When Life Gives You Lululemons

First of all, let me say that I love “chick lit”. I really honestly like this kind of books and read many, some are better than others. This book is well written and entertaining, but I found it really problematic and dated. I can’t believe that in the year 2018 we have to read how these “sexy/ attractive/ beautiful” women have to “starve” to be in shape. I find it really dangerous. Not only that, Emily (who is the main character and maybe our heroine?) not only recommends starvation but also diet coke (which she even gives to a 5 year old saying that it is “good for you”), pills and cigarettes. Sigh. I understand that she is sarcastic, but there should be some character or commentary about these being really unhealthy habits. And the other issue that I wish had been dealt with less “naturalization” was that of vagina plastic surgeries: to each their own, but there are many health professionals that claim that they are dangerous, and they perpetuate an image of women that is ridiculous: wanting to look and feel like a “teenager down there” sounds like something a really insipid woman would say. I really found the book and the characters funny, and I understand that this is fiction, but they seemed a lot older than they are. I am 39 and I think that I am much more modern than these ladies. They remind me of my mother, who is on her sixties.Do not buy if you are expecting a Devil Wears Prada sequel. This is not it. If they hadn’t mentioned Runway a couple of times (and Miranda), it wouldn’t have made a difference. This book stands alone.My conclusion is: If you are a well-adjusted adult who knows who she is, please, by all means read this book! But keep it away from insecure women, from teenagers and from people with image or health issues. Fixating on 15 pounds overweight is so silly and “90s” that I just wish that there had been one character calling them all out on all this: being skinny and rich and married is not a worthy goal. Have fun!

I liked “The Devil Wore Prada” because it was an out-of-the ordinary plot. This book, however, quickly evolved into the lost love/strong survivor clique that characterizes so much of so-called women’s literature. Couple that with one character’s perfect husband and another’s almost perfect husband and there’s not a lot of tension to move things forward. Not the worst of this genre but still pretty contrived.

Lauren Weisberger never disappoints and she doesn’t with “When Life Gives You Lulumons...” either. It’s the perfect beach day read, or a night in. I read it in one sitting and laughed out loud. The return of Emily after a few years of marriage and a lot of growing up is delightful. And the bits where Miranda Priestly returns are actually a riot. Add 2 best friends, one very monstrous husband and mix them with the Über wealthy Connecticut mommy competitiveness and you've got a jewel of a book. My only negative...I read it so quickly and now I have to wait till the next book from Lauren.

I read this because the book club I am in wanted to read something "fluffy". (Personally, I like "heavy" things.) Yep, our book club got just what the suggestor wanted. A light and airy, fluffy, meaningless, let's go get our nails done, to hell with reading good stuff book.

This will sound harsh. There are so many good books waiting to be read. I am so sorry I wasted time and money on this one. Cliche, trite, boring and insulting to women everywhere..

I'm kicking myself for ordering this book. Just pain dumb, no more, no less. The formula story line became predictable, very quickly. I thought it would be a guilty pleasure, it was actually a guilty waste of $12.99. No big deal, live, learn and rock on.

Amusing premise but much more hyperbolic character stereotyping than satire or wit. Predictable. Ok for light beach reading.I think the author has taken this series as far as it can/should possibly go.

This chick-lit, contemporary fiction was so fun to read, I had to give it <b>4 Stars</b>!<b>SUMMARY</b>A decade after <i>The Devil Wears Prada</i>, Emily is a celebrity publicist, living in LA, happily married and still fabulous! Her BFF, Marion has recently relocated to Greenwich, CT and left her career to be a full time stay at home mom to her three children. Although their lives are on very different paths, they have stayed close.One day, on a work related visit to NYC, Emily stops in to visit Marion. Since Emily's husband is on an extended business trip out of the country, Emily decides to spend the night with Marion, which actually ends up becoming weeks versus a night.In the meantime, a scandal breaks. A former Victoria's Secret Model \ current senator's wife is arrested for a DUI with, not only her son in the car, but several of his friends. It turns into a huge reputation ruining media storm.

Read this in one day on my vacation. It’s a fun story where heroines in different stages of life take on a major injustice with humour and savvy. However, the near-constant body shaming and obsession with weight became very tired. It made the main character seem flat—as if the author couldn’t come up with any other defining personality traits. I honestly wouldn’t recommend this book to any women who is struggling with her appearance and has had any sort of eating disorder.

I typically read books about WWII, North Korea, the middle east, and slavery in the southern US. Every now and again I need a light read to give myself a bit of a break from all the heavy reading I do. This book was perfect. Emily, Miriam and Karolina's lives will leave you laughing and hoping for all good things to happen. They are friends the way girls should be friends and their lives have many of the same types of problems we all have. They are relatable characters. I loved it!

From the author of “The Devil Wears Prada” this is a fun chick-lit, contemporary fiction of three thirty-something women supporting each other and finding new ways to deal with kids, men and careers, all while facing down the big 4-0. “When Life Gives You Lululemons” got my summer reading groove on and I spent most of it chuckling or madly swiping.Karolina, a former model, married to a senator, soon to announce his run for President is arrested for drunk driving, while with her son and his friends however she isn’t drunk. Her world is turned upside down. Shunned by her friends, torn from the child she loves, and the husband whom she thought loved her.Emily the former sassy assistant to the evil Miranda Priestly, is now in LA running her own business. Miriam is Emily’s good friend, a Harvard-educated power-house corporate attorney, who has had enough and wants to try her hand as a stay-at-home suburban motherhood with her three young kids but didn’t realise the major adjustment it would entail such as making new friends and fitting in with head-to-toe every day Lululemon clad fellow mothers whose main occupation is vaginal reconstructive surgery and lots of day drinking. Emily comes to visit to help Miriam only to find her friend Karolina in trouble...This book was fun & captivating from start to finish. In upscale Greenwich these three women come together, each struggling with something and make for a hoot of a story. Lauren Weisberger has done it again!

You kind of know what to expect from the author of The Devil Wears Prada, and in that sense this book doesn’t disappoint. In this one, former Polish supermodel Karolina is married to a junior Democrat senator and the happy stepmother of 12 yo Harry until one day when - driving Harry’s friends home - she’s stopped by police, arrested and thrown in the slammer overnight for drunk driving. But she wasn’t drunk. The whole thing was a setup and the question is why and how. Enter her longtime friend Miriam, who after a successful NY legal career lives in the suburbs being a mum, which takes more than a small amount of adjustment. Enter 2) Emily, a friend of Miriam’s. Emily is a great character: sassy, bitchy, very upfront. She’s one of those people who handle the image of showbizz types, and is determinedly childless, whereas Karolina has been having IVF for years without success.Karolina’s husband, far from being supportive, seems keen to distance himself from his wife, so naturally Emily and Miriam step in to buoy her up, rescue her reputation and sleuth their way to a satisfactory conclusion. Emily decrees that Karolina’s best course of action is to take the accusations of alcoholism on the chin and disappear for a while, hinting at rehab. Given the irregularities surrounding the arrest, this seems a weak plot point. Given the wealth and power available, surely it would have made better sense to uncover the police corruption and who organised it? This does eventually happen. Anyhoo ... we get a portrait of wealthy suburban folks where the women are super glamorous thanks to lots of surgery and have to be constantly on the lookout for cheating husbands, where birthday parties for five year olds are completely over the top extravaganzas that would feed a small country and where no expense (or drugs) are spared on neighbourhood parties. While we might get a frisson from these insights into the lives and accoutrements of the shallowly wealthy, you have to wonder what strange planet this is. While formerly middle class Syrians are escaping their war torn country in rubber boats, there are doctors busily stitching vaginas to suit the dimensions of a husbandly penis.While Karolina’s husband is painted all black, the husbands of Miriam and Emily (whose work is never delineated) are painted loyal and caring in a way that makes them unreal. The scary Miranda Priestly makes an entrance and is instrumental in seeing the senator get his comeuppance. It’s a feisty, fun, voyeuristic read if you can overlook a certain thinness in characterisation and plot and if nothing else, will make you glad you’re not one of those people.

Meh, I really hated most of the characters in the book and had forgotten their backstories since thier Devil wears Prada days.