Sophie Kinsella, prolific author, has died at the age of 55. Diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2022, Kinsella (a pen name for her real name, Madeleine Wickham) shared the news on social media in 2024. Today, her family announced her death on Instagram.
And I, along with millions of loyal readers, am devastated.
Known for her witty storylines, her laugh-out-loud dialogue, and her perfectly flawed (but warm and lovely) characters, Kinsella is best known for penning the Confessions of a Shopaholic series, along with more than 40 other books, including fan favorites like Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess, and Remember Me?. But her books weren’t just commercial successes — they felt like real people. Like Rebecca Bradley (neé Bradley) could walk right out of the page and sit down next to you, and you both would know each other immensely.
And for a teenage girl feeling a little unmoored, that kind of connection was a balm.
I started reading Confessions of a Shopaholic in the early 2000s. I think I was 13 when I read the first one, and something about the cover caught my eye at Barnes & Noble. I sat down and read the entire thing while my big sister shopped, and after that, I was hooked.
I read every book Kinsella wrote, and each time, something else brightened a little bit inside me. Because Kinsella wasn’t just writing funny books — she was writing characters that deeply resonated with me. If Becky Bloomwood could come out the other side of her troubles, well then so could I. She wrote characters with dysfunctional families, characters in bad relationships, characters who longed for more. She wrote characters who were self-aware, characters who had to find their demons and fight them, characters who sometimes needed a little push. She wrote characters who were vulnerable, characters who were strong, characters who were persistent.
Above all, she wrote characters who — eventually — were unashamed of who they were. Their flaws weren’t things to fix about themselves; they were things to embrace. Every part of them — their forgetfulness, their failures, their flakiness — was celebrated. It all built up to make them good, steady humans who were trying their best, day in and day out, and who never, for one second, gave up.
To this day, when I need a comfort read, I grab a Sophie Kinsella book off my shelf. I can pick any single one of them up, turn to a random page, and instantly feel comforted and safe. It’s like talking to an old friend, something Kinsella knew her readers felt about her and her books. “They feel like they know me and that they’re my best friend, and I feel like I know them, too,” she told The New York Times in 2007. “It’s like we share a common friend: my characters.”
I am so grateful she had so much to share. From one girl who needed to know there were other girls like her in the world — loud girls, funny girls, opinionated girls — thank you, Sophie Kinsella. Your legacy will remain for all of us who need to feel like we have a friend nearby, for all of us who need a reminder that we are never too much and we are never too little; we are exactly who we are, and we should be exceedingly in love with ourselves. Flaws and all.
