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ASK! about Fiction: The Devil wears Prada readalikes

Read the book or watched the movie? Or maybe you’re still waiting for your copy at the libraries. This readalikes (ie. similar books) listing provides information on authors and titles that may appeal to you if you’ve read (or are waiting to read) The Devil Wears Prada.

According to the Straits Times Bestseller List (as of 10 Sep), DWP is the bestselling fiction title in Singapore, the movie is also tops at our box office (as of 3 Sep). And according to this USA Today article, this genre (chick lit) is here to stay! In fact, check out this Library Journal article which even describes the various chick lit subgenres (bride lit, mystery chick lit).

For those who are not sure what constitutes chick lit:
“What puts the chick in chick lit?
The heroine is either looking for Mr. Right or getting over Mr. Wrong.
She’s in a dead-end job or is looking to climb the corporate ladder.
She often works in public relations, advertising or for a women’s magazine.
The tone is often light and funny.
The story usually is told in the first person.
By novel’s end, the heroine usually has worked out all her problems and has learned important lessons about life.”
Source: USA Today

Read on for the list of suggested readalikes!

Book descriptions are adapted from the book descriptions, or reviews from Amazon.com and Novelist.

Beyond the blonde by Kathleen Flynn-Hui
London : Penguin, 2005
Call No.: FLY
Click here for item availability.
Excerpt from Library Journal review: ‘First-time novelist and celebrity colorist Flynn-Hui exposes the high-fashion, high-stakes world of New York City hair salons. Georgia Watkins, freshly graduated from the Wilfred Academy of Beauty in Weekeepeemie, NH, moves to Manhattan to become a colorist at a top salon, leaving her small-town life far behind her. This debut is comparable to Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus’s The Nanny Diaries and Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, but with more hair.”

If looks could kill by Kate White
New York : Warner Books, 2002
Call No.: WHI -[MY]
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Excerpt from Booklist review: “Bridget Jones meets Nancy Drew in Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief White’s impressive debut novel, which provides plenty of New York glamour and glitz, besides a smart, sexy heroine and a cleverly constructed murder mystery. When Cat Jones, editor of Gloss magazine, calls, employees jump. And when she calls freelancer Bailey Weggins on a Sunday morning with a frantic plea for assistance in a personal matter, Bailey responds quickly. Cat has found her live-in nanny, Heidi, dead. When it turns out that Heidi was poisoned, Cat freaks out and insists that Bailey, whose specialty is true-crime reporting, help her discover who’s done it.”[ASKeditor: This series has 3 other titles]

The second assistant : a tale from the bottom of the Hollywood ladder by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare
New York : Viking, 2004
Call No.: NAY
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Excerpt from Publishers Weekly review: ‘Elizabeth Miller gives up an idealistic job as a Washington senator’s aide to join the Agency, a super-powerful Hollywood outfit that represents stars, producers and directors. The young L.A. newcomer may not be as clearheaded and full of self-knowledge as she’s intended to be (she does jump topless into the agency head’s pool with a lecherous producer), but she’s a paragon of virtue compared to her boss, Scott Wagner, who is loutish, sex-obsessed, terminally addicted to any abusable substance, lazy and overbearing.”

The twins of TriBeCa by Rachel Pine
New York : Miramax Books, c2005
Call No.: PIN
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Excerpt from Booklist review: “Pine’s debut novel follows Karen Jacobs, who quits her job at CNN to take a position as an assistant at Glorious Pictures, a major movie studio based in New York. But Karen isn’t prepared for the bizarre behavior she finds in the publicity department at the studio: the senior assistant is jealous of her; her boss, Allegra, rarely talks above a whisper and makes urgent phone calls from the comfort of her bedroom; and connected interns don’t have to come into work at all. A definite piece of “gossip lit,” Pine’s first novel is a fun peek behind the scenes of a major Hollywood studio and the wackiness that ensues there.”

The nanny diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2002
Call No.: MAC
Click here for item availability.
Excerpt from Publishers Weekly review: “Two former Manhattan nannies blow the lid off of the private child-care industry with a hilarious debut that pulls no punches as it recounts the travails of Nan, a hip Mary Poppins looking for a job to fit around her child-development classes at NYU. Mrs. X seems reasonable enough when she hires Nan to look after her four-year-old son, Grayer, but she quickly reveals herself to be a monster a bundle of neuroses wrapped up in Prada, whose son is little more than another status symbol in a fabulous Park Avenue apartment. Mr. X is just as horrible, although he’s rarely seen or heard, too busy navigating mergers and mistresses to make time for a family starving for his affection.”

Found this interesting? What do you think?
Post your comments, or send further questions about these books or any other fiction topic to ask@library.nlb.gov.sg