Customer Reviews

The Lives of Danielle Steel: The Unauthorized Biography of America's #1 Best-Selling Author

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

All of these negative reviewers are missing the point. This book was written to show the interesting parallels between Danielle Steels life and the characters in her book. The book doesn't go out of its way to say that Danielle is a bad person - it's just saying, "look, her books are a lot like her life." You people should just relax and enjoy the parallels between life and fiction. This is a great book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I'm also a Danielle Steel fan - I've read all of her books - and I now look back at them with a different eye, which is fun!

I have to say it: I am not a Danielle Steel fan in the strict sense of the word. I find her prose repetitive, her dénouements fairly sugarcoated and her writing rather low-brow in general, especially for a writer who scoffs at the romance writer definition and would like to be compared with Judith Krantz or Sidney Sheldon. And yet, there is something about her books that keeps me coming back for more. I especially enjoy her period works, like "Vanished," "Zoya," or "Crossings" and I have to say she has a knack at making a good portrayal of the times in which her books are set. The plots are intricate enough and one can almost invariably bond and relate to her characters without difficulty. As to this unauthorized biography, "The Lives of Danielle Steel," it has helped me understand more about the persona who is behind the fiction. The research on the author's life is very thorough and it also makes some good points about her fiction. This book doesn't intend to tarnish Danielle Steel's image, all the opposite: it helps her fans discover her as a human being. It's true that it gouges up a lot of rubbish about her past but in the end it was she who took the decision to marry ex-cons and drug-addicts. We all make mistakes and have to live them down as best we can. I found the book as entertaining as any of Steel's books and, as I have already said, it helped me relate better to Danielle Steel now that I know that she's human.

This is a great book. Danielle Steel is not just some rich arthur in her mansion in San Francisco. She is a compasionate person who actually feels and gets involved with the less fortunate. I didn't feel that this book was slanted either way. I think it is a fair portrait of one's life. Definitely an intestersting read.

I didn't know Danielle Steel was married to two ex-cons. I enjoy reading her books and will continue to do so, but it really bothered me that someone who writes the way she does could have gotten involved with two shady characters. I found it interesting how she took scenes out of her own life to write her books. Makes me want to sit down and write a novel myself!

I have been a fan of bestselling author Danielle Steel for some time, and when I heard about this book I had to give it a shot. Boy am I glad I did. For years I have read the stories that Steel has created for avid readers like myself, not knowing how much intrigue she has enjoyed and endured in her own life. The authors take you into a world that would be too complex and full of suspense for anyone else, but rings true of Steel herself due to the worlds that she creates for all of us.

We are able to see the highs of her journey to being one of the top writers of our time to the personal challenges that at times stole the light from her life. Through it all, however, she endured and thrived. Like the heroines that she writes about, she is able to focus on the good in her world and not allow the bad to rob her eternally of her joy and love of life.

I can understand why some might not enjoy or want to read an unauthorized biography, but the great thing about them is it presents its side and allows the reader to either enjoy the ride or dismiss it. For me, I choose to do the former, and I think many of her fans will as well.

I bought the book with the purpose of studying how a single working mother became a bestselling author. It's too bad that D. Steel did not write an autobiography, so this had to do. I didn't care about the secrets of her private life, but wanted to learn about her secrets of success, which, as I thought, turned out not to be any secrets at all: lots of work and perseverance.

Sorry, but I can't rate this book fairly as I still don't have it. It's been almost 5 weeks since I ordered it, and I'm still waiting. Several complaints, and I got a 5 dollar discount on my next order. Why would I order anything else when I have to wait so long to get what I was promised in 2 weeks? Next time I will buy at the local book store. Yes, I will pay more but at least I will have the opportunity to read it before I die of old age.

Yes, I admit I was a bit shocked reading up on Danielle Steel's personal life-but it has inspired her to write best-selling novels. I honestly don't give a damn if she was married to two ex-cons, and if she has married 5 times. I value her work as a writer, and I think she is a very talented woman. There's noone else like her. So she's human for God's sake, who isn't? She's tought me so much about history alone from her books. I don't care to know about the trash these two authors dug up on her-Its almost insulting..

I have been reading Danielle Steel novels for several years, including the book she wrote about her son's life, and this overdrawn gossip column, The Lives of Danielle Steel, is complete junk. I wouldn't be shocked at all if the authors of this book never even read a Danielle Steel novel, which I consider "real" fiction. If you are a true fan of Danielle Steel don't even bother to read this book because it tells nothing about the author's real life.

Well lets just say that the two others, Vicki L. Bane and Lorenzo Benet have done a wonderful job dishing the dirt on Danielle Steel. Wow, she is human after all. Don't let this dirt change your feelings about her as an author-she's just a normal human being like the rest of us. Maybe she can dig up the dirt on these two authors and write about them. Now that would be something. Don't they have anything better to do, like getting interviews for "People" magazine?