Princess Daisy
Judith Krantz, 1980
★ 3.80 from 4.8k ratings on Goodreads
A Brooklyn Dodgers jacket, a princess’s blood, and a talent for turning charm into a deal—Daisy Valensky takes on the glamour business. A glossy, gossipy ride through beauty and advertising, with satirical bite, warm nostalgia and a melancholy undertow beneath the charm.
Feels like nostalgia, joy and melancholy. About ambition, home and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy family sagas with glamour, camp and a sharp eye on the beauty business. Be warned that it can feel overlong and detail-heavy, and some of its dark content may not suit every reader.
Why read it
It offers a big, nostalgic look at ambition and charm in the glamour trades, with enough satire and feeling to make the soapy drama stick.
A page from the book
The unease inside a compliment that treats a child like a cultivar.
The tiny girl was like a new hybrid rose in the inconsistency of her coloring. By rights, he thought, only generations of selective breeding should have produced a child who had the classically Italian dark eyes of her mother, and skin that had a Tuscan warmth to it, like the particular part of a peach into which you bite first, knowing that it will be the ripest spot on the fruit. What readers say
Readers often describe it as a fun, nostalgic, glamorous soap opera with campy, trashy appeal. Some also find it overlong and detail-heavy, and a few are put off by its dark content, while others are fascinated by its drama.
Judith Krantz.Judith Krantz was a fashion editor and magazine journalist before her first novel, Scruples, became a bestseller at fifty—she wrote Princess Daisy partly from her knowledge of the beauty and advertising worlds.
Books that feel like this
More by Judith Krantz
Scruples
Judith Krantz, 1978
A Beverly Hills luxury empire, a film producer's Oscar campaign, and a woman with two hundred million dollars and no patience for the help.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Princess Daisy for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy family sagas with glamour, camp and a sharp eye on the beauty business. Be warned that it can feel overlong and detail-heavy, and some of its dark content may not suit every reader.
- What is Princess Daisy like?
- A glossy, gossipy ride through beauty and advertising, with satirical bite, warm nostalgia and a melancholy undertow beneath the charm. Feels like nostalgia, joy and melancholy. About ambition, home and memory.
- What should I read after Princess Daisy?
- If you liked Princess Daisy, try Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) and The Devil Wears Prada (Lauren Weisberger).
A taste of the feed
The story we tell ourselves to explain what we couldn't refuse.
I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing things I knew I didn’t want to be doing. But I’ve had a lot of therapy in my life now. And I mean a lot of therapy. And I see it now. I see myself clearly now. I wanted to be around these men—these stars—because I didn’t know how else to be important. And I figured I had to please them if I wanted to stay.
Daisy Jones & The Six · Taylor Jenkins Reid
A town that builds more seats than it has people.
Ten thousand seats up in the bleachers, for a town with a population of eight thousand. The math had never worked. But they piled in from the county, from out in the sticks where there was nothing else to do on Friday night. They got their paychecks and bought their beer, and they came to town, to The Field where they clustered in one raucous pack at the north end of the stands and made more noise than the students, the band, and the townsfolk combined.
Bleachers · John Grisham
A knock at the door, twelve light-years from home.
Knock-knock-knock No, that’s not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal.
Project Hail Mary · Andy Weir
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