The Beach House

I am SO enjoying women's fiction these days. This is a nice (if a bit long) story about a woman who comes back home to an island off South Carolina to reconnect with her mother and her roots. And get a new man, of course. Perfectly pleasant. Why is it the women in the smart (I mean literary, NYT reviewed, etc.) books can't get their “stuff” together and the characters in women's fiction make tremendous sense?