8 best Sophie Kinsella books to read if you loved ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’

This is a delicious book, all the more brilliant for working so well when it absolutely shouldn’t. The premise sounds troubling. Could anyone be so clever and so useless? Do we want a contemporary heroine to find solace in an apron and a rolling pin? It’s a real testament to Kinsella’s talents that Samantha is entirely compelling and credible. 

The wider themes of the work stay with you long after you’ve relished the happy ending. Arguably, Samatha’s bosses are some of Kinsella’s finest comic creations, and perhaps some of the funniest characters in literature. Samantha’s courage and growth feels genuine and is deeply moving. It’s a real escapist fantasy – who hasn’t felt utterly overwhelmed by the demands of life and dreamed about simply running away – but it’s a comic masterpiece that quietly asks big, alarming questions about ambition and identity.

Kinsella takes the most mundane, miserable details of regular London life – crap job, no money, a dearth of sexual possibilities – and lifts them and polishes them into observations so shiny and captivating that they could be displayed in the window of Cartier. This is apropos, as the book is all about figurative and literal shop fronts. Becky’s longing to be “The Girl Who”, and her conviction that the messy, unmanageable parts of her life can become smooth and controlled if she can just possess the right things, is painfully palpable. Kinsella’s forensic annotation of a “feminine” hobby is fiercely feminist.

The lightness of this book is Mitford-esque, it’s a real pleasure to read. But beneath the surface, Becky’s insecurity, anxiety and search for hope are all treated with real wisdom and compassion.

Social media is a tricky subject for some authors to navigate, but it’s a subject where Kinsella’s writing can really shine. It’s a crucible for the complicated emotions she excels at exploring – envy, shame, longings, cravings and hopefulness. When the people in your life say helpful things like “stop comparing yourself to other people” or “it’s only Instagram”, this is the book to throw at their heads.

Heroine Katie isn’t simply relatable. She’s written with a rawness, honesty and accuracy that burns, and Kinsella makes powerful observations about friendship, and the relationship between Katie and her boss Demeter is drawn with real nuance. It’s also very, very funny. Kinsella is able to gently skewer our obsession with image and appearance in a way that is teasing, affectionate but deeply knowing. 

An utterly charming escapist romcom that is as smooth and addictive as ice cream. It might be the most romantic of Kinsella’s novels, taking modern love as its subject and treating it as sharply and deftly as it would be in a Frank Capra screwball comedy.

Ava’s longing for love is exposed as a longing to live a different life. Kinsella treats the contemporary dating world with care, prioritising emotions over mechanics, and showing real understanding of the searing highs and heartbreaking lows we all encounter when searching for "The One". Even so, this might be the most sweetly old fashioned Kinsella novel, in its spirit, in that it fully whisks us away from the real world.

Imagine if you awoke from a coma to discover you had missed years of your life – and all of your dreams had come true while you were out cold. The idea itself is magnificent, it’s hard to think of an opening so specific, but with such universal appeal. Of course, it’s also the ideal story setting for Kinsella to do what she does best, showing us all how we wrestle with the pressure to be perfect and reconcile it with the impulse to be human.

Kinsella’s metiér is the creation of compelling characters, and the genius of Remember Me is that the character is the plot. We get to know Lexi as she gets to know herself, and we’re all solving the mystery together. Again, the romance charms us, but the real, propulsive love story is Lexi’s complicated relationship with her job, and the liberation of her ambition makes the most thrilling climax.

The second instalment of the Shopaholic series, this time Becky goes to New York. Kinsella takes Manhattan at an exhilarating clip – the novel was published in 2001, when Sex And The City was at its zenith, and that high gloss decadence is very much in evidence.

Of course, the brilliance of the book lies in the fact that this world is as strange and thrilling to Becky as it is to the rest of us. We get drunk on glamour with her, and we sober up, horribly, right beside her. Becky’s big mistakes are always dealt with tenderly, and this is what sets this novel apart. Kinsella is able to show her heroine wrestling with her flaws, and in offering her forgiveness, understanding and redemption, she releases the reader from a little of their own shame in a way that is truly uplifting. Becky’s “performance” of English customs is definitely worth mentioning too, it’s a comic moment that will stay with you forever.

This is a powerful story about family, ambition and longing, cunningly disguised as a souffle of a romantic comedy. Heroine Fixie’s keen sense of duty is getting in the way of her need to make choices and live for herself. Her family business is in bad shape, and her actual family is even worse.

On first reading, it might seem as though Fixie has a stronger moral centre than many Kinsella heroines, but this is a book about bravery, and how standing up for ourselves and our desires can be the scariest, but most satisfying thing of all. The reappearance of a subtly monstrous ex-boyfriend is written with great agility, and Fixie’s wrong turns are painfully relatable ones.

The will-they-wont-they tug of the romantic storyline is captivating, but ultimately this is a love letter to careers. Fixie finds fulfilment by taking charge of her own personal and professional destiny. This novel is filled with love – it’s the sort of story you’d pass to a person you really cared about, if they were in some kind of spiritual or emotional trouble. There’s no better recommendation than that.

Just like a real wedding, this novel assembles a cast of all of our favourite people and brings them together in joyous, unexpected ways. The star of this book might be Becky’s best friend Suze, who over the course of three novels has made a graceful and gentle journey from madcap Fulham posh girl to sweet natured, straight talking sage.

It’s gorgeously giddy, and it feels as frothy, gilded and urgent as a trolly dash in Vera Wang – but in some ways it might be Kinsella’s darkest and most complex book, as she deftly explores the difficult relationship between Becky’s fiance Luke and his chilly, emotionally abusive mother Elinor. A special mention must go to nightmare wedding planner Robyn, the iron fist in an Emilia Wickstead glove. She’s a comic creation that Evelyn Waugh would be envious of.