Book Review: She’s Gone Country by Jane Porter
She’s Gone Country by Jane Porter. © 2010 5 Spot. ISBN 9780446509411. Trade Paperback. Fiction/Chick Lit. 383 pages. $13.99 US. Source: review copy
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Synopsis: Shey Darcy, a 39-year-old former top model for Vogue and Sports Illustrated led a charmed life in New York City with a handsome photographer husband until the day he announced he’d fallen in love with someone else. Left to pick up the pieces of her once happy world, Shey decides to move back home to Texas with her three teenage sons. Life on the family ranch, however, brings with it a whole new host of dramas starting with differences of opinion with her staunch Southern Baptist mother, her rugged but overprotective brothers, and daily battles with her three sons who are also struggling to find themselves. Add to the mix Shey’s ex-crush, Dane Kelly, a national bullriding champ and she’s got her hands full. It doesn’t take long before Shey realizes that in order to reinvent herself, she must let go of an uncertain future and a broken past, to find happiness–and maybe love–in the present.
Review: It didn’t take long in reading this book for me to get major Hope Floats flashbacks. I kept thinking, “haven’t I seen this somewhere before?” Woman’s marriage fails, she moves offspring from the bustling city back to the rural home of her childhood, meets man from past and falls in love…and then all is well in the world.
She’s Gone Country was a quick, light read—and even went a little deeper and darker at times, bringing up topics of homosexuality, bi-polar depression and bullying/cyber-bullying, but no issue was covered in much detail to really say that this book has a lot of meat—and was good enough that I perhaps wouldn’t mind reading more of Jane Porter.
I enjoyed reading this book, but by the end I couldn’t shake the feeling that Shey’s life only seemed to get better once Dane was finally a part of it. Which perpetuates the whole “a woman needs a man” cliché that I hate. I would liked to see Shey become once again the strong confident woman she was before her failed marriage … but on her own, sans the man.
Overall, not scary good but not horrible either. Rating: 3/5
