Reviewer: Samantha
I received a review copy
Summary:
An outrageously stylish, wickedly funny novel of fashion in the digital age, The Knockoff is the story of Imogen Tate, editor in chief of Glossy magazine, who finds her twentysomething former assistant Eve Morton plotting to knock Imogen off her pedestal, take over her job, and reduce the magazine, famous for its lavish 768-page September issue, into an app.
When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired “the gray hairs,” put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings. Imogen, darling of the fashion world, may have Alexander Wang and Diane von Furstenberg on speed dial, but she can’t tell Facebook from Foursquare and once got her iPhone stuck in Japanese for two days. Under Eve’s reign, Glossy is rapidly becoming a digital sweatshop—hackathons rage all night, girls who sleep get fired, and “fun” means mandatory, company-wide coordinated dances to Beyoncé. Wildly out of her depth, Imogen faces a choice—pack up her Smythson notebooks and quit, or channel her inner geek and take on Eve to save both the magazine and her career. A glittering, uproarious, sharply drawn story filled with thinly veiled fashion personalities, The Knockoff is an insider’s look at the ever-changing world of fashion and a fabulous romp for our Internet-addicted age.
Review:
I was so looking forward to reading this book this summer, as I’ve been hearing so many people praise it. I found it to be a ton of fun, a real page-turner, and the perfect beach read. It was hilarious to watch Imogen try to keep up with all the changes at Glossy and the world in general. But the book was so true and it almost scared me a bit. We are Internet-addicted. We are all about technology and never leaving our phones and trying to get ahead. This book gave me plenty of good reminders not to get too caught up in it all, and that it’s okay to just enjoy life and not put so much pressure on myself all the time. Eve gave me plenty of chuckles as well as “I want to throttle you” moments. Looking for a vacation book or just a summer must-have? This is one.
5 stars
