Sisters
by Danielle Steel
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Book Reviews of Sisters
Book Review: Hard to Read without Eye-Rolling
Summary: 2 Stars
Danielle Steel's "Sisters" begins with a rather unbelievable plot. Four sisters, all gorgeous (Steel takes a good amount of time ramming this point into our heads), all implausibly successful, yet somehow all very family oriented.
Take Candy, an incredibly famous supermodel who is the most unlikable from the get-go. She parades around topless and if she's wearing a thong she's fully dressed, no matter who is around, whether it be her sisters' boyfriends or (grossly enough) her very own father. Of course, her behavior is excused many times because she is just "so young." Aside from Candy there is Annie, a blossoming artist in Florence. Then there's Tammy, an Emmy-winning producer of America's most popular television show, who (boo-hoo!) just can't seem to find a man. And Sabrina, a family lawyer in New York City with fears of getting married herself despite finding the perfect man.
Although the story should really be about Annie, who goes blind in a car accident that kills their mother, Steel finds time to talk about the others too. Despite this, Candy never develops into anyone the reader could sympathize with and even though she suffers from anorexia and gets raped on top of her mother dying Candy never seems to let these things bother her. Tammy and Sabrina, not being blind and not being young supermodels have storylines that seem to fade into the background.
On top of disagreeable characters, Steel's writing style is terrible. She repeats the same ideas over and over again throughout the book and one begins to wonder if she even bothered with an editor. While many potentially interesting characters appear (Annie's blind psychologist, Baxter, Annie's friend who is also blind and lost his boyfriend in a motorcycle accident) they never develop and become unnecessary to the plot.
I give this book two stars because in the right hands it could have been a good story. Unfortunately, Danielle Steel got a hold of the plot instead.
Book Review: Slow Beginning. Great Middle. Disappointing Ending. Okay Overall.
Summary: 3 Stars
The book got off to a rather slow start. The writer spent the first forty or so pages describing each of the main characters and giving their back story. Had the writer not insisted on making the same points and repeating the same thoughts over and over again as if her readers are idiots and wouldn't comprehend the first, second or third time around, those forty pages could have easily been wrapped up in a good ten pages.
After the first forty pages the book really took off and developed into a great story. The accident and the events that followed really keep me interested. However, there was a bit of confusion with some of the main characters. For the first half of the book I often got Sabrina and Tammy confused as they had very similar characteristics and lifestyles. The only thing that separated them was the fact that one had a boyfriend and the other didn't. I almost felt as if the writer should have merged the two and made one character. It wasn't until much later in the book that Tammy became a necessary part of the story. Then there's Candy. With her being the worlds most popular and successful supermodel I'm confused as to how she managed to live a rather normal life. She was able walk the streets and enter regular establishments and never once where there paparazzi or screaming fans around. She had no drivers, personal assistants or bodyguards; nothing to make the readers believe that she was this huge star that was described early on in the book.
The book ended on a cliffhanger which was a bit disappointing to me. There should have been one more chapter at the end to tie everything up. I really wanted to know how things worked out for each character, mainly Annie and the dad.
With that being said, if it weren't for the slow start, the slight confusion with the main characters and the cliffhanger ending, Sisters would have been a 5 star read. But with all things considered I can only give it 3 stars.
Book Review: C+, "Ehhhhhh"
Summary: 3 Stars
I have 3 sisters. This book wasn't provocative, insightful, or that emotional. I'm actually a little disappointed. I thought I might identify with this book.
One sister is a model, one sister is an attorney, one sister is a tv show producer, and the other is an artist. Seriously? Which one is the loser? Every family has a screw-up member. And the model-sister who hooks up with a guy who ties her up is drama? Oh, the artist sister lost her eyesight in an accident and meets up with Mr. Perfect who happens to run the Blind School? Dad hooks up with the former high school slut? There's more juicy stuff on Telemundo or daytime soaps. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
I can't believe this book got so many high ratings. It was okay. It wasn't great. I'm looking at the cover right now and I'm thinking, how many books do you really have to sell to become a "bestseller"? I gave this a C+ because it has a plot, it is easy-to-follow, and it wasn't riddled with typographical errors or plot errors. The "+" is only because I think this type of writing style actually appeals to a lot of people, otherwise, it would have just been a C. It wasn't any great escapism. It wasn't funny. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't a page-turner. It was boring.
This is the kind of book to kill time. It might put you to sleep. You carry this book around like when you go to the doctor's office so you don't have to touch the magazines that have been touched with hundreds of other infected people. I think this book was way overrated.
Book Review: Physically excruciating.
Summary: 1 Stars
I knew of Danielle Steel only as a romance novelist and thus assumed her reputation among literary snobs to be purely the result of her chosen genre. However, finding the idea of Sisters mildly interesting and in need of a beach read, I purchased it for the wildly overblown price of $4.99. Reading the first three pages, I learned only that Candy was a young, fun, beautiful model with a level of success and notoriety that the combined forces of the Beatles, Harry Potter, and the tweenyboppers of High School Musical could not hope to attain. The shallow and impossible details of Candy's beautiful older sisters are laid out equally lengthily and redundantly. The entire book reads like the stream-of-consciousness of a giddy and gushing 6th-grade girl, making it functionally impossible to focus on the tragedies befallen by the family, although taking great care to highlight that the severity of the tragedy is all the worse because the victims are beautiful. Lovely touch, that. If this explosion of typographical diarrhea is typical Steel-fare, then her critics are far too mild on her. Having affronted my sensibilities with this drivel, it is my opinion that Ms. Steel and her editor should be tried and executed for crimes against humanity, and if this insidious manuscript is published internationally, tried for treason. Forcing this upon unsuspecting countries outside our borders is at once an act of war and additionally might inspire the global opinion that all Americans are mindlessly shallow and grammatically retarded.Book Review: Come on Danielle!
Summary: 2 Stars
I have been reading Danielle Steel Books since 1989. I used to wait for the newest release to come out, and buy the $20 something hardcover the day it came out. Then, I realized the horrible truth of Danielle Steel. Same old thing book after book, if the woman is sick, she is pregnant. She makes time go by either fast, or painfully slow. I was searching for something to read, heat wave here in NY, went to the library and picked up "sisters". This book is pure fiction. Perfect sisters, all beautiful with different color hair, (come on) with all high profile jobs, sentences repeated over and over again. The part that really got me was when the sisters were searching for a place to live in Manhattan, and the first place the realtor finds is "perfect", bedrooms for each with King size beds, pink bathrooms, come on! I wish she wrote like she used to, I think she has around 5 books going at once when she is writing, and forgets what she writes. If only the proof reader took out all of these repeat sentences. Waste of time.