Second Chance | 
 enlarge | Author: Jane Green
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $3.97
You Save: $11.03 (74%)
New (39) Used (51) from $3.97
Rating:  86 reviews
Sales Rank: 2511
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0452289440
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780452289444
ASIN: 0452289440
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The New York Times bestseller by one of the best-loved authors in womens fiction
With this life-affirming tale of friendship and fate, Jane Green once again shows why she is a nationally bestselling author with legions of loyal fans. The story of a group of people who havent seen each other since they were best friends in school, they reunite when one of them dies in a terrible tragedy. Recapturing the intimacy of their younger days, they are each surprised at the impact their encounter brings. Warm, witty, and as wise as ever, Second Chance will strike a chord with anyone who is still trying to figure life out.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 81 more reviews...
 Simply Amazing August 26, 2008
This book is amazing. I have never heard of Jane Green prior to reading this book and I am in love with her literature. This book helps you realize how friendship is an amazing blessing in anyones life.
 Smells like the Big Chill August 25, 2008
I was so disappointed with "Second Chances". I have loved many of Jane Green's books, escaping to the funny world of her protagonists and transporting myself back to England. The character's were flat and the circumstances in the book seemed a photocopy of the Big Chill. Within the first chapter, I could not wait to get the book over with as this scenario has been done many times and I kept expecting a new twist. Hope better for the next one.
 Predictable and repetitive August 11, 2008
I bought this book to read on a plane, and I only finished it because I had nothing better to do. The characters are boring and annoying, repeating themselves over and over again. It's so exasperating!
This is the first book by Jane Green that I've read, so I don't know about the rest, but I would definitively recommend avoiding it!
 An okay commuter book August 11, 2008
A commuter book is my version of the "beach book." It's something for me to do on the train, but light enough to not take seriously or even pay TOO much attention to because I know I'll be distracted by train stops and other such things.
While I think Jane Green had an interesting idea, it was poorly executed with very cliche characters and immature, one--dimensional dialogue. At some points, I said to myself, "Wow, I can't believe Jane had the nerve to even write such things," in response to things that only 12-year-old high school girls would say, bt were coming out of 30-something year old's mouths.
I think this book's ultimate demise, however, is the end. There was a LOT of leading up to what decisions the main character's would make, especially Holly's. After the big climatic confrontational chapter, the next was a quick (cop-out) conclusion about how each character ended up during a "reunion" scene. Never was it explained how some of the characters made very different choices for their personalities or beliefs. Some others, however, were very predictable, which is okay for an entertaining chick lit book.
Overall, I enjoyed it, I suppose. It had it's major faults, and I don't think Jane Green is the best of chick-lit writers by any means. But it's an entertaining read if you need something to do on your 40-minute commute to work each day. The characters are at times very annoying, as far their descriptions by Ms. Green, but the stories and how everyone intertwines are, for the most part, relateable. If this book had been better written, I'd have been more happy with it.
Poorly written, predictable August 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
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