TBR Challenge: Jane L. Rosen - The Dress

Legend has it that every season there is one dress. The dress that can make your career, ignite a spark with that special someone, or utterly transform your life. For Felicia, who has been in love with her boss for 20 years; for Natalie who has sworn off men since her ex dumped her – for them and for others, life is about to change.
And all because of their brush with the dress of the season, the perfect little black number that everyone wants to get their hands on… 

Comment: This is the third Wednesday of this month, which means it's time for the TBR Challenge post. For September, the theme is "dress for success" and that can mean quite a lot. 

The most obvious choice would be to pick something where clothing has got to be special or plays an important role in the plot and browsing my shelves back in January when I chose the titles to go with the themes, voilà, I had a book titled The Dress and what could be more appropriate?

In this book we meet several characters who all seem to be linked somehow because of a dress. In fact, the dress of the season, as often happens in the fashion world when a specific dress is labeled as such. A dress that is so perfect, so suitable that every woman wants to own or wear one. Thus, from the point of view of several characters, some repeated, others not as much, we embark on a cute and (at times) tender journey through the minds of all those people whose lives somehow are affected by the existence of the dress.

I didn't have many expectations going into this book except that I was confident it might appeal to me somehow. After all, I had added it to my TBR at some point because something had made me think it would be a good idea. I'm so glad that it was a good bet for me because I liked it a lot.

I'll say something right away, though: this is not a perfect book nor is its execution the best it can be, considering the style and the plot. However, I still liked it a lot and it worked very well for me.

I'll try to explain why.

Each chapter is told from one POV. It's true that there are several characters whose POV we get while the story moves along and although I can't say there is one I like a lot more than the others, I found I liked everyone of them and what they were telling. 

The characters are simply drawn, have simple wishes and even though most of their interactions somehow revolve around the existence of the dress, not everything is about it.

The story starts with a runaway model showcasing the dress and the old worker about to retire who has made the dress with his own hands at the label that is now producing it.

We get the sense the dress can have different meaning to people, depending on where in life they are at so it was cute the first two narrators were the young girl now revealing it to the world and the older man who has made it.

However, the characters that more often "speak" are three women: Natalie, Andie and Felicia. All of them wear the dress at some point and that is also a starting point to why their lives took a turn for the better.

I'm not a fashion expert nor do I really care much about it but I did like how the author tried to embody in this novel that sentence by Yves Saint Laurent (also included in the beginning of the book) that says it's not how a dress fits a woman that matters but who she is inside with it on.

Thinking on this, I liked all these three main characters and their emotional journeys. It was also cute to have secondary characters' POV and how that helped the story move along. We have little snippets on those characters' lives and their interactions with others but in the little things I thing relies the bst part of this book: how we can find happiness in such a simple thing as wearing  dress that makes you feel happy and confident while meeting the man you'll love, the one you have loved and the one that makes you believe in love.

The author has done a very simple structure, has created very basic characters but whose charm and dreams are so well deserved because their attitude and their goodness deserve to wear a beautiful dress that allows them to grasp the things they feel worthy of finally getting.

There are also situations that are cute, sappy yes, but I couldn't care less because they made me smile. 

There is some conflict as well, but everything is easily overcome and each lesson something that makes the whole story feel a little stronger.

I know this might not work for many, it's too simple, it's too easy, it's too fairy tale like/dreamlike and nothing really profound happens.

I understand but I liked meeting these characters, knowing what is in their heads for the little while we follow their POV and the things they face.

There's a little in all of them that makes this a worthy read if one likes these types of books (woman's fiction and chick lit). Somehow it made my day to have read this and I'll cherish the experience, even though there are things I'd still change.

Grade: 9/10