Laura Stampler

I thought this book was the prefect mix of how to loose a guy in ten days and the devil wears prada. I loved the work place drama at the magazine and also NYC has a backdrop of this whole story. I really feel for harper and was super invested in her story. I also loved the various plot shocked that kept me on my toes. It was quick read but had a lot of emotional moments. It kept me reading and with a cute boy next door that i kept rooting for. If you liked t.v the bold type this might by your next read!… (mais)

I thought this book was the prefect mix of how to loose a guy in ten days and the devil wears prada. I loved the work place drama at the magazine and also NYC has a backdrop of this whole story. I really feel for harper and was super invested in her story. I also loved the various plot shocked that kept me on my toes. It was quick read but had a lot of emotional moments. It kept me reading and with a cute boy next door that i kept rooting for. If you liked t.v the bold type this might by your next read!… (mais)

Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies/Laura Stampler  
The Devil Wears Prada meets Sex and the City in a wickedly funny debut novel about a girl who lands a dream internship at a magazine in New York City. If only she hadn’t lied about being a dating expert on her resume…
Harper Anderson has always thought she should have been born somewhere more glamorous than her sleepy Northern California suburb. After all, how many water polo matches and lame parties in Bobby McKittrick’s backyard can one girl take?
Already resigned to working at a Skinny B’s Juice Press for the summer, Harper is shocked when the ultra-prestigious teen magazine, Shift, calls to say they want her to be their teen dating blogger for the summer. All she needs to do is get her butt to New York in two days.
There’s just one teeny, tiny problem: Apart from some dance floor make-outs, Harper doesn’t have a whole lot of dating experience. So when Shift’s application asked for an “edgy” personal essay, Harper might have misappropriated her best friend’s experiences for her own. But she can just learn on the job...right? Will the house of lies Harper has built around her dream job collapse all around her, or will she be able to fake it until she makes it in the big city?
This book was a lot of fun to read but definitely required some suspension of disbelief to really enjoy and had a few tropes that were just too obviously going to play out.
 
I know YA is great for sending certain messages and those messages should be about friendship and learning how to have self value, but I felt like I could see the formula in action. I could see the best friend trope; I could see the boy trope; I could see the bitchy girls turning out to have real personalities trope. Basically, I could map this book out after the first chapter.
 
Her parents let her go to New York City for the summer on a last minute whim and she happens to be able to stay with her mom's friend who's a little bit crazy and has great fashion sense and just happens to have a dog who needs a dog walker and... well, the coincidences pile up pretty quickly, and though Harper was living the kind of life I'd like to explore, I wasn't able to relate to her at all.
 
Nonetheless, I did try to suspend my disbelief, and this was quite an enjoyable read. There was a lot of little humorous pieces and I had a lot of fun reading about the work environment of the magazine Harper ends up interning for--perhaps not quite Devil Wears Prada, but still pretty amusing.
 
The way that the magazine was turning into a website that only cared about clicks was really interesting to hear about. They were writing articles that talked about other articles and had headlines just like those you'd see on Facebook today and that was very well done. The blog Harper wrote for the magazine was pretty entertaining, something I'd probably read if I was bored or anxious about a date, and I enjoyed hearing about the social media response that came from it.
 
When I turned off my brain and just enjoyed this book, it was a solid read and pretty entertaining. However, it could have done more to avoid tropes and to be more believable.
 
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
 … (mais)