Leeds Book Club: Danielle Steelathon III

Monday, 6 September 2010

Danielle Steelathon III - Heartbeat pub. 1991

I made this: BookElf at 9:04 am

OK, so this book, genuinely gripped by. Hero-Man-In-Forties this time is celebrated script writer Bill, creator of a daytime TV soap that wins Emmy's as well as hearts (I'm getting good at this cliche thing, aren't I?). Hero(ine)-Woman-In-Late-Twenties-Early-Thirties is Adrian (yes that is a girl's name) who lives her her husband Steven in a beautiful consumerist paradise in LA, where she produces the news. They meet late one night in a supermarket and its one of those classic eyes meet across as crowded room scenarios, but nothing comes of it. Nothing comes off it in fact until Adrian finds she is pregnant and her husband makes her choose, him or the baby.

Yes, that's right, her husband makes her choose. Once again, you have a character marrying another character young with whom they have nothing in common, and do not share common goals or morals, because they are in love with them. Steven says from the beginning that he never wants children, he believes that they will ruin his life, and he theirs. Yet she marries him, thinking, oh, he'll change his mind, oh, I might not even want children later, everything will be fine. Which is of course nonsense.

Now Steven dumping her when pregnant makes him a bit of a shit, but he then makes her sell her house, takes every stick of furniture from her, refuses to pay her any money, forgoes his parental rights before the baby has even started kicking and starts dicking about with much much younger women. Which makes him a lot of a shit, in my opinion. Fortunately, Adrian re-meets Bill, eyes cross once again in a crowded room and everything turns out OK. Except she doesn't tell him she's pregnant.

And from this point I was genuinely gripped. There is a bit of about four chapters where Adrian meets Bill's kids from his first marriage, and they all go camping together where you know full well he has to find out about the pregnancy and yet he doesn't, and the part where he does is just really well written and heart moving, I missed my stop on the bus because I was nose-to-spine in drama. And that's why I started this challenge; to see why Danielle Steel is such a popular writer you have to read her books. You can't just judge her as fluff if you've never read her, and I could not dismiss this book. Yes, its predictable and its cliched and in parts its a silly as the other two, but I really really enjoyed it! First one I would genuinely recommend. Looking forward to the next one!

Steelathon