Things progress, but I’m not going to ruin anything. As time goes on, though, Luke strikes Becky as being a bit of a prick. At first she thinks he’s not so bad (he even lends Becky money for a scarf she’s supposedly buying for her aunt). Plus she suddenly realizes that finance bores her stiff.Īt the same time, in the course of her Successful Savings job, Becky deals with a guy named Luke Brandon, who has a public relations firm called Brandon Communications.

Next, she figures she’ll get a high-powered gig in finance, but she can’t bluff her way through interviews. She tries taking a Saturday job at Ally Smith, only to be fired after a few hours for trying to reserve a pair of zebra-striped jeans for herself. Becky attempts to make picture frames at home, which frustrates her to no end. Not to mention, it’s difficult for Becky to suddenly go cold turkey on her usual habit of buying whatever she feels like. Only in Becky’s case, her sandwiches are soggy, her coffee is bitter, and she ends up spending loads of money to make curry at home, only to burn the spices (Suze takes pity on her and orders takeout). Cutting back means making her own sandwiches, taking coffee to the office in a Thermos, and forgoing all purchases except those which are absolutely essential. ( Novelicious)īecky knows she has a problem, and she only has two options: cut back or earn more money, and unfortunately, neither one works out so well for her. Naturally, this has saddled Becky with a massive pile of debt, as her bank representative, Derek Smeath, keeps reminding her. She lives in the Fulham section of London with her best friend, Suze Cleath-Stuart, and writes for a financial magazine called Successful Savings. And yes, she loves to shop. Like any pilot episode, it establishes Becky as a character. The first book, Confessions of A Shopaholic, which came out in 2001, is pretty sedate in comparison to the other books in the series. It serves as a prime example of what not to do when adapting well-loved novels for the screen, but we’ll get back to that. Only the first two of the currently eight novels have been made into a film, though, and that was 2009’s Confessions of A Shopaholic. Her best-known work is, of course, the Shopaholic series, which follows the misadventures of big spender Becky Bloomwood. Her books have a bit of bite to them, and her characters are diverse and interesting. However, I do like me some Sophie Kinsella. Or, heaven forfend, wear something from Sears. The characters never snap a heel or get a run in their stockings. That’s pretty much all there is to books of that genre. Chick-lit can be very one-note: High-end fashionista meets handsome stranger and everyone looks fabulous.

Confessions of a shopaholic book series