Luke has a new gig doing PR for an A-list movie star, which, for celebrity-obsessed Becky, is almost too much to handle – or maybe just enough? The fashion-obsessed anti-heroine of Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic books reappears in Shopaholic to the Stars, the seventh title in the bestselling series, which finds the former financial journalist moving to Los Angeles with her husband, Luke. Tutus are something Becky Brandon, née Bloomwood, a kindred-spirit animal to Mindy Lahiri if there ever was one, thinks about a lot.

In short, if you thought flawed female heroines went out of style when Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw hung up her tutu, think again. Instead, she was going for the Michael Scott, the Larry David, the Kenny Powers – truly screwed-up bigots and basket cases who were, nonetheless, the rowdy centers of their respective shows.'Ī woman that dares to be disliked? Indeed, Kaling's sparkling, sharply written comedy revolves around ob-gyn Mindy Lahiri, a motor-mouthed, narcissistic magpie whose many failures and faux pas are committed with such aplomb that they seem almost purposeful. She also wasn't trying to create a flawed comic protagonist with a voice-of-reason quality, in the tradition of Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope.

'Kaling made a strong case for one way in which her series has been misunderstood,' The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum recalls.'Her idea for Mindy Lahiri, she said, wasn't a spunky role model like Mary Tyler Moore. During a panel at the recent New Yorker Festival, Mindy Kaling, creator and star of The Mindy Project, made a rather startling admission.

Confessions of a shopaholic series