Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5419 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Synopsis
Step inside the home of Holly Mac and meet her successful, distinguished husband Marcus, notice how beautiful her home is and how gorgeous her children Daisy and Oliver are. You might say that they are the perfect family, but you would be very wrong...Holly is desperately lonely. She has spent her entire marriage trying to be the perfect wife but she is missing the one thing she really wants - a husband she can talk to, a soul mate to share everything with, someone like her first love and best friend Tom.Then a terrible tragedy finds Holly reunited with some old friends, and she soon realises that they too are each beset by their own problems. There's Saffron, a Hollywood actress and a recovering alcoholic, in love with a very famous and very married actor. Then there are Paul and Anna who have a great relationship but months of IVF have destroyed them financially and Anna still isn't pregnant. As the safety net of Holly's life begins to unravel, she's about to confront her problems head-on but is she ready for the change? And faced with a second chance at life, will she take it?

Customer Reviews

Not her best book....
I have been a fan of Green from her very first book and always eagerly await the next publication. Although this book was good enough that I finished it rather than giving up, like I do if they are really bad - I did finish it. Certainly not her best book. I think Straight Talking clinched it for Green.

Good book!
Jane Green never disappoints and this was another good read. From the first page I was hooked and while it isn't in the league of Bookends or Jemima J, it still hits the spot. Got settled on the sofa with a big bag of crisps and never moved for hours. Fab!

Was this actually written by her?
One of the very most wonderful books in the world is Straight Talking - by Green. Green, Freya North and Marian Keyes were staple reading in my late teens and twenties: 3 authors I was always genuinely excited about when opening the first page of their latest book. Everyone knows that lovely feeling. Where you know a group of strangers will, in the space of 300 pages, become people you adore, and take you on a journey that will make your world more colourful.

The latter 2 authors are still writing gems; Green, though, appears to have lost the desire to write anything beautiful, and it's genuinely disappointing.

This is so desperately formulaic. The dialogue is clunky; the characters are cardboard (the main character's husband, Marcus, especially, is almost a caricature) and the initially promising premise quickly devolves into something mundane.

The editing is very peculiar. One minute, people are breaking apart from grief over having lost someone they love, but within 30 seconds, they're grinning at each other shyly. Huh? That really does happen in here. It's like it was written non-sequentially. Or perhaps she put it down for months, having forgotten what she'd just written. Either way, the continuity is bizarre.

Equally, it lacks the humour and quirkiness of her previous efforts. There isn't a single laugh out loud moment in Second Chance; there's a few quick chuckles, but nothing that raises it above any other book you'll forget within 5 minutes of finishing.

It's just not a very good book. It's sort of smug, and a little lazy and doesn't feel like British chick lit by a British author. It feels like an American trying to emulate it, and getting it completely wrong.

Finally, on a personal note, I found her using a terrorist attack as a "topical" plot-point very uncomfortable, and opportunistic. I don't want to bang on too much about that as it's probably very arbitrary, but it's not a level I ever would have expected Jane Green to stoop to. Chick lit is fab, and covers some serious issues, but as a genre, it lacks the gravitas to effectively cover an issue as destructive, consuming and evil as terrorism, and the ways in which it has affected the world.

So ultimately, if you're a fan of Jane Green, this will probably disappoint you dreadfully. If you're looking for something wonderful to snuggle up with on a cold Sunday afternoon, I'd recommend either Freya North and Marian Keyes, or Green's earlier books... but not this.