Book Review: Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Jane and Dan at the End of the World
Author: Colleen Oakley
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 11, 2025
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.

Author Colleen Oakley has quickly become a go-to author for me, and it’s engaging stories like Jane and Dan at the End of the World that keep me coming back.

When Jane and Dan head out to dinner for their 19th anniversary (which he seems to think is their 20th), rather than go to their stand-by date night restaurant, they instead go to the ultra-exclusive, ultra-expensive La Fin du Monde — a chic place located at the top of an isolated cliff along the Pacific coast. (Dan got a gift card… although he’s shocked to learn that the card only covers the cost of the reservation itself, not the thousand-something-dollar meal.)

The couple seems bored and jaded. Jane has heard every joke already. Dan has grown used to Jane’s need to double-check whether she’s unplugged her curling iron every single time they leave the house. But to Dan, it’s all fine. Jane, however, has had enough. She’s discovered texts between Dan and some unknown woman, and this proof of cheating is the final straw. In between their fancy courses, she informs Dan that she wants a divorce.

They don’t get to continue the conversation; a group of masked people with guns bursts in and zipties the guests and restaurant staff. The apparent leader is quickly infuriated to learn that the billionaire he’s been targeting isn’t actually present — instead, his wife and daughter are having dinner alone. What follow is a tense (but also very funny) countdown to a major confrontation, as the disorganized terrorists, frightened and frustrated restaurant guests, and local law enforcement interact, make generally bad decisions, and deal with circumstances none of them could have seen coming.

Well, maybe Jane could. As events unfold, she realizes that they’re strangely similar to the events of her heist novel — which practically no one read, not even Dan (or so she thinks). But as the evening progresses and more and more details line up with her book, Jane has a feeling she knows what’s coming… and knows she needs to get herself and Dan out of there before the big finale.

“For the love of God, [spoiler]’s never read your book,” Dan hisses, confirming Jane’s own thoughts. “No one’s read your book, Jane! This can’t be like your book because no one has read it.”

Meanwhile, right alongside the heist/adventure elements, this is really a story about marriage and family and parenthood. As Jane and Dan think back over their years together, certain truths and observations become clear. I don’t want to go into spoiler territory, so without revealing how these details connect, I’ll just say that Jane’s thoughts about motherhood, raising children and seeing them become their own people, and devoting oneself to family feel absolutely true and honest and real.

Jane often thinks all of the difficulty with parenting can be summed up by one sentence: Am I overreacting? And how 99 percent of the time, the answer is yes, but how is one to know when it’s the 1 percent of the time worrying is warranted?

Plus, the writing is funny! You might not think a hostage situation in a fancy restaurant would provide moments of humor, but in Colleen Oakley’s talented hands, unexpected bursts of laughter creep in when least expected.

Watching someone get shot was nothing like Jane thought it would be. Or nothing like the movies, which were Jane’s only point of reference. (Then again, having sex for the first time was disappointingly nothing like Dirty Dancing had led her to believed it would be, so she’s not sure why she’s surprised.)

Jane and Dan at the End of the World is fast-paced and engaging, and I raced through each chapter, unable to put the book down. Ultimately, while the heist elements are entertaining and really well-done, it’s the characters and their personal stories that drew me in.

Putting it simply: I love this book. With unexpected twists, down-to-earth truths, and a terrific main character to cheer for, it’s joyful and fun and full of life. Don’t miss it!

For more books by this author, check out my reviews of:

9Feb2024

Book Review: The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Frame-Up
Author: Gwenda Bond
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication date: February 13, 2024
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

A magically gifted con artist must gather her estranged mother’s old crew for a once-in-a-lifetime heist, from the New York Times bestselling author of Stranger Suspicious Minds.

Dani Poissant is the daughter and former accomplice of the world’s most famous art thief, as well as being an expert forger in her own right. The secret to their success? A little thing called magic, kept rigorously secret from the non-magical world. Dani’s mother possesses the power of persuasion, able to bend people to her will, whereas Dani has the ability to make any forgery she undertakes feel like the genuine article.

At seventeen, concerned about the corrupting influence of her mother’s shadowy partner, Archer, Dani impulsively sold her mother out to the FBI—an act she has always regretted. Ten years later, Archer seeks her out, asking her to steal a particular painting for him, since her mother’s still in jail. In return, he will reconcile her with her mother and reunite her with her mother’s old gang—including her former best friend, Mia, and Elliott, the love of her life.

The problem is, it’s a nearly impossible job—even with the magical talents of the people she once considered family backing her up. The painting is in the never-before-viewed private collection of deceased billionaire William Hackworth—otherwise known as the Fortress of Art. It’s a job that needs a year to plan, and Dani has just over one week. Worse, she’s not exactly gotten a warm welcome from her former colleagues—especially not from Elliott, who has grown from a weedy teen to a smoking-hot adult. And then there is the biggest puzzle of why Archer wants her to steal a portrait of himself, which clearly dates from the 1890s, instead of the much more valuable works by Vermeer or Rothko. Who is her mother’s partner, really, and what does he want?

The more Dani learns, the more she understands she may be in way over her head—and that there is far more at stake in this job than she ever realized.

I’m not entirely sure what this book was trying to be. A heist caper? A tale of generations of women with magical powers forced to serve a supernatural being? A contemporary romance, complete with love triangle? Perhaps the problem is that The Frame-Up tries to be all of these, and doesn’t quite hit the mark with any.

Dani Poissant has been estranged from her mother and her chosen family of art thieves ever since she turned her mother in to the FBI ten years earlier. Now, she lives and works alone, using her magical gifts to scam bad guys and restore a little bit of justice to their victims (and earn a paycheck for herself).

When her mother’s former associate, a mysterious man named Archer, tracks her down, she’s forced to confront her past. A billionaire art collector, who has never let anyone inside his well-named Fortress of Art, has died, and his family plans to open the collection to the public for the first time and auction it off. There’s a painting that Archer wants, and he wants Dani to get it for him.

For… reasons, Dani accepts, and heads back to her old home base to reunite with her former circle of thieves/family and plan one final heist, hoping to repair her connection to her mother and rid themselves of Archer once and for all.

I’ll be blunt. This book is a mess. Plot lines are all over the place, as is the tone. We’re supposed to feel Dani’s deep connection to the people she goes back to — Rabbit, Mia, Elliot — but none of it is fleshed out. We’re told about Dani’s thoughts and emotions, but none of it felt substantial to me.

The magical powers that enable them to control technology or create master forgeries or find anything lost are a convenient jumble, and the heist itself is nonsensical, as are the other magical art thieves who try to get in their way.

The storyline about Archer’s past with the women of the Poissant family is a little more interesting than the rest… but it doesn’t get explained until past the midway point of the book, and even then, it feels familiar. A supernatural being haunting/controlling generations of women in the same family? I could name at least two or three other books with the same theme.

Messy, jumbled plots and characters aren’t helped by messy writing. There are sentences that I had to stop and parse — just who are we talking about here? There’s even a scene where someone using an alias gets referred to by his real name — but it’s clearly not an intentional slip or a piece of the plot, just a place where more editing was needed. I can only hope that the errors and awkwardness I noticed in the ARC are cleaned up in the final published version.

I considered DNFing repeatedly throughout this book, but wanted to see it through in case something happened in the latter half to make me feel more invested. It didn’t. By the end, I was hate-reading. I was going to finish this book, dammit!

Such a disappointment. I read the author’s three previous books, which were all cheery, silly, supernaturally-infused adventure/romances. I hoped for a similar reading experience with The Frame-Up, but sadly, that was not the case.