Or its title, for that matter. Both make it seem like some kind of romance novel/ self-help hybrid, when it's actually a literary novel that follows one woman and her interactions with her family during three different relationships she has in her life.
I picked up The Man of My Dreams because it was on the sale table at B&N and because I had liked the author's first novel, Prep, but I think this second novel only warrants an average rating. At times the writing is really good and seems to capture authentic moments, but at other times it feels like she's trying a little too hard to make her characters seem "real". The entire last chapter seems unnecessary. It suddenly switches from a third-person narrative to a letter format that tries to sum up too much and wrap up loose ends. The previous chapter could have easily served as the ending. It would have left the story more ambiguous and open-ended, but in my mind that would have been better.
I picked up The Man of My Dreams because it was on the sale table at B&N and because I had liked the author's first novel, Prep, but I think this second novel only warrants an average rating. At times the writing is really good and seems to capture authentic moments, but at other times it feels like she's trying a little too hard to make her characters seem "real". The entire last chapter seems unnecessary. It suddenly switches from a third-person narrative to a letter format that tries to sum up too much and wrap up loose ends. The previous chapter could have easily served as the ending. It would have left the story more ambiguous and open-ended, but in my mind that would have been better.
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