Rating: 
Summary: I liked it!
Review: I was quite taken with this book. First of all, it is a page-turner. Secondly, the boss is a great dark character, constantly demanding the impossible from her employees. I think the book as a whole provides a keen understanding of how distanced (from reality and common kindness) the work world can be.
Rating: 
Summary: Title seemed appealing...
Review: Yet another book about bad jobs and overpriced shoes.
Has creativity taken a new turn since sex and the city? It seems that now anyone can be an author as long as they can spell Jimmy Choo...
Rating: 
Summary: Good gossip
Review: Great insider gossip on the fashion industry, but otherwise pretty superficial. If you've had this sort of boss, this book will resonate; otherwise, you're probably better off spending your time elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Baby Fishmouth is Sweeping the Nation
Review: Weisberger's follow-up to her 2001 debut "God Wears Pajamas" is full of faded ideas and tattered characters. In "GWP" she invented a St. Peter who hands out p.j.s at the Gates of Heaven. Portraying God as an advocate of the happy nap was an inspired idea, and it elevated this reader's conciousness to levels not achieved since I first read Camus. In "Prada", however, the gag of Satan forcing new arrivals to don uncomfortable garments seems contrived. So you didn't get into Heaven and now you have to sleep in golf shoes. So what? It's impossible for the reader to connect the dots when Weisberger offers fewer than you find in a typical elipses. While dissapointed, I still look forward to next year's final installment of this trilogy, "Buddha Wears Von Dutch".
Rating:
Summary: Simply So-So
Review: I just finished reading this book. The title/cover was the draw, but the inside was not worth me paying the hardback price (should have come to amazon.com before I bought).The concept of the book was good, but for some reason, the author could not pull it together to make it an interesing read. The development of the characters (the main character's best friend, boyfriend, boss)were just not there. I hate to mention The Nanny Diaries, but it begs to be compared. This book had none of the witty dialouge and zippy writing style of Diaries. For that reason, you found little reason to really connect with the main character and her angst. The writer merely described situations, but did not really pull you inside the moment with her writing. I mean, if I could care less about her relationship with her super-caring boyfriend or troubled best friend, that says something. And although I could stretch my imagination to visualize the cruelty that was her boss, the writing style did very little to capture the true "horrible-ness" of the whole job scene. Maybe if there were more characters from the fashion world thrown in (e.g. horrific models, demanding designers) then it would have been more interesting. But the focus on the main character and her devilish boss was too little to keep me interested. Lastly, it seemed that the same problematic situations kept resurfacing for the main character (i.e. her hellish job tasks). There was no real variety. I could go on and on, but you would be better served to wait for the paperback or borrow from a friend.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, entertaining read
Review: I have a sneaking suspicion that readers who didn't like this book never had a boss that came close to Miranda. Trust me, they're out there. There must be a cosmic law that says that spectacularly brilliant people are completely lacking in common sense and simple human decency. I ROARED when Miranda called her assistants in Manhattan so *they* could find her chauffeur...in Paris...a few yards away from Miranda! So 'The Devil Wears Prada' isn't great literature. It's funny, and I liked it. And I don't care a whit for fashion.
Rating: 
Summary: Fashion Insider?
Review: Supposedly written by an author with an insider's view of the fashion world, but when a book contains such gems as the description of a model's look as "heroine-chic", even us non-fashionistas gotta cringe.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, keeps you turning pages long after midnight
Review: The sheer fact that so many readers have rated this book with only one star, proves the author's point and skill.
Contrary to what has been written here, I feel that the style and language are appropriate to get the shallow, extreme world of fashion publishing across. The narrative pulls you in and you keep on reading every word, and laughing out loud many times, which in my opinion is one of the definitions of a good book. However, whether the author is/was skilled and/or experienced enough to fulfill her lifelong dream to write for the New Yorker has little to do with the quality of the writing in this book. Different messages require different media, which require different writing styles. Even if the author has taken the creative liberty to exaggerate the events and behaviour of Miranda (her boss from hell), the real message comes through loud and clear. The book describes a depressing place to work in, yet you keep laughing and wanting to know what happens next. Andrea, or Laura, might have been "the staffer from hell", as one of her former colleagues writes, she might not have had any PA skills to speak of and her attitude to feel "above it all" is probably true and terribly annoying, it is the bosses like "Miranda" whose behaviour are hellish. It is when the top of such corporations allow it and suffer silently with the rest of the staff, that they become the Enforcers, the guilty ones, helping the Miranda's of this world to keep on behaving like this. No person in this world can rightly claim the right to terrorise others. No matter what worldly position you hold, no matter if you've been born with a golden spoon in your mouth or as a pauper, you simply don't behave like this. It doesn't really matter if Miranda Priestly is Anna Wintour's alter ego. Only staffers can tell and they won't, as Laura does describe so well, they've been brainwashed and have lost the power to objectively look at their lives. Or maybe the many fringe benefits are compensation enough to accept the daily terror. Laura, as Andrea, isn't really trying to portray herself as a Saint. She's admits to many of faults and incompetences, some of which would not have been tolerated in other companies and would have had her fired much earlier. In that respect I can understand someone like "Emily" whose main complaint about Andrea is her attitude. In the end, Andrea decides that her ambitions are just not worth it when reality in the form of a friend in need, snaps her out of it. Bosses like "Miranda" exist. Be grateful that you've never encountered such person. But then, you've lost a chance to write a book about it. In the meantime you spend a few hours laughing out loud and being thankful that when your phone rings at 2 am in the morning, it's a "wrong number" and not somebody barking to find her a seat on a flight right now...
Rating:
Summary: Fun read but not a great book
Review: I liked this book and found it fast and enjoyable to read. But at the end of the day it doesn't really add up to a lot. Andrea Sachs, an aspiring magazine writer, lands a job as personal assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high profile editor of "Runway" magazine. Andrea quickly finds that the job involves numerous mundane and tedious chores, long hours, incessant demands and enormous personal sacrifices. The fact that author Lauren Weisberger wrote this book after working as Personal Assistant to Anna Wintour from Vogue adds a lot of credibility to the environment and story. One of the flaws with this book is that the job really does sound like it would be glamorous and (at least sometimes) fun. Although Miranda does come across as being the Boss From Hell, you still feel that Andrea is just a whinging and ungrateful employee, who performs her job with little grace. I'm a stay at home Mom, and all I can say is that if it's too much to deal with someone who refuses to eat the food you've bought for them, changes their mind irrationally and makes petulant demands of you, then Lauren Weisberger should never have children! At least Andrea got to dress in designer clothes, attend Parisian fashion shows and go home at the end of the day. The other problem with this book is that you never really care about Andrea. In the end she has to make a decision between a job that she hates and a boyfriend and best friend whom I had come to dislike intensely. It wasn't a dilemma that invoked much sympathy from me. I did enjoy reading this book, but I suspect that I'll have forgotten it by tomorrow.
Rating: 
Summary: Well *I* liked it!!!
Review: I *LOVED* this book, regardless of what anyone else says. I mean, the people that wrote bad reviews of this book must never have had a tough job with a demanding boss in their life. As in this book, I am not allowed to get up from my desk for any kind of break, restroom or not, unless I have someone else to sit there and answer it - So it's not all that far-fetched. I have to get my boss's coffee and lunch, make his appointments, etc., just like Andrea. However, I work in a law firm, which is not as exciting and fashionably-fabulous as a fashion magazine. BUT, my boss is not horrible, mean, rude, and evil. I actually love my boss. Andrea's boss, Miranda, was a horrid, evil devil-woman. I totally agreed with Andrea in this book, 100%. I've been treated like poo by people above me before, and no one deserves that. Just because you are low on the totem pole doesn't mean you're doggie doo. So, I was shouting for Andrea the whole book. I loved it and just thought it was all around fabulous. And if you honestly think that any employee deserves to be treated like Andrea was, then you have a real, REAL problem.
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