Some have seen Sykes' books as lying in natural succession to "Sex and the City", Candace Bushnell's column in the "New York Observer", which was the inspiration for a highly successful television series (HBO 1998–2004). Others remarked that the story was no less than the kind of offensive vapid claptrap you would expect from a dead-eyed rich girl. However, despite their satire, others have regarded them as too rooted in Sykes' own Park Avenue "set" to be reflective more generally of women's lives in post-9/11 Manhattan. Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1925) is perhaps a closer, if incomparable, antecedent.