Author Sophie Kinsella, who penned ‘Shopaholic’ novels, dies at 55

Over the course of her career, Kinsella published more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which together sold in excess of 45 million copies worldwide. She achieved global fame through the Shopaholic series, a sequence of novels centered on the financially reckless but endearing Becky Bloomwood.

The first book, originally titled The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, was released in 2000 and later retitled Confessions of a Shopaholic in many international markets. The series ultimately ran to 10 books and became one of the most successful romantic comedy franchises in modern publishing.

The birth of the novelist 

Her transformation into Sophie Kinsella came when she secretly submitted a new manuscript under a pen name. (Sophie Kinsella/Facebook)

At the age of 24, she completed her first novel, The Tennis Party, deliberately avoiding autobiographical material. Speaking in later interviews, she explained that she wanted to establish herself immediately as a serious novelist rather than writing a thinly veiled account of her own life. That debut launched a successful early career under her real name, with seven novels published between 1995 and 2001, including Cocktails for Three, Sleeping Arrangements and The Gatecrasher. She later described these books as darker and more ensemble-driven than the lighter romantic comedy style that would make her famous.

Her transformation into Sophie Kinsella came when she secretly submitted a new manuscript under a pen name without telling her publishers who she really was. That gamble proved decisive. The Shopaholic novels became a cultural phenomenon and were adapted into a Hollywood film in 2009, directed by PJ Hogan and starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy.

The standalone novel

Beyond Shopaholic, Kinsella built a highly successful parallel career of standalone novels, including Can You Keep a Secret?. (Sophie Kinsella/Facebook)

Beyond Shopaholic, Kinsella built a highly successful parallel career of standalone novels, including Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess and Remember Me?. Her final standalone novel, The Burnout, published in 2023, was inspired by her own experience of exhaustion and recovery. After her cancer diagnosis, she said the novel’s warm reception helped sustain her through treatment. Tributes and public messages of support followed from readers and fellow writers, including Jojo Moyes and Gillian McAllister.

Although frequently grouped under the label “chick lit,” Kinsella consistently challenged the term’s limitations. She argued that her fiction reflected the full range of women’s intelligence, vulnerability and contradiction, combining professional ambition with emotional chaos, humor and self-doubt.

Later in her career, she turned to younger audiences, writing the children’s series Mummy Fairy and Me and the young adult novel Finding Audrey, which explored teenage social anxiety—another sign of the emotional range that characterized her work.

She is survived by her husband and their five children.

(With inputs from The Guardian)