Second Chance but probably not worth a second reading (Second Chance - Jane Green)

Member Name: jo1976

Product:	Second Chance - Jane Green
Date:	10/08/09 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Enjoyable easy reading

Disadvantages: Not the best of Jane Green's novels

I like reading a bit of a chick lit from time to time and as I've read and enjoyed quite a few novels by Jane Green, 'Second Chance' seemed the ideal book to take with me for my recent short break.

The book is based around a group of (late) thirty-somethings who knew each other from school and are reunited after twenty years by the death of one of their other school friends (Tom). After meeting up, the group stay in touch and the novel focuses on the different issues that each individual is dealing with at the time.

I have to admit that this book definitely met the criteria for easy holiday reading, as I read it from cover to cover over two evenings, but this is not one of Jane Green's better novels. The characters featured were fairly innocuous, inoffensive individuals but I was a little disappointed that Jane Green had felt the need to make them all 'extra' successful, rather than just having typical run-of-the-mill jobs and lifestyles, which is all part of the appeal of chick-lit for me. One of the friends was an actress, having an affair with a married A-List Hollywood star, another was a journalist for the Sunday Times and the wife of another character was the owner of a fashion website - not just any website though, this was the third most successful fashion site in the UK. Even the main character, Holly Macintosh, who was mainly preoccupied with the state of her unhappy marriage, wasn't allowed to be 'just' a stay-at-home mum (with a high-profile, high-powered lawyer for a husband), she also had to have a career as a successful freelance illustrator on the side! I would much preferred the characters to have less high-profile careers, to be honest. I like my chick lit to be based around people that I can identify with and this lot all seemed a bit too high-flying for my liking!

Another drawback was that the whole grieving about the loss of their mutual friend, Tom, seemed to be a little over the top to me. Fair enough, the basic premise of a high school reunion to meet up following the tragic death of a friend seemed plausible, but I didn't see why the characters needed to be breaking down in tears every five minutes following the death of somebody that they had only kept in infrequent contact with for the past ten years or so! It certainly didn't add anything to the story, it just seemed exaggerated and out-of-place.

Despite this criticism, this was easy, generally enjoyable reading. I did get drawn into the characters lives as they started to reassess their lives and priorities following Tom's death. I became particularly drawn in to Holly's story and felt that there were two particularly obvious routes that her character could go down and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the outcome was actually neither of these so this wasn't a predictable chick lit novel, by any means.

In all, this is pretty inoffensive reading that most chick lit fans would enjoy. There are much better examples of the genre out there and for anybody new to Jane Green's work I would recommend starting with some of her earlier stuff, rather than this particular one.

I picked my copy up from a charity shop for £1 but copies are available for around £5.50 on Amazon.

Summary: I probably wouldn't give this a second reading