Second Chance by Jane Green Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Second Chance
Book Review: Okay, but repetitive
Summary: 3 Stars
This book was enjoyable enough, but I did feel it fell short of my expectations. If I had to hear one more word of Holly whining about her husband, I was going to scream! It seemed slightly ridiculous to me that he was made to be SUCH a bad guy, with no redeeming features - then why did Holly marry him and why are we supposed to feel sorry for her, given that she knew when she married him that she wasn't in love with him, didn't feel passion for him and he wasn't a friend?
I would have loved more focus on Paul and Anna, the couple struggling to have kids - they seemed a lot more real and a lot more sympathetic, but we just didn't get enough of them. Holly and her self-righteous, self-pitying ways took up far too much of the book! I tried reading this book several times and kept putting it down in frustration. In the end I actually quite enjoyed it, but it certainly could have been better.
Book Review: Older than her other books
Summary: 2 Stars
I really enjoy Jane Green and I thought this book was a little old for me. I am 24 and I love her other books.Book Review: On the depressing side
Summary: 2 Stars
This is not a book that will cheer you up, leave you feeling uplifted and inspired. It is actually quite depressing as it deals with the death of a good friend and how his friends cope with his loss. It dwells a lot on this event and it all got a little boring in the end.....even the sub plots bored me - I felt that the characters were cliched and predictable. I love all other books by this author, and have enjoyed them all immensely, but feel so disappointed by this one....Those of you who have lost a loved one in recent times, should steer well away from this novel.Book Review: One dimensional and contrived
Summary: 2 Stars
I have loved every Jane Green book I have read, but I kept thinking "Beach House" felt more like a Maeve Binchy book than a Jane Green book. There were too many characters to do any of them true justice. It was predictable, unrealistic (Bee decides to become a writer out of the blue and is instantly published in the New York Times?) and saccharine sweet at times. The characters do not ring true; the relationships are too instantaneous, the dialogue at times had me cringing, it was so cheesy. (Also, a small point, but I was distracted by her American characters using British phrases.) I'm sorry, I didn't enjoy this one, and I love Jane Green.Book Review: Poorly written, predictable
Summary: 1 Stars
This book starts out as a British version of "The Big Chill" but goes downhill pretty fast.
We are introduced to all the main characters in the opening scene. They were school friends who went their separates ways and reunited when another friend dies in a terrorist attack.
So we have Holly, trapped in an unhappy marriage to Marcus, a vain, snobbish, selfish lawyer. The author devotes many pages throughout the book to demonstrating how vain, snobbish and selfish Marcus is. Oh, did I forget to tell you? He's vain, snobbish and selfish.
Next is Saffron, a B-list Hollywood actress with alcoholic tendencies having an affairs with P -- "the sexist man in the world." Except that P can't marry Saffron because he's married to someone else and it would be bad for his career. (Didn't stop Tom Cruise).
There's Olivia who likes dogs more than people, has a one-night stand with a hunky American and gets pregnant.
Paul is a journalist married to super-Swedish businesswoman Anna who would like to have children but can't get pregnant. Oh the possibilities for plot development that little contradiction offers.
This collection of cliches (sorry, I mean characters) falls in and out of bed with each other and others, goes to weddings and funerals, gets pregnant, gets drunk, gets depressed, gets high, gets low ... gets this, that and the other ...until the book ends with everyone living happily ever after and buying lots and lots of fabulous clothes and never getting wrinkles.
I honestly don't like giving books poor reviews and I have nothing against books about unhappy marriages and adultery (Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary examined this territory rather effectively, after all). I would rather give five stars to all the books I read because I know how hard it is to write a book, how much effort and heartache and emotional investment goes into it.
But really, don't people write books with real characters and real plots any more? The writing here is so wooden and pedestrian it's hard to describe. Characters are introduced solely so that they can say things about other characters. Then they disappear and we never see them again. At the end of the book, Holly suddenly falls in love with someone else who we never meet at all. Sarah, the widow of the friend who dies, is inconsolable -- depressed, shattered, bereft. She just disappears from the book. Does she live, die, recover, marry a space alien? We're not told.
I guess writers are only as good as readers demand them to be. If this kind of stuff sells, there's no incentive for the author to do better or her editors to demand better. We, the reading public, get the books we deserve.
But surely we don't deserve this.