women, each around 29. They are friends. Leigh is an overachieving and not overly successful editor at a publishing house who is dissatisfied with her romantic relationship, so she screws the author of the book she's editing. Adrianna is Brazilian American. She doesn't work, lives in her parents' apartment in Manhattan and literally screams and throws tantrums when they want to stay in their own apartment when they come to visit. Emmy has recently been broken up with after a 5 year relationship. The guy, Duncan, leaves her to be with a 22-year old virgin cheerleader (??) and Emmy is surprised and upset even though they guy cheated on her throughout their relationship. Her solution? To take a job traveling and have sex with as many men as she can.

Now, I appreciate all kinds of literature, and this includes what we call 'chick lit'. I loved Bridget Jones, The Shopaholic series, and many more. I even like teen chick lit, like Gossip Girl and the Au Pairs. It's all good, silly fun, and can even be clever in some cases.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in terms of Chasing Harry Winston. Technically, the book didn't work. It jumped all over the place and ended abruptly. It seemed as though Weisberger was trying to write like Candace Bushnell, with less than desirable results. Even though it was a short read, I found myself finding it hard to get through it; The three main characters are superficial in terms of character development and still unlikeable. They are always talking about how 'old' they are and bitching about not having a 'rock' on their finger. Leigh has a boyfriend who seems like one of the only decent characters in the story, yet she cringes at the thought of being with him any longer. He proposes to her, and instead of telling him she doesn't want to marry him, she acts like a bitch for months, and then cheats on him. Lovely. Adrianna doesn't contribute to the story. We just hear about how hot she is and how she could get any man even though she is 'almost thirty'. The author has stereotyped her ethnicity to the point of ridiculousness. It drove me nuts. She said querida in almost every sentence she uttered. You know, because that's the way all Brazilians have to speak.

I found the book more than a little insulting as a woman. It's unsettling that Weisberger has fed the false notion that a woman is virtually useless once she turns thirty if she hasn't landed a man and a rock. Emmy's character is absolutely obsessed with getting married and having a baby. In one cringe-worthy scene, a waiter asks if she would like anything else, and Emmy replies, A husband? A baby? Some sort of life? Any of THOSE on the menu? How embarrassing. What decade are we in here? A woman's sexual liberation is great as well, but when Emmy decides to sleep with people to get over her boyfriend, all she does is refer to herself as a slut, calling her new way of being the 'Tour de Whore (ew). Thank you, Ms. Weisberger, for giving us another nice big step back. If a man had written this book, people would have been outraged!

I guess I don't have to say that I don't recommend this book. Fiction, Chick Lit By page nine, I had already laughed out loud and at page 38, I already LOVED Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger.

It's the story of three best friends: Emmy, Adriana and Leigh and a year in which they plan to change their lives. Set in New York, focussing on dating and sex, you can't help but compare it to Sex and the City but it isn't a carbon copy nor are the similarities a bad thing.

I found Chasing Harry Winston highly entertaining and incredibly easy to read. The characters are all likeable and the plot unfolds pleasantly. If you want a high-brow Pulitzer’s contender, then this isn't the book for you but if you want an easy, fun and fabulous Summer read, I highly recommend Chasing Harry Winston. 288 I’m going to go right ahead and start by saying that this book????



Chasing Harry Winston is about three almost 30s in various stages of relationships. Emmy has recently been dumped by her longtime boyfriend who she had every intention of marrying and birthing many of the babies with. Adrianna is a playa playa (!) who can’t be tied to one man. And Leigh has been dating the same fella for a year . . . but mainly because it’s easier to do that than break up with him. The plot here revolves around Emmy and Adrianna daring each other to switch up their respective lifestyles for a year. Emmy will become seasoned at one-night stands and Adi will have a rock on her finger. Leigh will â€" well I guess she was just supposed to be along for the ride.

I have loved (and I mean looooooooved) nearly everything by Lauren Weisberger. Her newest release missed the mark a bit, but I still enjoyed it. This, however? It was pretty awful. The characters were not likeable much at all, it was dated, and the plot was thin at best. I think it was an attempt at going for some Sex and the City vibes and sex positivity, but it sadly missed the mark.

That being said, I was not in the mood to read much of anything and have been struggling with daily pounding headaches that could be a result of eye strain, the need for new glasses, ponytail holders that pull too tight in all the wrong places or maybe a combo of the three. Something brainless like this was definitely what the doctor ordered, it’s just unfortunate it wasn’t the caliber of The Devil Wears Prada or When Life Gives You Lululemons.
Fiction, Chick Lit Adriana, Emmy and Leigh are best friends living in Manhattan, New York.

Adriana - The Brazilian goddess, the ultimate slut socialite who will sleep with just about anything male.

Emmy - The flat-chested serial monogamist who had been dumped by her five-year boyfriend for a virgin cheerleader (like I would believe that for a minute!).

Leigh - The obsessive and compulsive one with lots of issues despite having perfect everything i.e boyfriend, job, place... or so her friends thought.

One day, the two of them made a pact of changing their lives in a year. Adriana is to settle with ONE guy while Emmy will sleep around as she trot around the globe within a year. Leigh? Well, she has it all, no? The perfect boyfriend every women drool upon, the job with one of the top publishers, a place of her own with lots of space, unlike Emmy's. And she has this No-Human-Contact every Monday night.

It is the story of 3 not-so-young women in the big city. Each with their own issue and conflicts.

Coming from Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada), I was expecting a good read, if not a great one. The result: DISAPPOINTING! It was a HUGE letdown for me as I went through page by page. It's like reading a novel wrote by a lazy and amateurish author! There's nothing interesting or anything remotely new in this novel. It's bland. It's meaningless. It's just downright stupid. Even the title doesn't fit the story. At all.

I have only one word for this novel: BLEARGH!!! Lauren Weisberger Three best friends. Two resolutions. One year to pull it off.

After reading The Devil Wears Prada and not being overly impressed, I read the blurb for this and it actually sounded rather fun. Very Sex and the City (show) style and I thought why not read this?

Well, turns out it was a mistake to read this because even though the plot sounded great at first and I started with great gusto, all my gusto started to simmer down soon after. Yes, I expected the characters to be totally immature and shallow but this was another level of being stupid and shallow. Three best friends it says and even after by the end of the book, I wasn't convinced of their friendship.

It was supposed to be witty and clever but I just got bored and rolled my eyes a lot and groaned in frustration. I really wanted to love this but I couldn't. I can't even recommend this to anyone.

1 star Fiction, Chick Lit

So far this book is like a martini topped with mini marshmallows.

Update: I'm past the halfway point and the book is now a martini topped with marshmallows poured over a steaming pile of dog excrement.

Update the second: I retract my earlier statement, as it is demeaning to the martini. Martinis are fabulous and should never be associated with dreck like this. It is, however, like marshmallow-dotted dog poopie, as it is cloyingly sweet, fluffy, and a real stinkeroo.

Update the third: WARNING. I am not going to mark this review as spoilerific, because I'm assuming that after the above comments no one wants to read the book anyway. And if you do still plan to read this, well then, you're an idiot and deserve to be spoiled.

Adriana, Leigh, and Emmy are best friends in New York who are about to turn thirty. Adriana is the wealthy daughter of a former supermodel (even though the term supermodel wasn't really coined until the nineties), has no job, lives in her parents' NY penthouse apartment, and sleeps with any man who looks at her. Not because she's insecure, mind you. She's just that beautiful. Leigh is a book editor with the perfect apartment and sportscaster boyfriend but she's suffering from panic attacks and some kind of strange OCD-like symptoms. Emmy is a serial monogamist who has just broken up with her boyfriend of 5 years.

The girls decide to shake things up. Adriana pledges to settle down within a year, Emmy wants to whore it up all across the globe, and Leigh wants to do something (she just doesn't know what).

The novel alternates between characters. Adriana whines about no one taking her seriously, Leigh whines about her job and her boyfriend, and Emmy whines both about wanting to have random sex and not thinking she can go through with having random sex.

The biggest problem I have with this book, beyond the basic boring insipdness of the plot, is that Weisberger doesn't seem to know her characters. They are not only underdeveloped but they constantly contradict themselves. Adriana is oh-so-cool that men want her and women want to be her, yet she very uncooly gushes over Salma Hayek, Brangelina, and, inexplicably for someone who doesn't want children, Angelina's son Maddox.

Leigh isn't in love with her boyfriend (who later becomes her fiance) but Weisberger makes a point of telling us that while she doesn't want to have sex with him, she isn't repulsed by his touch, either. The significance of this revelation is never explained. When she later and very predictably has sex with one of the married authors she's editing, she feels exhilarated in one sentence and in the next, with no explanation for the mood change, is angry/shamed/insecure. She is so upset that the author is married, yet when it is revealed that he only married his wife so she could get her green card, she no longer cares that he has no plans to get a divorce.

Emmy insists all over the place that she's ready to give up her monogamous ways and slut it up with at least one man from each continent (she travels for work) but this isn't really what she wants to do, nor is she very good at it. Later, one of the girls comments that Emmy has slept with every strange man she'd met over the past year, when in reality she only slept with three. She's also so unaware of herself that she can't figure out why she scares off a would-be one night stand by asking him if he wants children.

It would have been much more interesting if Weisberger had given a reason for these inconsistencies, such as the characters having an internal struggle over doing what they want to do and doing what everyone expects of them. I suspect this was Weisberger's intention but she never really made it clear which version was the facade and which was the real girl, especially in Adriana's case.

It also wasn't very believable that these girls were best friends. When Leigh calls Emmy to tell her of her engagement, she tells Emmy flat out that she doesn't think she's in love with her fiance but all Emmy wants to talk about is the proposal and the ring. A real best friend would have jumped all over it and told her friend that she shouldn't marry a man she doesn't love. It also isn't believable that Emmy and Adriana wouldn't confide their problems to each other.

There are also huge holes in the action. The three girls go on vacation to Aruba, ostensibly to give Emmy the opportunity to sleep with someone, but the narrative ends just as she meets someone and jumps ahead several days, and the result of their Aruba trip is only mentioned in passing several pages later. The lengthy description of their flight to the island is utterly pointless.

The ending is so contrived and predictable that one can only assume Weisberger was up against the deadline, couldn't figure out how to end it, and just wrapped everything up without any creativity whatsoever.

I'm pretty pissed off that I paid for this book, and that I've contributed to its sales as it will surely be a best seller. I can only hope that people will begin to see that The Devil Wears Prada was an anomaly, and that Weisberger can't write interesting fiction. 288 Absoulutely one of the worst books I've ever read. I am completely done reading the vapid crap that this woman purports to write. She's a no talent-hack, who I'm convinced just knew the right people and got a contract for telling-all about Anna Wintour. When people bought that admittedly interesting, albeit horribly written book, it perpetuated a book deal and now she won't stop writing. And she should. She's HORRIBLE. Fiction, Chick Lit Like eating a whole sleeve of not particularly great cookies and then feeling like, Why did I do that?? Lauren Weisberger Leigh, THE BOOK EDITOR, got engaged and went to visit her mom. Her mom says I can't believe I had to wait TWELVE DAYS to see this sparkler. Then, two pages later, an incident that happened the day of the engagement is referenced as it had been TEN DAYS since. About 200 pages later Leigh's name is spelled LEAH. This is the kind of crap that makes me want to burn books and then back over their ashes with my car. Or just complain incessantly to anyone that will listen.

Anywho, over the top characters, far fetched ending--standard chick lit. Although I doubt Anne Hathaway will be starring in this one, it's a beach read worth reading at the beach. Hardcover I'm not sure why I am still reading this dreck. I didn't purchase it on my kindle because it had such horrible reviews, but when I saw it at the library I thought I would give it a chance. I think I am just avoiding housework but the pile of laundry is starting to look more appealing. 0743290119