Rating: 
Summary: I loved it despite its flaws
Review: I think that Trading Up is a great additional to the chick-lit genre. It's a nice change of pace to read one in which the main character is a glamourous model instead of ordinary and always trying to lose weight. This is different from other chick-lit books in that the average reader will most likely not be able to relate to the characters or setting in the book at all, and she certainly won't LIKE them. You will NOT like Janey Wilcox, and you will not wish that she was your best friend. Despite her looks and fame, you will actually feel sorry for her and the other characters in this book because they're completely miserable, rather vile people.A college professor of a writing course told me once to never tell your story through the eyes of a character who is delusional, because it's extremely hard to make it work. I think that Bushnell partly pulled it off. At times I wasn't sure what I was supposed to believe. In some cases (the first one that comes to mind is one of the scenarios when Bushnell is first describing how Janey believes that Zizi is interested in her) I didn't know what to believe--that Janey is correct and Zizi is really interested in her, or that Janey is simply being her usual ego-centric self and Zizi couldn't care less about her. As the story continues, and I began to realize more and more how distorted Janey's perception was, it became easier for me to understand what Bushnell was doing. The other critiques I have about this book are that is that I found it to be occasionally melodramatic and the dialogue to be a little soap-operaish (the same reasons I can't stand romance novels). Despite that, this is the most page-turning book I've read in a long time, and every day I stayed up until the early hours of the morning to read just a little more. It's juicy, scandalous and exciting, and I felt like I really was getting an insider's view into the lives of the New York society elite. I loved it and now I can't wait for Bushnell's next one.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, Probably Would Have Been Better on the Beach
Review: My wife, who has read Sex and the City and Four Blondes, and I (who have not, but have seen some episodes of the Sex and the City TV show) read this book out loud together. Trading Up seems to be made for this. It is plot driven and not particularly written at a high grade level, so it is easy to follow when you're not doing the reading. Janey is a Victoria's Secret model, a repeat character from Four Blondes. She now has money and status enough to befriend a true New York socialite named Mimi. But Janey wants more. She wants to be taken seriously as something more than a model, she wants true love, she wants to secure her status, and she wants to escape her past, which is vaguely described as less-than-savory at the beginning. Janey falls in love (or at least lust) at first sight with a foreign polo player named Zizi, who seems attracted to her, but does not start up a relationship with her. Troubles ensue with Zizi, her husband who she marries on a whim because she convinces herself that she loves a movie producer who is madly in love (or at least lust) with her, and her past. The book jacket blurb compares Bushnell's writing in this book to Edith Wharton or Jane Austen. While the plot is owes much to Wharton and Austen, something Bushnell does without making it seem pretentious, of course the writing cannot match these great authors or even many of the medium ones to follow. Still, the book is fun and easy to read. I recommend this book as light reading.
Rating:
Summary: Like watching a train wreck
Review: ... or a car crash. You are driving by and want to avert your eyes and focus on the road but you just can't .... this protagonist is not a nice person, in fact I don't think ANYONE in the book was nice and you didn't even care what good or bad things happen - the only good thing about it was the kind of "insider gossip" info ....
Rating:
Summary: A Fast, Fun Read
Review: TRADING UP (Bushnell, Candace) is very similar to both STORY OF MY LIFE (McInerey, Jay) and MY FRACTURED LIFE (Travolta, Rikki Lee). One of the best books I've read this year.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing....
Review: I love a good chick lit read as much as the next person, but I was very dissapointed in this book. This is my first Candace Bushnell book and I think it will be my last. The primary characters were highly unlikeable, and not that this is a requirement for me, but if you are going to make the characters so repellant, you at least need to have a compelling plot and the clever dialogue to make up for it. This book lacked both. By the last 100 pages I just kept wishing it would end....the story was dragging on and ultimately I didn't really care what happened to Janey or her boring sidekicks. For clever writing about a shallow protagonist, try Gigi Levangie Grazer's "Maneater"...written by the wife of movie mogul Brian Grazer. You get an insider's perspective with a far more ascerbic wit.
Rating: 
Summary: Let's raise the bar of women's fiction
Review: 1 star to counteract the 2 obvious promotional online reviews at the very beginning, no doubt written by the book's publishing/editorial staff.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVED IT!!!!
Review: I was reading some reviews of this book, i hate to write my own. I really enjoyed reading this book. I think the main character Janey is fun to read about. Sometimes you hate her and sometimes you feel sorry for her, mixed emotions, but she made the book interesting.
This is a fun book to read, if your one of those people who look for some kind of deep philosophical meaning, not gonna find it. That's why they call it fiction. I enjoyed it because I was able to escape from reality into the life of Janey. I didn't want to put the book down and I wish it wasn't over, I just want to keep reading about her.
This was in continuation from the first story in 4 Blondes, the previous book by Candace Bushnell, I hope she writes more books about the other characters that were in that book as she did with Janey Wilcox. Left me hanging and wanting more.
Rating:
Summary: clever and fun
Review: Lighten up reviewers! Trading up is a highly entertaining and well written novel. I read it standing up while stirring pasta. It is an improvement over Four Blondes, her previous novel. The protagonist of a novel needn't be a highly moral heroine to make a book terrific. All you Sex in the City fans out there, buy this book and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Janey Is Shallow, Conceited, and Annoying!
Review: The main character in Ms. Bushnell's story "Trading Up" is one of the most annoying character's that I've read in a long time. I liked her somewhat in the story "4 Blondes" but she is shallow, and very selfish. I found this a difficult book to enjoy since the main character was such a snot and the nasty way she used people and treated people that were close to her, never mind how she treated and used people that were simply in her way also became rather tedious. I found that although the overall story about improving ones life through social connections could have been fun this one just really fell short of the mark. IF on the other hand you like shallow, self involved characters then this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Why?
Review: I love reading 'chick-lit' as much as I love watching chick-flicks. I read 4-Blondes a couple of years ago and vaguely remembered the chapters about Janey Wilcox as being the best so when this book came across my desk I noted its title and waited for a chance to grab a copy from my company's scrap book area. When I first opened 'Trading Up' to start reading, I noticed how small the type was and that it had 404 pages so I immediately thought that it was going to be a great book! Well, I have to say I've never been more disappointed in a work of fiction in my life. Janey Wilcox is the most unlikable protagonist I've ever read. Throughout the book, readers will see her walk all over people without even once feeling guilty for more than a few seconds. First, I'd like to know why Selden Rose being so incredibly rich and supposedly powerful in his field would tolerate that woman's behavior. I kept waiting for him to lose his temper and smack her around or at the very least, tell her off and I'm COMPLETELY against all forms of spousal abuse! Secondly, when Janey is telling about her first encounters with Mimi Kilroy, you get the impression that Mimi is not the kind of woman that allows herself to be walked over or taken advantage of. Yet later in the book we see Mimi's character stumbling over words, clinging to clothing racks for support and faltering all over as Janey practically runs her through the ground! I kept waiting for Mimi to say or do something that matched her with the Mimi from earlier in the book... It NEVER happened... And Patty, Janey's sister! I know for d*mn sure that if my sister treated me with the same regard with which Janey treated Patty, I'd never even acknowledge that she existed. Especially if I were married to a famous rock star! It's not like she needed to cling to her sister to be a part of her stardom... She had her own! What about this brother, Pete, who we find out about in one of the final chapters of the book? Where the hell did he come from? And where the hell is he now?? That totally threw me for a loop... I think Ms. Bushnell's brain was reset at least 4 times throughout her writing this book and the only part of her memory that she had ever bothered to 'save' was the part about Janey being a self-centered, heartless b*tch! And this, by the way, forms the question in my mind of just what kind of person is Ms. Bushnell? At any rate, as I was reading, I kept questioning myself as to why I was even bothering to finish this book. Well, the reason was always the same. I was just dying to see if something completely terrible would finally happen to Janey Wilcox that would knock her down on her ass where she belongs. Needless to say, I was left feeling completely at a loss when this never happened! I am still in shock that she managed to make her way to Hollywood to start the next chapter of her worthless existence. Ms. Bushnell is very clever in setting that up to feed her next novel. The sad part is that as much as I hated this book, I know I will read her next one. Probably hoping, the whole time, that finally Janey gets what she most definitely has coming!
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