I just couldn’t finish this book. I was bored out of my mind and I just didn’t even care to finish it so I can not recommend this one at all. I’m sure some would love it but I just didn’t which is a bummer because the description sounded like something I would love .

Thank you @harpercollinsca for sending me a copy for review. A Hundred Other Girls is out in the US and out August 9th here in Canada.

Noora is an aspiring writer in New York when she gets a job with her favourite magazine, Vinyl. She becomes the assistant to the editor in chief and is thrown into the drama and hectic life of her boss.

This was a fun summer read! A bit like Devil Wears Prada with a modern slant and lots of micro aggressions and some out and our racism. The side characters were so fun and I love the support Noora receives along the way.

When I heard the pitch for A Hundred Other Girls, I immediately added it to my TBR. A modern take on The Devil Wears Prada, yes please! I wanted to love it. I wanted to connect with it. I wanted to be able to rave about it. Unfortunately, it just wasn't the book for me. I found the main character kind of frustrating. Her decisions left me shaking my head most of the time. The attitudes and actions of most of the rest of the characters were appalling and just left me feeling awkward and wanting to distance myself.
I really wish I was on here praising this book, because Iman is a gifted writer. The story had me to the end and the way it ended was good, but it wasn't enough to salvage it. I know there are many out there who will love this book and connect with it, and I look forward to seeing their reviews, but this was not for me.

Thank you so much to Harper Collins for the gifted Ebook ARC. All thoughts in the review are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. This was a fun, light read, with serious social commentary. I think this will be a new favorite for many, I think that this did show it was the author's debut, but I can see her writing knockout novels in the future!

This was the breath of fresh air I needed! I love having a book based off of one of my favourite movies and tv shows, The Devil Wears Prada and The Bold Type! I love that this has a subtile underlying tone of women empowerment. That is what I need in any book! AMAZING!!

Rating 3/5
Plot 3/5
Spice 1/5
Writing 3/5
Character Development 4/5

[I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book]

“A Hundred Other Girls” by Iman Hariri-Kia tells the story of Noora, an aspiring writer and amateur blogger living in New York. Noora has read Vinyl magazine for as long as she can remember and when she lands a job as an assistant to the editor-in-chief, Loretta James, Noora sees a bright future ahead of her. However, her dreams are shattered when she realizes what a nightmare Loretta is. Loretta constantly demands that Noora complete tasks that overshadow the successes of other members of the company such as digital director, Jade Aki. During her time at Vinyl Magazine, Noora finds interest in the digital team and also begins crushing on a man from IT which further complicates her work life. Noora must determine whether to follow her dream or switch paths and try something new.

This book was good! The plot was interesting and it did live up to the “The Devil Wears Prada and The Bold Type” vibe that it was marketed for. Although I love seeing real-life references in books, there were a few too many pop culture references mentioned in this book. The book was relatable and covered many important and inspiring topics such as working in the creative industry and chasing after your dreams.

I did not enjoy this book at all, I actually did not finish after about 30%. It was an interesting premise for the book that intitially interested me and reminded me a bit of the Devil Wears Prada plotline - totally up my alley. After I started reading the book it was full of TONS of woke keywords, all of which were clearly there to keep the book relevant and inclusive. I found it overwhelming, annoying, and not enjoyable. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book, but I could not power through the virtue signaling.

Rating 2 stars because the premise of the book is really interesting and compelling.

This one had me when it was described as Devils wear prada, unfortunately i was a bit disappointed by the story. I think my expectations had been for something of a different genre. I found this to be more of a YA than the adult fiction it has been labeled as. That being said it was still enjoyed but not as much as the hype had me longing for.

This was a fun Sunday binge read!

Noora takes an assistant job (for a bosszilla) at a print media outlet and soon learns there’s a war between the print and digital team - and she’s caught in the crossfire.

I enjoyed reading the NYC and pop culture references, the dynamics at a modern day media outlet and loved the diversity. This was a quick, fun read (that at times read a bit YA-y), but a light and quick read.

Marketed to people who loved The Devil Wears Prada, A Hundred Other Girls is a story about Noora and her life as an assistant for the head of a renowned magazine. As Noora gets in deeper into the company and the lives of her coworkers, her morality becomes tested.

While I didn't expect for this book to be a new favourite, I certainly didn't expect it to be as gruelling as it was. The first quarter was fine, but as it went on, the writing got increasingly unbearable. For a writer whose novel seems to be trying to analyze the "problematic" aspects of the journalism industry, boy did she have some problematic things to say herself!

Hariri-Kia uses a Black character as the narrator's love interest, and then foil, while stringing ridiculous stereotypes behind him. If you told me this author didn't actually know any Black people IRL, I would believe you. Diversity isn't a trope, and the way Black people are written in this novel would better suit a 2000's YA novel.

Despite the unwavering racism, A Hundred Other Girls is nothing special. While reading it, the prose makes it clear to the reader that this is a debut novel: phrases are repetitive, Noora's voice resembles a Zoey 101 character, etc.
It will continue to be a testament of it's time, and not in a good way. The dialogue and humour is devoid of any real wit, instead regurgitating Gen-Zisms on every other page.

All in all, A Hundred Other Girls is clear debut at best, and a meandering (and slightly racist) cliche at worst.

📘I thought A HUNDRED OTHER GIRLS was a good story about a writer trying to make it in the media during a print vs. digital era. Who doesn’t want to root for someone making it at their DREAM company. With that being said, there was something about the way hundreds of pop-culture references were thrown my way that threw me off, almost like there were ToO mAnY? I also think the references were very Gen Z and I sometimes didn’t even understand them (but that’s a me problem 👵🏼).

However cheesy at times, I really appreciated Noora’s relationship with her sister👯‍♀️ I read this book like I was on a rollercoaster—super excited at first, a bit of a lull in the middle, but then the big big peak was at the end and got me excited again!🎢

💻I liked Iman’s writing style especially since this was a debut, and am super excited to see what she has next, but I wanted to love this book more than I did 🫣🥸

This was a smartly written, clever #ownvoices debut from a young Iranian-American author and native New Yorker, Iman Hariri-Kia.

Greatly hyped and touted as an updated Devil wears Prada, this coming of age story follows Noorah, a new intern at the iconic magazine Vinyl. Working for a demanding boss, Noorah has to navigate work-life balance when she's hired to be the fresh young voice the magazine needs while also pursuing a new romantic relationship and her own blog.

I found the writing very insightful and relatable and loved the diverse cast of characters. I was a little disappointed Noorah's love interest turned into such a selfish dick but this was definitely more a story of self-improvement and growth for Noorah as a young woman of color than it was about finding her a happily ever after.

Good on audio narrated by Lameece Issaq and recommended for fans of The other Black girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

3.5 stars - rounded up because i’m excited about Iman’s voice, and what she writes next!

A Hundred Other Girls was an enjoyable romp, and a much more relatable (to me) and up to date answer to The Devil Wears Prada. Smart, heartfelt and funny - while also frustrating and enraging, this book was an excellent and incisive criticism & deep dive of the media and publishing industries.

Some of the lines were a bit cheesy and cringy (an empty juul pod where your heart should be?! lol) — but I felt Hariri-Kia did a great job at a really meta/satirical cast of characters.

One of the things I loved most was the greyness in morality, ethics, and characters — we saw the best, the worst, and the middlest(?!?) of everyone - which was really relatable to me, painting an all too real picture of what it can be like working as a young woman of colour in an industry that can both uplift you, and also chew you up and spit you out.

Everyone was a villain, but everyone was also making decisions to try to do what was best for them - which led to messy, complicated people, in a messy, complicated world. I *loved* it.

I treasured Noora’s relationship with her sister. It was so full of love and care, and pain, and obligation, and shared history, and it was beautiful.

This book was a quick and enjoyable read, and incredibly hard to put down.

3.5/5 stars

A Hundred Other Girls is General Fiction/Women's Fiction. It has a Devil Wears Prada vibe to it.

The book takes place in New York City. The narrator is 22 year old Iranian-American writer/blogger Noora (1st person POV). She takes a job as an assistant to Loretta James, her favorite print magazine's editor-in-chief (think Miranda Priestly).

What I liked:
I really enjoyed everything about the magazine. It is an interesting setting for a book. I enjoyed the print vs digital war. And I enjoyed seeing how unhinged and demanding Loretta acted.

There are quite a few diverse characters, which was great. I loved the Iranian-American rep and the queer rep.

What I liked less:
I liked the beginning of this book. But the middle fell a bit flat for me. I hate when a book grabs my attention, but that doesn't keep it all the way till the end.

However, the book did pick up and there was a lot of drama towards the end which I enjoyed!

Hello. This book wasn’t available for me to download so I did not have a copy to read. Does anyone know if it’s possible to retrieve a copy?

3.5 stars

An aspiring writer with a solid following on her NYC-based blog, Noora is currently crashing on her sister's couch and in desperate need of a job. So when she hears that Loretta James, the Editor in Chief of Vinyl magazine, is in need of a new assistant, Noora applies hoping that this would be her foot in the door to jumpstart her writing career. Instead, she finds that Loretta is erratic and difficult to work for, and that there seems to be a feud between the Print and Digital teams at Vinyl. A feud that Noora soon finds herself caught in the middle of.

This was very much Devil Wears Prada vibes with a more diverse cast of characters, which gave it a more relatable point of view. Noora is Iranian, and experiences situations and micro aggressions that, unfortunately, many people of colour can relate to but also provides depth to the character. Even the depiction of the industry itself may seem grandiose and outlandish to some but, I can imagine, is perhaps inspired by actual experiences. I'm not even in the same industry (maybe slightly adjacent) but after 1.5 decades in my career, I have experienced and/or witnessed moments that are not that far off from some of what was depicted in this novel.

As for the writing style, I'm a bit torn about it. I generally do enjoy more colloquial language and not as much flowery narration, and this was definitely a conversational style. It almost felt like this could have been in the style of Noora's blog posts - a lot of asides, cheeky commentary that interject her own storytelling. I found that, in a way, it did work, but also not at times. The asides sometimes took me out of the flow of the story a bit. I also found the pacing a bit inconsistent. Sometimes there were a lot of pages dedicated to something, and other times (I think) mid-chapter it would have jumped weeks or months later, fairly abruptly.

I also have mixed feelings about the sex scene that's in this story. I didn't feel that the connection between the characters was established well enough that there was really anything there to warrant a sudden moment of passion. And given the tone and general vibe of the book before and after that, I felt this scene was suddenly uncharacteristically spicy and just stood out that it didn't feel like it quite fit. While I do appreciate how the author made Noora confident in expressing her wants and needs, I really was not feeling that connection (and the guy's behaviour and personality had been so ick throughout the story so far) that the whole thing just felt off to me. (I was actually rooting for another pairing that didn't pan out to anything!)

I do want to highlight that there is a good representation of a variety of groups in this book. People's pronouns are acknowledged, there are a number of characters that are part of the LGBTQ community, and a diverse mix of ethnicities. Overall it is a fairly quick, entertaining read if you enjoy novels like Devil Wears Prada, shows like Younger, and stories that have to do with the fashion and/or publishing industry in NYC. It touches on themes of ambition and what people do to achieve that, ageism in a way - when the technology and the world moves too quickly for some and there's almost a culture shock to try and keep up or else be left behind.

I love the overall concept of A Hundred Other Girls. It was as advertised, much like the Devil Wears Prada and the Bold Type, both of which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, the overall execution of this book did not work for me. It was oversaturated with Gen Z references, to the point that I found it so distracting. A lot of it did not feel very natural.
Thank you HarperCollins Canada for the opportunity to read this eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

While this novel did meet the Devil Wears Prada genre as marketed, this was a let down as far as quality.

This was so cringey, performative, and tone deaf that it was hard to read. The main character is selfish and manipulative, but relishes in playing victim to get ahead in her career. The author tried to push some kind of social commentary but has her MC constantly overlook racism and micro aggressions in order to appear more pleasant. There are so many terrible one-liners and pop culture references that it borders on unreadable.

Thank you to Harpercollins for an eARC of this book!

Honestly, I liked it, but I did have a few issues with this book. What I did like about it was the main character, Noora. I loved seeing her perspective on the media industry, and I loved how ambitious, and strong of a character she was. And she had incredible growth throughout the book. The plot was also great, and although it took a bit of time to get into, it picked up during the last half of the book and kept me pretty invested. But one of the major things I did not enjoy about the book was the writing style. The book tried to come off as modern and gen-z, but it felt very forced and at many times, cringy. It felt so unnecessary and made the book harder to enjoy. Overall though, I liked the book, but I don’t think that it’s something for me. 3.5/5 stars.

i have been following iman for a while on tik tok and instragram and was super excited to read this book because i love stories set in nyc and the whole 'magazine' work place stories à la bold type and the devils wear prada.

iman's writing is simple, funny, and her characters are really cool. i recommend this to everyone.