Customer Reviews

Malice

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I was impressed with the way Ms. Steel developed the character of Grace Adams. She was deep and real. I was a little bothered by what she went through and at times I winced and shook my head in pity.
A sad tale about a young girl named Grace Adams who is abused savagely from when she was 13 until her mother's death when she turned 17. Four long years of abuse and the night of the funeral she is once again attacked brutally and then knows for certain it will never end. Doing the unthinkable, she ends her torture and finds herself on trial.
Thinking things can't get worse, they do as she is convicted of murder and is sentenced to prison. Once a weak girl she becomes a strong woman in those years and wants to start her life over and she does.
Taking a job in Chicago for a modeling agency Grace is thrown into the seedy world of drugs and backstabbing. Beautiful enough to be a model herself, Grace finds that men want her but she wants nothing to do with men. She can't, she has a terrible secret.
After disaster in Chicago she moves to New York and takes a challenging job where she meets Charles Mackenzie, a New York lawyer. He wants nothing from her, just to be her friend, heal her wounds and listen to her. Can she trust him? He's an older man...reminds her of her horrible secret.
Throwing caution to the wind she grasps love and embraces it. Years go by and she is happy with a husband and three children when he goes into politics and a tabloid digs up her past for all to see...
Old enemies, her prison time, a man she saw once in Chicago has some revealing photos of her and Grace feels the pressure. Can Malice detroy what she worked so hard to heal and build? How can she and Charles get past this? Will he ever look at her the same way?
A look into the stark reality of domestic abuse and how children are swept into it. Grace was such a strong character and she never gave up. I wanted to cry when she revealed the horrors she went through. Superb writing Ms. Steel, very intelligent reading...

Tracy Talley~@

This is the first Danielle Steel book I've read. It was really easy to "get in touch" with the characters in this book. Great plot, great characters, GREAT WRITING! For some people, the subject matter may not sit well - some parts of the story are graphic in content. You'll definitely need to keep a box of tissues next to the bed while you're reading this one. It brought tears to my eyes. Very touching story but sadly, some people are like Grace Adams in the real world. It really makes you step back and take a look at things like child abuse and domestic violence. The message this book gave to me was, "If Grace Adams can make it through what she's been through, so can I!!"

I believe this novel is truly Danielle Steel's best works.

Grace Adams is a loner. She hardly has any friends when she graduates high school. Yet, everyone who admires her father thought that he has a perfect family. See, Grace's father is a sucessful and wealthy lawyer in town. Her mother dotes on her family.

But, what everyone did not know is that the Adam's family harbor a dark secret--a secret that was deadly which ends with shocking and scaring effects. When Grace's mother dies, Grace believes it is the end. She does not have to deal with her father anymore. Yet, on that fateful night you find out that Grace's father is a horrible, selfish, disgusting and cruel monster. On the surface, everyone believes he is the honorable man in their community, but behind close doors, he is evil fiend who rapes his daughter. What is worse is Grace's mother is so sickly in love with her husband, she sacrifices her daughter to keep her husband sexually satified.

When her mother dies, it is the end of Grace's father sexual abuse to her. In self-defense, Grace shoots her father after he brutally rapes her. The naked and frighten young woman is scared when the police officers come, but what do they do? They believe that Grace was the one who tried to have sex with her father, became angry and shot him. Instead of Grace defending herself, explaining that her father had raped her--had been raping her for all these years, to protect his image and her mother's image, she keeps silent as she is arrested and put in jail.

Molly and David find out Grace's secret and try to help her, yet it is too late. Grace is sent to a women's prison for two years, and she is about to endure the same kind abuse as her father did to her until two cellmates decided to place her under their protection. They want Grace to succeed in the world. When Grace leaves prison, she sets out into the world--believing she will be granted a fresh start--even then, the world betrays her with its cruelty as her father did all those years ago.

Yet, Grace keeps haboring her secret. She is too ashame of her past until she meets Charles McKenzie. Until then, she realizes she wants to try to live the rest of her life as functional as possible, and she does. Charles gives her what she wants--a full functional life with children and a family. Grace is very happy being a mother, wife, and advocating for abuse children. Years later, Charles decided to run for Congress, and Grace is behind him 100% until...malice starts to taint their lives. This time Grace will not like it escalate!

In this profound and inspiring story, Grace Adams learns not to be the victim--she learns to fight back and reclaim her life and what is important in her life. As she struggles to confront all her past demons, once and for all, she learns that people are malicious...and sometimes, you have to be malicious in return.

This book deserves more then 5 stars I was so engrossed in this novel it was the second novel I had read by Danielle Steel the first being Secrets and I thought all of her novels were going to be light-hearted and beautiful people falling in love with equally beautiful people this book changed that image for me. Grace Adams had real problems she was in prison and was sexually abused for many years and despite of that she still found love and happiness with her husband Charles but then a series of scandalous events from her past resurface and Grace's happiness is almost shattered by those who want to destory what she has built for herself and the family she created with her husband. Danielle Steel outdid herself with this novel and because of this I have been a fan of hers for years.

'Malice' is the kind of writing that Danielle Steel does best - strong and flawed heroines dealing with serious personal life issues. This book is very emotionally heavy and involving for the reader, and is not a romance novel, so fans of Steel should be forewarned that this novel isn't her standard fare. The character of Grace Adams is well-written and many readers should find much to like about 'Malice.'

This book was very good, and it probably deserved more stars that five.
This story is about a girl named grace who was molested by her father while her mother was very sick, for many years. Then when her father trys to rape her on the night of her mothers funeral, she gets very scared and shoots him.
She is then sent to prison for murder, and has to deal with all this other hard things, and then even after out of prison, she still has to deal with her slimeball probation officer, and the troubles with her work.
She finally meets the right man, and settles down and has a family. Then years later, she is confronted by her past, when all these horrible lies and photos of her come out, it almost destroys her.
This is a very intense book , and i recommend it to any DS fan.

I really enjoyed this book. It reminded me so much of my life. It seems like a lot of people who have bad lives, really do keep on having the bad things keep on happening to them, and the ones with the easy lives, have easy lives forever!
I didn't really like the ending when she brought a gun to scare Marcus, the photographer, though!!! I thought that was completely out of nowhere and did not match with the character's "meek, sensitive, victim" personality. It also did not make sense because she should have known that Marcus could have even gone to the cops after she did that, and made herself look even WORSE.

Malice was given to me as a present. I don't care too much for romances and I knew that Danielle Steel writes romance novels, but I read it any way and I loved it. What a thriller. If she can write more thrillers like this, she might have a new fan.

Unfortunately, I can relate to Grace's story. As a survivor of incest, this book was extremely difficult to read, yet I couldn't put it down! Danielle Steele has amazing insight into the mind of an incest survivor. Thank you, Ms. Steele, for writing this book...maybe it will save some young person's life and sanity.

After reading some of her latest books, i.e., Impossible, and being EXTREMELY disappointed, I reluctantly picked this one up, hoping for the good old Danielle Steel books that she used to write. Thank goodness. Malice is an excellent story. Grace went through so much and yet held her head up. From prison life to fighting off the creeps she would end up working with, she never lost sight of her goals and made it through. Unlike the book, Impossible, I easily finished this to the end and enjoyed every page. I just wish Ms. Steel would still write books like this one!! I definitely recommend it!!