Matters of the Heart Book

I've avoided Danielle Steel for years. Her books are formulaic and her writing is passable. But a coworker recommended this, and I decided to give it a try. The verdict? Meh.

Hope Dunne is, of course, incredibly wealthy, successful, kind, and beautiful. And tiny; how many times were we reminded of how tiny she is, and how her eyes are violet? Steel beats the reader over the head with her female protagonist's perfection, to the point where, instead of sympathizing with the protagonist, we're sick of her. At least I was. Finn O'Neil is a psychopath, but he doesn't reveal his true nature until Hope is already in love with him. In typical Steel fashion, most of the action takes place through narrative, rather than dialog, and just to make sure we've gotten it, Steel reminds us again, and again, and again of the same points. And in case we've been snoozing through the entire first two-thirds of the book (which, I admit, I kind of did), she summarizes it again in a conversation Hope has with a Dublin lawyer. Okay, we got it, Danielle.

I will say that the plot was very different from the Steel books I've read in the past. And I think that Steel did a decent job portraying the way in which an intelligent person can be sucked into a relationship with a manipulator. Still, Danielle Steel is just...not good. I don't know what else to say. So she gets props for originality - not overall originality, but originality compared to her past efforts - and that's what the two stars are for.