A Wedding in December - Anita Shreve

I had seen this author for quite a while but this was her first book I ended up picking up at the library. The basic premise is a handful of classmates get together after not seeing each other in twenty-seven years for the wedding of two of them. The weekend is full of regrets, unfinished business, and secrets.
I found this book to not be quite as captivating as expected. The author's main attempt at suspense, the circumstances surrounding the death of one of their classmates during their senior year, was pretty fully revealed early on. The confessions that finally happened at the "climax" of the novel were very simple to guess at.
One of the biggest themes of this book is regret, a what-if mentality, and therefore infidelity. I feel as though the author wanted me to truly empathize and rationalize with the characters who were involved in some sort of extramarital affair, but she did not succeed.
I found her narrative style interesting; weaving the plot in with another that was being written by one of the characters. At the beginning, the secondary plot felt incongruous and made me wish she would just "get back to the real story." However, at the end as both of the stories were wrapping up, they began to come together and I ended up feeling almost more emotionally moved by the "fake" story. Overall, for me, it lacked the emotion that she had probably intended.
A sidenote, I found it ironic that the story is set in December of 2001 and 9/11 is mentioned multiple times, while I read it over the eighth anniversary of the date. The emotion of 9/11 was portrayed well, however it was only thrown in occasionally.

Positives: the characters were believable, I have as clear a picture of them all as I would had I seen the movie

Negatives: at the end, I felt as though I had just read a 150 page book not a 300 page one, I suppose there was not enough plot for me; I was unable to empathize with the characters

Rating: 3.5 - it was ok, but I wouldn't recommend it.