Book 7, Day 31: Crossroads

I bought Crossroads by Belva Plain at the same time as the last one. They were both on sale and both stories of friendships, jealousy and betrayal. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good theme for summer reading but they were both reasonably light so I guess that helped with luggage weight limits. However, although they share similarities on the surface, these two books could not be more different.

Where If I Were You was light chick lit based around London's social elite and their steamy affairs, Crossroads was set in New England and had a more sombre tone when dealing with jealousy built not out of friendship, but a social divide. This comes between two girls at opposite ends of the social hierarchy: Gwen Wright, adopted daughter of Cassie Wright, CEO of Wright Glassworks whose legacy built the town in which they live, aptly named Wrightstown; and Jewel Fairchild, a secretary at the Glassworks who has had to work hard to maintain a job that will cover the rent of her small apartment.

The blurb of Crossroads tells that this will be a tale of how the girls' lives, different on every level, will intertwinethroughhey marry and Gwen's hard working husband Stan, who works for Jewel's shrewd businessman husband Jeff, makes a shocking discovery within the business. As plots go this was fairly average, but I was disappointed to find that the drama that this entertains didn't come about until the end of the book. The first half of the book seemed to be setting up the relationship between Gwen and Jewel, and we weren't even introduced to their partners until two thirds of the way through. While I understand that the crux of the story has to come at the end, I did feel that the book was too drawn out at the start and the entire plot happened within the last two chapters.

As far as the characters go, I felt that they were well developed but not particularly relatable. Even Gwen's 'odd duck' character, which I should have connected to, felt a little off kilter. In the novel Stan describes her as 'quaint' and that's how I feel about this book. It is well written but feels rather rustic and out of its time in the setting of a small american town and in the sense that the characters never felt their age.