I read a lot of chick-lit, where one of its most prominent feature, is the character driven narrative. However, I have just finished two books, Last Christmas by Julia Williams and An Absolute Scandal by Penny Vincenzi, where there are several main characters and the authors jump between their narratives that sometimes intertwine and sometimes work in parallel.
I do think it is more difficult to make a story believable when using several main characters that not necessarily always interact with each other. With An Absolute Scandal I definitely think it has become too much and half the characters are not necessary. Vincenzi could have made the book half the length and still got the point through. I find that you spend such a short time with each character that you feel you never get to know them.
In Last Christmas I found an other problem where Williams sometimes repeat events to put the reader up to speed on the characters feelings, which become repetitive as it doesn't bring enough to the table to bring the story forward.
Neither of the books were written to my taste, even though I did appreciate Williams plot more than I did Vincenzi, and it does makes me reluctant to pick up another of their books.
Josefine
Title: Last Christmas Author: Julia Williams ISBN: 978-1-84756-086-5
Title: An Absolute Scandal Author: Penny Vincenzi ISBN: 978-0-7553-3680-7
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