Rating: 
Summary: Quit yer whining, Andrea, and grow up!
Review: As this book is clearly autobiographical, I think this book would have been much improved if the writer waited several years after her stint as an assistant concluded and then penned the book. Then, at least, the writer would have "gotten over" her need to avenge her boss and focused more on revealing the juicy aspects of the fashion world. The inside scoop on the world of fashion journalism was the only interesting part of the book and unfortunately, it took a minivan-size backseat to the author's incessant whining about her boss! The author is obviously young and naive because anyone who has been working for awhile has had to eat dirt for difficult people at one time or another -- however, it does not necessarily make interesting subject matter. The main character, Andrea, is unsympathetic because she has this sense of entitlement so that, despite being only a recent college grad with no skills or work experience (except at an ice cream parlor), she expresses on every other page how wronged she is because she is not obtaining solid writing experience at the magazine even though that fact was openly disclosed to her before she accepted the job as an assistant. Her attitude is bad, as her boss points out correctly, and you begin to feel more sorry for the boss for having an assistant who takes cigarette breaks when she should be working. Further, to its detriment, the book is filled with Andrea's (i.e., the author's) numerous unfair judgments of her co-workers and her boss (who cares if her boss wants two sugars with her lattes?). If she was a better writer she would have simply relayed her experiences at the magazine and let the reader go along for the ride -- instead I feel like I'm back in high school and the author is trying to force me to "take sides" in a fight she's having with her friend. Moreover, the unredeemable writing doesn't it make it any easier to get through either. (By the way, did anyone else think the boyfriend, Alex, was a jerk?)
Rating: 
Summary: I would have given this 3 1/2 stars
Review: I enjoyed the book, some parts were really funny, like when Eduardo made Andrea sing and dance to enter the bldg!
All in all a very enjoyable read, bordering on fluff, but still with a very good ending!
Rating:
Summary: save your $20
Review: this is a truly awful book. boo frickety hoo this undeserving college grad's boss will not allow her spend all day on the phone to her friends. why the hype? it seems entirely unclear having actually picked up the book to read this second rate attempt at "fictional" writing. by the saccharine sweet end i wanted to get andrea sachs her much desired job at the new yorker just to watch her squirm in misery as she was dismissed due to her total lack of literary talent.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: I can't understand the hype around this book, nor can I really understand how it ever got published. The writing is simple and uninteresting, the plot is almost nil, and it's completely self-indulgent. I had much more sympathy for the mean boss Miranda Priestly. At least she was competent. There is no depth, no major style - the author uses big names to impress the reader rather than detailed, well-written descriptions of the clothes, parties, etc... A waste of money. I skimmed the last 50 pages to the predictable ending just so that I wouldn't feel like I threw $20 in the garbage.
Rating:
Summary: Makes an Interesting Topic Dull
Review: You'd think a novel about a young woman working in the fashion industry would at least be glamorous, but after the first chapter it quickly became boring and whiney. The prose was leaden! Whoever told this woman she could write? Although it's obviously thinly-veiled autobiography and the narrator wants to be a writer, this book was full of such scintillating sentences as "You're scared of me," he stated factually, flashing me a teasing smile. More Danielle Steele than Helen Fielding. But worse than that, there's almost no forward motion to this story. Once it's been established that she hates fashion and despises her shallow editor, what are we waiting for? I felt ahead of the story, uninterested in the main character and almost sympathetic to the boss from Hell. No particular character growth, no surprises, no startling sentences and no laughs. Yes, it sounded like a grueling job, but her reasons for staying were never convincing... other characters in the book are just as shallowly portrayed. She has a flirtation that leads nowhere, an impossibly saintly boyfriend, and a troubled roommate, all of whom seem to be right out of central casting from a Judith Krantz tv movie. I loved Bridget Jones and I read magazines and should have loved a story about a young Jewish girl who wants to write who falls into this job, but her attitude and self-involvement was a turn off. It took me a whole week to finish this and I wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't been asked to read it as a reader's corner reader for Elle. A trip to Paris began to make the book more interesting-- but then it, and the book, abruptly ended. Read THE NANNY DIARIES, HIGH MAINTENANCE or THE LOVELY BONES instead!
Rating:
Summary: The Staffer From Hell
Review: Snot-nose Lauren Weisberger (alias Andrea) doesn't go as far as to say she actually spat in the coffees she was fetching for Anna Wintour (alias Miranda Priestley), but she does admit to trying to squeeze the stuff she was actually paid to do around her personal calls, personal e-mails and cigarette breaks. And you can't help feeling that the spitting happened only Weisberger doesn't want to own up to such appalling behaviour while she's trying to paint her employer as the devil incarnate to her 'cutie-pie, caring-sharing' alter-ego. Every task is too demeaning for Andrea. We never really find out what fabulous qualities she has which allow her to consider all work beneath her, apart from an extraordinarily high self-regard. Washing dishes was a no no, even if it was just one plate, but faking expenses (lots of them, every day) was OK by her. Revenge on the company that expected her to actually work for her pay is the name of the game. In an attempt to gain our sympathy Weisberger explains just how tough it was to get up every day at 5:30 in order to get in at 7:00. But that sob story soon palls when she reveals that her commute was a whole 10 minutes (thanks to a company sponsered taxi ride, which she regularly rorted). So why the 5:30 alarm? Because it was half an hour before she was actually out of bed and an hour was needed to try on and reject outfits. Organizational skills are obviously not Ms. Weisberger's strong point, which may explain why she wasn't the most appreciated employee chez Vogue (alias Runway). The main character of this novel is so unsympathetic that the whole premise of the book is undermined. It's not the boss from hell that grabs your attention as you make your way through this long whine, it is the staffer from hell. A warning to all employers. If the girl's got an attitude problem: ditch her. And skip the book.
Rating:
Summary: the 'protagonist' is totally unsympathetic
Review: are we really supposed to care about Andrea? Sure her boss is horrible, but that's not an excuse to have no redeeming qualities. Andrea dislikes all Southerners (I guess anyone outside New England area is a redneck per this author), she behaves coldly toward her family, and mistreats her boyfriend. I almost take enjoyment of the abuse Andrea suffers under Miranda. If this author wants us to be enthralled with this story, she should have made her main character more likeable. This just isn't well written.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste of paper!
Review: I am sick to death of books about whiny, b*tchy, vain NY women (Trading Up, The Nanny Diaries, this book). I used to work and live in NYC, so I "get it," but this book was trash. I got about 15 pages into it and said "Enough!" The characters are one-dimensional caricatures, and Andrea should have just QUIT if she was so unhappy. I didn't want to waste my time with this.
Rating:
Summary: UGH!
Review: What a total waste of time. The author has NO aidea how to develop her characters--they were cardboard cut-outs. She did not give ANY detail about what Andrea's life was like before she interviewed at " Runway"( except for drifting through Europe and Asia with her boyfriend) I rather liked Miranda, at least her antics kept me guessing about what outlandish stunt she would pull on Andy next.
Rating: 
Summary: The triumph of the tyrant
Review: Ineptly written, clumsily edited, Weisberger's thinly disguised autobiography is one of those quick reads that's perfect for a long trip or a night when you're too tired to focus on anything with more substance. Devil keeps the readers plowing ahead by describing a year's worth of excess and boss-from-hellishness. Can Miranda really be as awful and obsessive as she sounds? Oh sure, and Weisberger delights in regaling us with example after example of Miranda's lack of empathy and her emotional lability. How did Miranda get that way, how did she manage to achieve such success, and why does her kind of behavior exert so much power over people who should realize that they aren't indentured slaves? Weisberger doesn't explore this aspect at all. How can someone with so little regard for financial issues be running a major magazine? Weisberger doesn't care, and we don't find out. Nor does she ever seem to truly appreciate the fact that she was very lucky; if not for her stint with Miranda, she would never have had the chance to publish this book. (I don't think she could be a reporter for a college newspaper, let alone a writer for a major magazine.) I kept waiting for Miranda to get her comeuppance, but instead, it was more of the same old until the fictitious Andrea told off the boss and flew home from Paris, a quick but merciful ending to Anna's and our ordeal. At the end of the book, she's still babbling about the celebs she met and the clothes she got to wear (why bother with $800 shoes whose heels won't stay on?). Perhaps in ten years she'll have gained some perspective on her experience and polished her storytelling ability. Meanwhile, I'm giving her first awkward effort two stars because of the great Bad Boss anecdotes.
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