Meet Emmy, Leigh, and Adriana. Best friends since college, each has seen her share of career foils and romantic foibles over the past decade. Now, as they approach thirty, they’re looking toward their future...and they’re not quite sure they like what they see.
When they are each alone on Valentine’s Day, the trio makes a pact. Within one year, each woman will change the thing that most challenges her. For Emmy, it will be to find romance—or a fling—in every foreign country she visits. For Leigh, a book editor with a dream boyfriend and dream apartment, no change seems necessary—until she starts to notice a brilliant and brooding man named Jesse. And for commitment-phobic, drop-dead-gorgeous Adriana, her goal is to have an engagement ring and a house in Scarsdale. Each woman starts the year with the best of intentions—which is exactly why the pact goes immediately, and exceptionally, awry.
Filled with delicious insider details, Chasing Harry Winston whisks readers into the heart of an elite world, and showcases Weisberger’s best storytelling efforts to date.
Publishers Weekly
Lily Rabe throws herself enthusiastically into her narration; she sounds like she's having a ball, and listeners will, too. Rabe especially has fun with over-the-top Brazilian sexpot Adriana, making melodramatic pronouncements and calling everyone "querida" in a sexy, throaty exotic accent. She's also great as Emmy, the marriage-and-family-obsessed member of the trio: Rabe's sobbing, outraged delivery of Emmy's rant about her boyfriend dumping her for his personal trainer is simultaneously touching and hilarious. Leigh is the "straight man" of the group, but Rabe's performance conveys her doubts about her engagement realistically and sympathetically. This fun audio brings out the best in the novel. A Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 7). (June)
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Library Journal
Weisberger's latest novel chronicles the lives of three glamorous New Yorkers à la Sex and the City. Sexy Adriana lives off her rich Brazilian parents' money while devoting herself to her beauty; serious Leigh works as an editor at a prestigious publishing company; and sweet Emmy is a scout for a prominent restaurateur. All nearing the big 3-0, the gals take stock of their lives over a fabulous meal at the Waverly Inn. Emmy decides to expand her horizons by having sex with random men, and she challenges the promiscuous Adriana to find a committed relationship (Leigh is exempt as the others believe she has a perfect life, even if she doesn't). The three follow paths amply strewn with consumer goods and cattiness, each eventually finding what she really needs. While this book lacks the outsider-looking-in social critique that made Weisberger's best-selling The Devil Wears Prada so entertaining, don't underestimate the number of readers who enjoy following characters willing to spend $8000 on a "makeover" for a parrot. Weisberger's legion of fans make this an essential purchase for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ2/15/08; visit the author online at www.laurenweisberger.com/index.php.-Ed.]
—Lisa Davis-Craig
Kirkus Reviews
Three single gals on the cusp of turning the big 3-0 shake up their romantic lives and deal with the consequences. That Adriana, Emmy and Leigh have remained close since college is a testament to the strength of their bond, since personality-wise they could not be more different. Leigh is a neurotic book editor, Emmy is a financially struggling cooking aficionado and Adriana is a Brazilian knockout living off her rich parents in a swanky penthouse. After serial-monogamist Emmy is suddenly dumped by her longtime beau Duncan (for the personal trainer she hired for him), Adriana insists that the only way Emmy can get over him is by having torrid affairs with foreign men. Easy for the gorgeous Adriana to say. Emmy counters that if she can "slut out" then unrepentant man-eater Adriana has to, for once in her life, have a committed relationship. Let the games begin! Well, at least for Adriana and Emmy. Leigh, for her part, has a job she loves and a "perfect" boyfriend, hunky sportscaster Russell. Or is he perfect? When he proposes, she knows she should be happy, but she instead finds herself getting tangled up with bad boy novelist Jesse Chapman, who happens to be married. Meanwhile, Emmy, courtesy of her new job scouting restaurant locations, embarks on her erotic adventures, while Adriana nabs a slightly dorky big-time Hollywood director she struggles to remain faithful to. She also meets a magazine editor who, impressed by her effortless ways with men, gives Adriana her own advice column, "The Brazilian Girl's Guide to Man Handling," which sounds a lot like a sexed-up version of The Rules. The narrative is choppy (the book would have benefited from more editing), and the characters'obsession with youth, as well as their displays of jealousy and cattiness, are tiring. Weisberger's third effort (Everyone Worth Knowing, 2005, etc.), with the requisite girls' nights out and disappointing men, has some well-observed passages-and Adriana is a hoot-but it's nothing we haven't seen before, many times. Agent: Deborah Schneider/Gelfman Schneider
