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Trading Up/Abridged

Trading Up/Abridged

List Price: $25.98
Your Price: $25.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the real deal
Review: Candace Bushnell is the real deal...no one has captured the ethos of modern day relationships as well. Her insight and humor make this her most sublime reading yet. Can a television series be far behind?

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: leaves you feeling empty
Review: Yes I had a hard time putting this book down, but only because I wanted it to be over! If I weren't the type of person who has to finish what they started I would have stopped reading it. The "protagonist" is completely unlikable. As a matter of fact there are few truly likeable characters in the book, Janey's sister Patty and her husband Digger being the only two I can think of. It's about a bunch of narcissistic freaks. I like a summer trash novel where you want the protagonist to succeed or find happiness or love or something. In this book, and maybe this is the point after all, Janey is written to be the protagonist, but is also the primary antagonist as well. The end was also a little quick and neat and clean, leaving itself open to...yikes...a sequel...which I will definitely not read. A great disappointment after Four Blondes, which I enjoyed.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't even bother with the paperback
Review: There exists a very fine line between the quick witted tongue in cheek insider humor and the sappy smaltz of Jackie Suzanne and unfortunately Ms Bushnell has descended into the Valley of the Dolls. Who knows, maybe it has something to do with all of the hairspray fumes,or maybe she has simply become one of the reviled 40 somethings, but she has clearly lost her edge. The novel starts well, with her characteristic ascerbic wit, but as she grows her charactersshe seems to take everything far too seriously. After the first 4 chapters, the quirky satire that has been the hallmark of Ms Bushnells work, tries to get deep, and spirals into a very badly concieved soap opera. Barbara Cartland watch out. Janey Wilcox will take you down!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No I havent't read ieither
Review: But if somebody from New York can give a book five stars before it's even published, then in fairness, someone should give it one star.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As good as drinking a cosmopolitan....
Review: This is a fantastic novel. It reminds me of Gone With the Wind, or Tom Jones, but set in NYC in modern times. I saw the author on Oprah right after she got married, and she impressed me as smart, funny, and down to earth but glamorous. Her novel Trading Up is smart, funny and glamorous, but also wise. She realizes it's not all about just finding Mr. Right. I've bought five copies of this book to give out to friends!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Delightful beach read
Review: In the summer of 2000 in New York, Janey Wilcox has become a Victoria's Secret model. However, she is tired of the "sex and the city" scene while always looking to climb up the social ladder. Janey has made a new friend in the Hamptons in socialite Mimi Kilroy. Matchmaking with Janey's encouragement, Mimi introduces the lovely model to her wealthy neighbor Selden Rose, head of MovieTime.

Knowing her modeling career is on the age precipice, Janey goes all out to become the wife of Selden. They marry following a 100-yard dash romance. Their Italian honeymoon is not quite the fun Janey anticipated as she misses her shopping sprees. To make matters worse, married life in Manhattan proves tedious especially when Janey feels she picked the runt of the litter. Reassessing her values, will Janey find some middle class morality or will she seek a higher rung on the social ladder?

Though amusing and satirical, yet insightful into the Manhattan style life of a wannabe, only the die hard Sex and the City fans will gain pleasure from the tale. The irony is that the story line is well written and often perceptive, but the problem is that the key protagonist is so amoral, she offers no balance and thus most of the audience will detest her as she is no modernized Holly Golightly. Still fans of Candace Bushnell will appreciate the latest adventures of it happened to Janey.

Harriet Klausner

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Essential Summer Reading!!!
Review: I love Sex and the City and I loved Candace Bushnell's last book, Four Blondes. I read a strange review of her new book in The New York Times, but knew I had to get this book as soon as it came out. I don't know what the Times reviewer was talking about. She missed the point of this brilliant, hilarious, smart and incredibly entertaining book entirely.
Candace Bushnell is my hero. Everyone should read her new book.
If the author weren't so beautiful and glamorous, people would be comparing her to Tom Wolfe and Bonfire of the [Vanities!!!]

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Impossible to resist and hard to put down
Review: Forget about Collins' "Hollywood Wives" or Susann's "Valley of the Dolls". With "Trading Up", Candace Bushnell has ascended to the top of the beach book heap, proving that summer reading can be so much fun. Grab the sunscreen, cop a squat on the beach and settle in for a wild, well-written romp through New York society, as experienced by one of Manhattan's prettiest upstarts, aspiring model Janey Wilcox. "Trading Up" is like a chilled vodka tonic on a hot summer's day -- impossible to resist and hard to put down. I can only hope that Ms. Bushnell will spend her summer days penning another tome, so that the summer fun will continue for years to come.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Can't get through it!
Review: I have read Miss Bushnell's other books and bought this one for a trip I went on. While starting out ok it just kept getting worse and I finally put it down without finishing it. Books should not be this painful to get through. The characters have no redeeming qualities and there are parts that drag on forever. Skip this book and read Sex in the City a second time.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dreadful, vacuous characters and a waste of time.
Review: You keep hoping Janey will have some redeeming qualities or will have an epiphany around her self-centered life.. but she doesn't. The book is entirely frustrating, irritating and unsatisfying, although it does provide a probably fairly accurate glimpse into the inner workings of New York City "society".


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