Student Review: Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

What I'm Reading: Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger
Review by Shirley Li

I started reading this book in class last week and I'm almost finished reading it, but to tell you the truth, in my opinion Everyone Worth Knowing is not worth reading. Ok, ok - I'll admit that I liked it the beginning and even thought the plot was pretty catchy, but c'mon, the storyline is tedious and the number of characters became more than I could handle, to the point where I felt I couldn't keep up. In some novels, a large number of characters works, but in this "chick-lit" novel, the number just adds to the monotony. For some reason, I do want to finish it since I've already invested this much time but it isn't a book that I look forward to completing.

This book is the second novel by Weisberger, who wrote The Devil Wears Prada, and it starts off with Bette Robinson, a banker working for UBS who barely has a social life. Bette spends most of her social time with her best friend Penelope, who just got engaged to frequent party goer, Avery. Things change, however, when she quits her job, gets a new one at a party planning company, and starts partying at the hottest clubs in NYC. Sounds like a good start, right? Well, that's exactly what I thought until the events began to go the way events go in most of these novels - Bette gets so caught up in her new life that she forgets her best friend and has to "find herself" again. A lot of sub-plots occur, but listing them would go on for several pages. There's no surprise twist, no creativeness, no originality; it reminds me of The Devil Wears Prada- just a really bad version of it.

Although I was kind of interested in the beginning, now I just want to get this book over with. If you liked Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada, then don't pick this one up. It ruins her "best-seller" streak, unfortunately. There are definitely a lot of better books out there, so go and grab one of those instead.

-Shirley Li