Customer Reviews

Confessions of a Shopaholic

5 star:		(577)
4 star:		(223)
3 star:		(72)
2 star:		(46)
1 star:		(60)

 

 

I started it last night and stayed up till 3 a.m. to finish this book! I really enjoyed this book ~~ it was funny, lighthearted and cute! I laughed out loud in some places and found myself shaking my head in other places.

Rebecca is a girl who overdraws her bank account and maxes out her Visa card. I am not a big shopper (unless you call shopping for books a shopping spree ~~ then I am!) of clothes but it was funny just to hear her describe her clothes like she is posing for Vogue or Cosmo or even 17. Her justification for buying things are hilarious and the scene where she was trying to make curry made me laugh so hard! (I'm a cook and that scene just cracks me up because I've done the same thing she did!) Sophie took a character riddled with anxieties and insecurities and made her so likeable ~~ you can't help but laugh at some of her excuses. She has a vivid imagination which really carries the book through.

I can see why some of the critics didn't care for this book ~~ it does sound like something from a fashion magazine, but Sophie is a good, clean writer. I really enjoyed this book and would like to read more of hers. Her sense of humor is a lot like mine and it is a refreshing read! I recommend it for a light, easy reading and if you're looking for humor, this book has it all.

That's what our heroine, Rebecca Bloomwood, does fifty times a day. Clothes, make-up, scarves, boots, anything that has a price tag is fodder for Rebecca's shopaholic paradise. Unfortunately, Becky has maxed out her Visa, is getting threatening letters from her bank, and has borrowed from her roommate. Even more unfortunately, she can't curb her addiction to shopping. Sophie Kinsella gives us the funniest, most messed-up, and yet most endearingly vulnerable heroine of the year. If you've ever aspired to be trendy and glamourous but didn't quite have the budget to accomplish this, you'll laugh and cry along with Becky as she attempts the two biggest ways to achieve financial security---Cutting Back and Making More Money. Her attempts are disastrous, her failures hysterical. So, what does she do? She gives herself a little consolation prize...just a tiny little purchase, and another, and another....cause Becky was born to shop and couldn't stop if her life depended on it. As an added joy, she is also a financial journalist who writes articles advising others how to manage their money. Light, clever, and totally disarming, this is a quick, fun read sure to please anyone who gets an adrenaline rush walking into a mall.

I can't wait to read the upcoming sequel "Shopaholic Takes Manhattan" for more side-splitting fun shopping with Becky!

"Confessions of a Shopaholic" is a funny, mindless book about Rebecca Bloomwood, a rather silly girl who works for a finance magazine in London and spends about five times as much as she makes. Becky just can't say no to piles of magazines, heaps of designer clothes, and dozens of frothy cappuccinos. It doesn't take long for Becky to run up some pretty huge debts, but instead of dealing with her financial problems head-on, she opts to use the avoidance tactic by telling creditors that her dog died, tossing her monthly statements into the trash bin, etc. Eventually Becky decides to cut back on her spending, but somehow her "responsible financial plan" ends up costing her even more money. Unfortunately for Becky, she can't hide from her problems forever, and eventually the unhappy creditors literally drive her into hiding. But of course, books like these almost always have happy endings, and things miraculously come together for Becky in the end.

I enjoyed reading this book: it's light, humorous, and fun. Becky's crazy rationalizations are pretty hilarious, but after a while I got a bit tired of how completely dense she could be about everything. It was also very obvious how the book would end pretty much from the start. Still, Becky made me laugh, and her outlandish situations and slightly over-the-top love interests were very entertaining. Overall, if you're looking for fluffy chick lit, this book is definitely up your alley, but it really doesn't amount to much more than that.

First of all, the main character is rather irritating, especially because she seems to force other people to go out on a limb for her selfishness (for example, the banks to whom she owes money and the future love interest who lends her money to buy a scarf that she claims is for a sick relative and her friend who makes frames for her). The book is a succession of tedious shopping lists stating prices and then many complaints of having no money. The only reason I continued in the torture of reading the book was due to the fact that I wanted to see character progression and find out if maybe she would become a better or at least more interesting person. It does not happen. She is rewarded for her selfish, irresponsible ways with a cute boyfriend and a sparkling future. Morality is nonexistant, coincidentally so is any trace of a plot. I would really have given it 1/2 a star, but that is not an option. Save your time and just skip this vapid, annoying novel.

I was prompted to buy this book by all of the good reviews that I read here, but I must admit that I didn't expect it to be quite as enjoyable as it was. While the familiar plot line is recognizable - single woman working in London, miserable in her job and love life, quirky and amusing, etc. - this book has a different approach - the heroine's life revolves around her attempts to fill the emptiness in her life with possessions and she winds up over her head in debt. She's bored with her life yet doesn't even know where to begin to change it, finally finding salvation in the most unlikely places.
I don't want to belabor the plot or the quality of writing and character development (both well above average for the genre). The best aspect of this book for me was how entertaining and funny it was while containing much in it that is easy to relate to - sure, at times it stretched believability but not so far that the book itself became ridiculous. Shopaholic is a delightful distraction, well worth the investment and one of the better entries in the now-familier Bridget genre. I recommend it most highly - it's a wonderfully entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

I read Remember Me? (Kinsella's latest novel) a while back when it first came out. This is the book that introduced me to the genre of chick lit, and I greatly enjoyed it. Perhaps Lexi Smart wasn't the deepest of characters, but the majority of the book was an unfolding of her discovering what it is she really wants out of life, mixed in with some very original humor to keep the pace going.

Confessions of a Shopaholic is NOTHING like that. I admit I never finished the novel because after reading a particularly despicable act on the main character's part, I got off the train at Penn station and threw it in the trash. I have never not finished a book out of sheer disgust ... and interestingly enough, I fell into a deep relaxation afterwards knowing that I would never have to deal with Rebecca Bloomwood's retarded problems ever again.

The whole book reads like one car crash after another. The main character is obviously mentally unstable and a pathological liar, which I found neither funny nor endearing as the author seemed to have intended. The typical situation in the book plays out like this: Rebecca sees store, Rebecca goes in and buys too much, Rebecca berates herself, Rebecca goes into deep played-out delusion about how she'll hit the lottery jackpot, win at the casino, marry rich, etc etc etc ... , Rebecca's bubble bursts by some way too obvious event, Rebecca goes into an internal panic attack of massive proportions, Rebecca conjures up new way to lie to her friends, family, coworkers, and so on, to make herself feel better. For about a hundred pages in the middle of the book this whole cycle goes from start to end every two paragraphs. I'm not kidding. I lost count of how many mini-meltdowns our "heroine" had. Not to mention that after the first few chapters there's nothing that comes out of this girl's mouth that isn't a lie. It was the epitome of exhausting and disturbing at the same time ... I got a little more than 2/3rds in before I realized life is too short.

I suppose the first couple of chapters were mildly amusing ... seeing a glimpse of what someone who's in financial trouble goes through. But the humor stopped after realizing the main character's a pretty horrible person in general. I reckon I read in other reviews that the story wraps up with her getting her dreams come true, getting a hot rich boyfriend, all for not reason, blah blah blah, no repercussions, blah blah boring! I won't even go into how laughably bland and alike every single character in this story is. I just hope that the movie is only loosely based on the novel because the message doesn't need to be going out to the masses that it is cute and socially acceptable for young women to be idiots about their finances and unbearably selfish with their loved ones.

The author can do much better than this, so go read Remember Me?; an immensely more well-written story with a better plot line to boot than this garbage.

Writing a truly humorous novel is, I have to believe, very difficult to pull off. Heaven knows, I've been disappointed often enough. CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, by Sophie Kinsella, is a rare gem.

Rebecca Bloomwood is a single, twenty-something English lass with a serious problem. She shops beyond her means with a vengeance, blithely ignoring, sometimes discarding unread, the concerned letters from credit card issuers requesting payment. (The demands are very genteel, of course. Her creditors are British, after all.) Yet, she'll go into a panic at the prospect of losing the opportunity to buy a $540 designer scarf at two-thirds off. Ironically, Becky is also a financial journalist for the magazine "Successful Saving" - she advises readers on strategies for increasing their personal nest eggs.

Becky has every good intention of paying her debts, though spending an additional $300 in a single day on Stuff is not extraordinary. The fun of this book is watching her escape from impossible situations, or hemorrhage money, despite every scheme she devises to either save or earn more income. Between chuckles, you just want to slap her out of exasperation - for her own good. Two examples ...

Determined not to spend a Saturday on frivolous shopping, she decides to visit London's Victoria and Albert Museum, admission for which she thinks is free. (Save money and absorb culture, all in one go.) Unexpectedly faced with an $8 entrance fee, she purchases the $24 season ticket. Then, after trudging between exhibits, which, disappointingly, have no price tags attached, she discovers ... the Museum Gift Shop.

Hoping to land a banking position in the City, she sends off a suitably embellished CV to a high-powered head-hunting firm. So impressed is the agency with her professed abilities, including a totally fictional fluency in Finnish, that its representative, unbeknownst to Becky, arranges an on-the-spot and surprise meeting between her and the recruitment director for the Bank of Helsinki. ("I can't wait to hear the two of you talking away in Finnish," chirps the rep.)

This book is particularly delightful because Becky is so endearing. OK, so she rationalizes away reality, and is shallow, immature and irresponsible. However, she's not a bad, malicious person, nor is she hard-core dishonest. She's actually quite pleasant - a most agreeable person with whom to spend the day ... well, shopping. For these reasons, I rooted for her all the way to the end, at which time my faith in her essential goodness was justified. You go, girl!

I read all the amazing reviews of this book and decided to try it out. I was not impressed. The writing was good for a fluffy chick lit book, but the main character was totally ridiculous. If I knew Becky Bloomwood, I'm certain I would hate her. Her idiotic thought processes are totally unbelievable and unrealistic. I was much more able to relate to and laugh with Bridget Jones. With this book I kept finding myself exasperated, wishing this girl would just get a clue. I enjoy reading chick lit books as well as real literature, and I think I have appropriate expectations going into each book, depending on the genre (meaning I wasn't expecting this to be Jane Eyre or anything). This one just didn't measure up to me. It's a fun little beach read, but I was not bowled over.

This book is a perfect light read for when you're sick. I didn't go out last night because I didn't feel well and ended up readign 2/3 of the book in one sitting. It's another one of those British 20-something's autobiographical novel, this time dictating the woes of Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist whose own finances have gone down the garbage chute. She finds herself horribly in debt and tries and tries to remedy the situation, but nothing seems to work. I was afraid when I picked this one up that I wouldn't have sympathy for the main character, but that wasn't a problem. Though Rebecca makes quite a few mistakes and gets herself into quite a few laugh-out-loud funny situations because she's afraid to face her debt, I found myself rooting for her all the way through.

From the moment I saw this book, I knew I had to read this.

From the moment I started I knew it was very much like me, many times I've just thrown away those credit card bills because I didn't want to see what was inside of them. Rebecca has the same idea I have, why worry about paying off that debt just go out and buy yourself something to make you feel better.

Now onto the book. Rebecca has a job that doesn't make as much money as she needs. She struggles to find something that makes her more money. She takes a few jobs but at all of them she fails out. Finally she hits a point in her life where she can't escape and she has to finally figure out ways, after a few bad choices she finally comes upon something that is just right for her and everything works out just fine.

Overall this was a very quick and light read. I would recommend this to anyone who is in debt and needs a good pick me up.

I can't wait for next book about Rebecca.