jane and and dan have been married for 2 decades. a long time. and Jane is feeling they might not make their next. she might be going through a mid life crisis or she might be fed up of being taken for granted. or she might just...just what? so on their anniversary meal instead of asking what he wants off the menu she asks for divorce. but things dont exactly go to plan when some activist hold the restaurant hostage.
suddenly though Jane realizes that the script the hostages are following is one from her own book. and she sadly know how this ends? will this follow? and what if anything can she do to stop it?
this was a original read and i very much enjoyed it. i like the idea of someone knowing whats happening and where it goes simply because they wrote it! its a really quirky take on things.
this book is alot more than that though. this is more the story of a long marriage and then how that chages especially when two teenager are added to the mix.its also where you get to when you stop "seeing" eachother, and a reminder that marriage and any relationship takes work.

Jane and Dan go to an incredibly expensive Michelin-starred restaurant on a remote cliff for their 19th wedding anniversary, though Dan thinks it’s their 20th. The exclusive nine-course dinner should be a special occasion except Jane has blurted out to a stunned Dan that she wants a divorce moments before the diners and staff are taken hostage by gun-toting eco-terrorists. All this and just the first course – goose barnacles – has been served.
To add to the intrigue the activists seem to be following the plot of Jane’s one and only book from a few years ago that barely sold any copies. This scares her as she fears they plan to take matters to the same dramatic finale. The chapters count down to the end of the siege as patrons are tied up and shots are fire. Everyone is tense and obviously scared but every now and then Jane and Dan forget the matter at hand and bicker about their marriage, why Jane wants a divorce, who is having a midlife crisis and their two kids, to the surprise of the hostage takers and amusement of the reader.
It’s a fun read and the main characters are entertaining, but there are quite a few subplots and minor characters that distract from the main story and drag the plot in the middle. The book could easily have been shortened by at least 50 pages to make it a more memorable story.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I absolutely loved Jan and Dan at the end of the World. It’s some of the best writing about marriage and parenting that I’ve read in commercial fiction lately, and I found the way that we flitted between both Jane and Dan’s POV’s really enhanced that. The hook, of being taken hostage, got me to choose to request this ARC but I stayed for the subtleties of characterisation and observation.

This was a really quick and fun read for me, I enjoyed it even though it was quite ridiculous at times. I think it would maybe work well as a movie adaptation because I could absolutely see this on the big screen.
Jane and Dan are celebrating (?) their anniversary at a very expensive and exclusive restaurant which is at the top of a high outcropping of cliff. Just as they are getting settled into their meal with its ridiculous number of courses, the restaurant is taken hostage by an unknown group. This would be disturbing enough, except Jane is left very confused, as the terrorists seem to be following the plot of her book that was published a few years ago.
There are plenty of twists and turns, and some interesting characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book UK for this ARC.

Jane and Dan have been married for 19 years and brought up two children, Sissy and Josh. They have booked an anniversary meal in the super exclusive La Fin du Monde Restaurant in the Californian mountains, where, over the lobster, Jane calmly informs Dan that she wants a divorce.

Before Dan even gets the chance to react, the place is stormed by eco-activists with a personal grudge who take everyone hostage. The strange thing is that six years ago Jane had a not very successful book published about activists holding up a restaurant (well, tea room), and suddenly life seems to be imitating art. To say that this is an unexpected development is an understatement - especially when Dan and Jane figure out who one of the activists is. Jane thinks she knows the ending to her book and therefore this situation, but does she?

Told in dual, third person POV, this is as much a detailed analysis of a nearly 20 year old marriage and the parenting of teenagers as it is about eco-activism, crypto currency and arrogant chefs in over-hyped restaurants for the rich. It almost reads like a satire - a theatre play of this would be a hoot. It's a quirky, hilarious drama with many twists and turns where the world seems to be ending personally and on a larger scale, signified by the name of the restaurant and the position on the edge of a cliff.

Granted, it drags a bit in the middle when we are waiting for Otto, and Jane and Dan pass the time by having petty arguments, plus cop Kip doesn't get much of a look-in, but altogether this is an engaging read that will keep you on your toes. I liked sweet, clueless podiatrist Dan from the beginning, and Jane grew on me too. And a hurray at being really good at frisbee!

Ohh this book!! How I relate to Jane, who is a mother of two and feels like her life has halted (she feels unloved and unneeded by her family and her career is on pause) and (in perhaps a moment of madness and mid life crisis) decides to end it with her husband when they go out for (an insanely expensive never ending) anniversary dinner until the restaurant ends up being stormed and they end up being held hostage. To make matters even worse everything that happens during the hostage is exactly what she has written in one of her books she wrote years ago (including one of her daughters participating on the wrong side!) and she ends up being the only one that can save them. I thought Dan was quite likeable and although Jane seemed a bit unhinged, in relation to what she was going through, including decline in her mental health which she wasn't quite fully aware of how bad it was) I think everything made sense. The hostage situation gave her and Dan time to reflect on a lot of things within themselves and their marriage, and I thought Dan was quite patient with Jane - I guess thats why they have been married for 20 years! I think there is a lot that can be taken away from this book and a lot to learn, especially if people are in similar situations as the characters.

Genuinely funny and engaging, this book began as a humorous and realistic look at midlife marriage and then spun off in an entirely unexpected direction. The story manages to be both entertaining and thought provoking, not an easy mix.

I expected more from this story, because from the description it sounded quite interesting - having the author witness the events of her obscure novel playing out in front of her eyes. However, there were too many additional subplots to execute this idea well: the stale marriage, the dynamics of the terrorist group, the family dynamics between the parents and their daughter. I'm not quite sure that introducing the point of view of the husband as one of the first-person narratives actually helped the story. The motivations behind certain characters' actions were dubious at times. I think what this book lacked was a good redactor who would slash some unnecessary branches of the story and strengthen what was good and promising about it.

This was a 3.5 star read for me. Entertaining concept and I really liked parts of it.
Long- married couple Jane and Dan go to an ultra exclusive restaurant for their anniversary. Whilst they’re there, climate activists storm the building and take everyone hostage. The added twist is that Jane wrote a book with almost exactly this storyline- and she knows how the story ends.
There are some fun scenes and entertaining plot lines as well as some deeper societal messages

I firmly believe that you could cut 50-100 pages of this book and make absolutely no difference to the conclusion or execution of the novel itself. The plot and the writing did not justify the 368 pages this is being published in.

'Jane and Dan At The End of The World' is a novel about a group of diners at an exclusive Californian restaurant being taken hostage by an environmental activist group. We move between perspectives - mainly Jane and Dan, but occasionally other characters and more consistently, a responding cop called Kip. A book that handles a hostage situation gone wrong really well, I felt, is Fredrik Backman's 'Anxious People', largely because it managed to maintain momentum for the majority of the novel. This one, unfortunately, doesn't. The author has a bad habit of tumbling into contextual tangents every time someone says or does something, which I immensely disliked reading. There's no better way to pour cold water onto tension than to stop and say 'she flashed back to a fight with her daughter' which had very little to do with what just happened. There were points when I found myself skimming those sections just to get back to the actual scene that was happening on the page.

I started to get irritated by Jane and Dan about 3/4 of the way in - it felt like the author kept stalling for time, hoping it would a red herring or another moment of tension when it was just dull. The characters made odd, unmotivated decisions - why WOULDN'T you run from a building in danger so you could have a conversation about your marriage? - and the wait between certain people showing up and certain things happening were dragged on for far far too long.

I finished the book, which means I enjoyed it to a degree, but I can't help but feel another author would have tackled this concept far better. I'm frustrated by the problems more than I can celebrate the positives, mainly because I'm struggling to think of any. The idea is sound, the execution is poor.

An interesting story which grabs your attention from the start. I enjoyed the parallels between Jane's novel and the story playing out in front of Jane and Dan. This book kept me guessing, I didn't know where it was going and the twists were well done.

Such a great read! It focuses on marriage, commitment, and important issues such as the climate. It is different from your tropical read but that what hooks the reader. You won’t be disappointed picking this one up