Dune Road [Paperback]

I'm a big fan of Jane Green, and did enjoy this book overall, it was entertaining and light for a summer day ... but feel like the "rich family in connecticut" formula is getting old fast. Dune Road is set in a wealthy CT town and features characters that are very similar to her other novels. Yes, they're loaded. Yes, their husbands work on Wall Street. Yes, they wear 3 carat diamond studs. They all use the same interior designers, and drive luxury SUVs. Been there, done that in The Beach House, Swapping Lives, To Have and to Hold...the list goes on. Can't she think of something totally new and different than writing about rich people in CT?

Also, while Green happens to be English, the peppering of British slang throughout the book doesn't seem to make sense considering the characters (except for one) are all American, and an American reader unfamiliar with these terms may not understand why Kit is wearing a "vest" to yoga class instead of a tank top, or what on earth "sod's law" means (in case you're wondering, it's the same idea of Murphy's law).

Although Kit, the main character is recently divorced, you actually root for her to get back with her husband which is a bit odd for a chick lit novel, but I liked the relationship with the two characters and how they worked as a family, even when divorced. I did however see a lot of similarity between her and Daff from The Beach House.

Green also throws in a long lost family member plot (um, didn't that also happen in The Beach House?)

I'd recommend this as a vacation book but don't think it's Green's best.

After reading Jane Green's books for many years, and finding the last two or three to be disappointing, I picked up Dune Road hoping that she had somehow managed to find a trace of the flair she displayed in her earliest offerings, such as the delightful Jemima J: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans and thoughtful Bookends: A Novel. Instead of a lively and punchy chick lit work, however, I found myself reading the most banal novel full of the most irritating and dithering female characters it has ever been my misfortune to encounter in a novel with a contemporary setting; I wanted to pick most of them up and shake them until their hair was less than perfect and their gleaming teeth rattled at least slightly.

Kit is divorced from her Wall Street banker husband because, it seems, she couldn't find a better way to stop herself from being transformed into the kind of trophy wife he wanted. (It's no secret, from the earliest pages, that he still hankers after her and he's really her soul mate.) Her closest friend, meanwhile, after happily becoming a consumer goddess, is angry at her husband for mismanaging their finances and allowing her to become that woman. Leaving aside the issue of whether either woman is interesting or appealing enough to identify with, there's the bigger one of whether they are realistic. In this reader's opinion, both are cardboard cutout characters and Green's half-hearted efforts to transform their lifestyles into lives by whipping up such drama as a mother's conflict with her daughter over borrowed clothes are just absurd and, ultimately, dull as ditchwater.

There is a plot and an underlying theme of sorts to this, but both are a bit absurd in both nature and execution. The theme -- how well do we really know the people we have in our lives or who we encounter -- is at the heart of the plot, which revolves around the somewhat mysterious Tracy, owner of the yoga center that both Kit and Charlie, her friend, attend. (There's also a subplot involving a mysterious sister of one of the characters, who may or may not be what she seems, and a suitor for one of them, ditto.) Through in a reclusive thriller writer, apparently tormented by the death of his wife 30 years earlier; a warm, wise and witty elderly neighbor and surrogate grandmother living next door to Kit, etc. etc -- and you still have a novel about not much in particular, going nowhere in particular. The plot -- which doesn't get going until halfway through the book -- has all twists and turns telegraphed well in advance. It was only sheer stubborness that got me to the final page.

There are authors who have written wonderful domestic novels, from Jane Austen onward. Those stories rely as much on compelling character portrayals more than drama in the plot. Chick lit, I'd argue, is characterized more by predictable character types set in plot dilemmas that while recognizable, never become so predictable that the reader can see what will happen next. This book doesn't succeed on either front. Jane Green is no Jane Austen; she can't write about character development, even if her characters developed. (They don't; they meander and drift and ponder, endlessly.) The writing is as tedious and meandering as her characters' musings; such plot as exists isn't the kind that will keep you turning the pages to see what happens. It's a story about characters who just seem to dither, to whom things happen. When I compare that to her previous novels, whose characters acted, reflected and changed their own lives, this is deeply disappointing.

Coming from an author whose work I'd never read before, this would earn 2 stars; because Green can do and has done far better when she's put her mind to it, I'm giving this 2.5 stars and even rounding it up. But I'd suggest it only as a beach read -- and then only if you've borrowed it from a library.

I've read all of Jane Green's books and normally enjoy them. However, I couldn't wait to be done with this one, and not because I was loving it. The writing seemed very juvenile, as she repeated the characters thoughts and ideas over and over (felt like she was trying to fill pages). I saw one of the "twists" coming a mile away (don't want to give away any plot points), another of the "twists" just disturbed me. Overall, I didn't ever find myself caring for any of the characters like I usually do when reading Green, so I didn't care what happened. I just wanted to finish reading so I could get on to the next book in my reading list.

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