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Kayleigh A

SS Book Review: May 2024


Heyo, Kay here! I have read several Danielle Steel books, and somehow CY has not even heard of her so I wanted to choose a DS book for May's book club. For some context, we are both approaching 30 (more rapidly for me), and in the run-up to this I wanted to choose a coming into your 30's book. A quick Google search later, I'd come up with Zadie Smith's Swing Time which turned out to be so painfully boring I quickly came up with another option. I saw some rave reviews for The Right Time, and it seemed to fit the profile of what I was looking for, so voila there we had May's choice.


I'm sorry to report that this book really disappointed me. Don't get me wrong, I think Danielle Steel is incredibly talented. She has written over 185 books (just how?!! Is she superhuman?) and has covered several different genres. Wanderlust is one of my favourite of her books and I think it is masterfully created. But this review isn't about that book unfortunately, and The Right Time just did not live up to her standards. Now I am convinced that Danielle Steel must use a ghost writer. I'm sorry, but who can smash out so many books! And the difference in the writing between Wanderlust and books like The Right Time is so pronounced I'm not convinced they are written by the same person. Now, conspiracy theories aside, let's dig into the details.


What I liked:


The book might have been disappointing but that doesn't mean it was all bad. Actually, at the beginning of the book, I thought it had a lot of promise. Alex's story was very touching, and I actually had a little cry after her father's dementia diagnosis and eventual death. Up until this point I was really invested in her story and DS had me rooting for Alex. I also loved that Alex grew up at the convent and the relationships she shared with the nuns, I thought this aspect of the book was quite interesting and unique.


Another thing I liked was that the story was about a writer. As a writer myself I found Alex's drive to write inspiring and it really made me excited to jump into my WIP. As CY is also a writer, I thought she would enjoy it as well (and how wrong I was!).


What I didn't like:


In my opinion the story peaked after the death of Alex's father, and that was in Chapter 5. The rest of the book was lacking in a lot of aspects. There was no real conflict after Alex's struggle at the beginning of the book and I didn't really feel that there was much variety in Alex's journey after she was taken in by the nuns at the convent. The characters were all very one-dimensional, save for Bert who was one of the only characters I liked from this book. All of Alex's romantic relationships pretty much followed the same trajectory, and save for the one successful one it was a bit too predictable for my tastes. I understood that the idea was to portray the downside to success and the sacrifices Alex had to make. However, I just think it could have been a bit more varied, rather than each time the issue coming down to every guy being jealous of her talent.


Another thing I really didn't like was the style of the writing. The perspective changed too often and at random moments, and the entire book felt as though it was narrated in a very flat way (very much telling, not showing!).


Oh, and I just had to include this comment of CY's - 'I did not like this book at all. I'm sorry, but it's true.' Guess that pretty much sums up how she felt about it!


Rating:


Kay - Overall I'd rate this book a 2.5/5 as I do feel it had potential and although it fell a bit flat I still did enjoy reading about Alex's journey. It was a very average book in pretty much every way for me so it gets a very average rating!


CY - If I can't choose 0, I will give it a 1/5 for the aforementioned reason that Kay has me quoting.


Let us know in the comments what you thought of it, and as always feel free to recommend any other books that we should read! Bonus points if they are about coming into your 30s!






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