Pippa Middleton's party book is panned by some critics

Pippa Middleton may be the It Girl of the moment but her new party-planning book is getting panned, to the effect that Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson have nothing to worry about.

Mocking words like "cheesy" and "treacle" and "wishy-washy" have been mentioned to describe the book by the future queen's sister, more accustomed lately to being described as fascinating and Her Royal Hotness.

Celebrate: A Year of Festivities for Families and Friends, is on sale today in the USA, (Viking, $50), but the book has been available to reviewers for several days. Critics have been tepid at best, while some have been distinctly unkind, in the stiletto style of London's and New York's snippy tabloids.

"Pippa's book a bum-mer," punned The New York Post, alluding to Pippa's vault to fame at last year's royal wedding thanks to her shapely rear end. The paper's food editor, Carla Spartos, tossed around adjectives like "mediocre" and "goofy."

"In presumably not wanting to offend the royals, the jet-setting It Girl is reduced to doling out family-friendly party advice that shows her clearly out of her depth," Spartos scoffed. "For all this treacle – most of which could be gleaned by reading an issue of Family Circle, circa 1982 – publisher Viking reportedly paid Pippa a staggering advance sum of $600,000."

Even Britain's Telegraph, a reliable fan of the royals if not their in-laws, could barely muster enthusiasm. "Twee," sniffed Byrony Gordon, about one of Pippa's artless pronouncements, comparing her book to "that warm feeling on your back on the first sunny day of the year or spotting the first signs of spring."

Still, Gordon wrote that Pippa's recipes are "oddly comforting," the book is appealingly "self-deprecating," and she's not so tacky as to exploit her royal connections to big sister Kate, now Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, after marrying Prince William last year.

"(The book) is at least as sweetly inoffensive as her recipe for ginger cake," Gordon concludes.

Usually nice Canadians weren't impressed either. The Toronto Star's restaurant critic Amy Pataki called the book "simplistic and lackluster." She was scornful that Pippa, 29, felt the need to state the blindingly obvious, like advising party-givers to stock up on ice and put guests' coats in a bedroom.

"Celebrate is a wishy-washy version of Martha Stewart crossed with the Kraft Canada website," she wrote. "Instead of creativity, there are platitudes and store-bought shortcuts."

Pippa does have some support. The Telegraph's Xanthe Clay confessed she was ready to despise the book but couldn't, even though she winced at some of Pippa's prose. Most readers, she wrote, will find the book "reassuring rather than patronizing."

"There is a lot to like," she wrote. "But Pippa is no Martha Stewart. We are allowed, encouraged even, to use shortcuts. Most people won't notice if you use teabags not loose leaf tea (at tea parties), she insists, and she likes to 'cheat a little' with frozen Yorkshire puddings."

The Irish Sun, the Irish edition of Britain's biggest and cheekiest tabloid, had the, well, cheekiest comment, referring to Pippa's opening sentence in which she expresses amazement that she has achieved such fame on the account of her sister, her brother-in-law and her bottom.

"Ah yes, that famous arse appears in the opening line – and the rest of the book seems to consist of Pippa talking out of it," snarked Jennifer O'Brien, under a headline, "Pip's a whole lot of bore."

"It is clear that by writing the book Pippa set out to prove that there is far more to her than her pert bottom. But the fact is, there isn't."

Ouch.

USA Today