The Devil Wears Prada novel is about a recent college graduate, Andrea Sachs, who is seeking work as a writer. Her dream job is to work for The New Yorker. But she doesn’t have any connections or job experience. She reluctantly decides to accept an entry level job at a big high fashion magazine, Runway, because she is told that Miranda Priestly is very powerful as well as she has connections in the industry. She works for Miranda as her assistant, and from day one, she feels lost. The longer she works there, the more she loathes Runway, Miranda, other employees there, and everything about Runway. But she tolerates Miranda as well as working at Runway for about a year so that she can eventually get her dream job. Miranda makes Andrea’s life miserable with incomplete instructions and assignments that she is not sure how to perform.
Nevertheless, she perseveres with her work, trying to get everything done somehow. All the stress and tension of the job take a toll on Andrea, and she starts to neglect her boyfriend, friends and family. Her ambition drives her to work hard toward her goal and she starts to forget about her surroundings as well as what really important in her life. Every time she gets frustrated, someone keeps reminding her that “a million girls would die for it,” and “it” meaning the job she loathes so much. She eventually starts reminding herself that a million girls would die for this job in order to motivate herself to keep going until the year is up. Tensions and frustrations build up for Andrea throughout the novel as Andrea continually complains about working there as well as for Miranda. Toward the end of the novel, Andrea starts having a nervous breakdown and she realizes that she can’t take it any longer. She also realizes that Miranda is trying to mold her into a young Miranda, in which she doesn’t appreciate as a reference. All of the sudden, friends and family need her, and she becomes torn between continuing to strive for her dream job or being with friends and family. Many things happen, some tragic, that make Andrea change her original plan. She finally decides to give it to Miranda and go on her own.
This novel seemed different from the movie version because many details in the novel were different from the scenes in the movie. I thought it was an interesting novel because Andrea was narrating her journey and struggles after college toward her dream job as well as describing her exciting surroundings. She took the reader on every step of her journey as she performed her work and assignments. She also described what she encountered on her way, which was entertaining. This novel about Andrea’s experiences seemed so real to me that I found myself relating with Andrea because of my own struggles after college. I often found some areas in the novel to be quite amusing because of Andrea’s constant bickering about this and that as she tries to tolerate everything and everyone at Runway. Furthermore, I often wondered why the author didn’t name the novel, “A Million Girls Would Die For It,” because it was mentioned so many times in the novel. It seemed to be the main theme of the novel,
although it would have been an ironic title.

Rating: 8