This is the much-awaited latest instalment of the Shopaholic series which has proved a huge best seller for British author Sophie Kinsella.
With the first novel famously Americanised into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Isla Fisher, the books have become a staple of women’s bookshelves, the perfect holiday read with an added level of substance through the witty and self-aware story lines.
‘Shopaholic to the stars’ sees our flawed but loveable heroine Becky transferred to LA through her husband Luke’s well connected job where she proceeds to become starry-eyed and caught in the flimsy reality of Hollywood’s society, leaving her conflicted in her relationships with friends and family.
The secret to Becky’s popularity as a character is that she is every woman – we don’t all have the shopping habits or the budgets but we all indulge in our deep shallows now and then – but it doesn’t mean we are without heart or intelligence. She never gets it right first time and sometimes not at all, juggling roles as wife, mother and ambitions as a stylist with joy, guilt and ineptitude. She embraces the Hollywood lifestyle a bit too much. Her fall is all the more painful for it.
As in all in the Shopaholic series, this story leaves you smiling but wanting more. The story is clearly set up for follow-up with several unresolved storylines and a trip to Las Vegas on the horizon. Might I suggest the working title, ‘Shopaholic showgirl’? Five stars for Sophie Kinsella.
Read and reviewed by Nicola Kristine Adam @jabberingjourno
This review first appeared in Lancaster Guardian book club. Click HERE
