Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns
by Lauren Weisberger
reviewed by Kelly Smith
The long anticipated sequel to The Devil Wears Prada is here and revisits Andy, Emily and Miranda ten years after Andy gave Miranda and the job “a million girls would die for” a righteous send off. Andy and Emily are now best friends who have joined forces and launched “The Plunge,” a highly successful bridal magazine. Emily is married and Andy is about to marry the love of her life in a grand wedding that will, of course, be featured in “The Plunge.”
The magazine is so successful that it catches the eye of the Devil herself, Miranda Priestly,
who begins very lucrative negotiations to acquire “The Plunge” for Elias Clarke’s esteemed stable of publications. The only problem is…Andy doesn’t want to sell, especially to the woman who still haunts her nightmares ten years later. Emily, however, does want to sell and so does Andy’s husband and so ensues the secret negotiations that ultimately pit friend against friend and husband against wife.
When Andy discovers what’s been done, she breaks her friendship with Emily, divorces her husband and sets out to start over with a love connection from her past.
I had such high hopes for this book. I mean really, who doesn’t love her some Miranda Priestly? Miranda was cruel, yes, but supremely entertaining nonetheless. I had visions of high fashion cat fights, Miranda’s razor-sharp tongue and plenty of “That’s all’s.” Sadly, that is not what I, and possibly everyone else that read this book, got. What we got was a seemingly random story with so many details left by the wayside such as: How did Andy and Emily become best friends and why, after ten years, does the thought of Miranda send Andy’s subconscious into nightmare mode? This Andy doesn’t seem at all like the strong Andy from The Devil Wears Prada. She’s more wishy-washy and one-dimensional here. And there just wasn’t enough Miranda! Surely Ms. Weisberger would have known that the combination and interactions of the characters created in The Devil Wears Prada that made it such a success needed to translate to Revenge?
Sometimes sticking with a formula isn’t necessarily a bad thing and had Ms. Weisberger done that here, it would have delivered a much needed “stiletto to the instep” of this book.
2 Stars
