Customer Reviews

One Day at a Time: A Novel

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

So, true enough that maybe there is nothing special here, nothing particularly tragic or earth-shatteringly life-changing, yada yada. I enjoyed that it was female-centric, introspective and had modern elements(lesbian sister, mother of the protagonist dating a younger man).

I read the occasional Danielle Steel book to be entertained. And entertaiined I was. She is, at least, consistent. I loved the development of the character of Coco in the beginning portion of the book. Maybe I relate too closely to the exasperation and disappointment of particular family members, who knows, but I really enjoyed the character development. I do think Ms. Steel does take a poke at the chi-chi Hollywood set who chooses names like "Coco" for their children and carries about their itty-bitty poochie-woochies.

I dowloaded this book to my kindle and felt it was a decent deal- I likely would not have paid full hardcover price for it.

I think Ms. Steel does an excellent job of capturing those depressing and at times debilitating moments when we realize that we are not all that our parents/family/ourselves wish we were. I love that Coco is a dogwalker and is happy with that, loves her dogs and their individual personalities, shares chinese food with them and somehow makes them seem just all that much more appealing than the human beings by whom she is surrounded.

How much more cliche can you get than the distraught, discombobulated, unkempt dog-walker suddenly confronted with the world-famous, accent-bearing, heart-throb who is staying at her movie producer sister's home where she just so happens to be housesitting? Yes, the accidental and unavoidable meeting of two totally different people, thrown together by fate(or, uh, Ms. Steel- who does happen to be a bit of a romance novelist, heh). They, of course, bond over a dearth of groceries and a bed-nabbing dog.

Like numerous other Steel books, Coco goes on to experience a romance that takes her around the world. Leslie, her movie-star heartthrob, turns out to have a daughter that Coco fall in love with as much as Leslie himself, setting up the picture of what could be a perfect little, ready-made family.

Then, in Italy, an incident brings things to a screeching halt. Coco is reminded of an unpleasant childhood incident that appears to be a dealbreaker for her and Leslie. Coco decides it's just not going to work out- Leslie represents too much of everything that she has always resisted in her Hollywood family- the fame, ambition, lack of privacy...

I don't want to give away more but Coco returns to find that maybe her family isn't quite as judemental as she thought and she is able to find some solace for her broken heart there. Leslie's daughter Chloe ends up being the bridge that brings the destined couple back together again. After all, who can resist the wiles of one of Steel's adorable, never ill-behaved younglings?

Sadly enough, when Coco returns to what her family calls her "shack" in Bolinas, which had been her hideaway where she had kept alive her former lost love, everything has faded and lost it's warmth for her. Steel has her moments of showing us that love transforms both people and places and while Coco's memory of her lost love had been kept a burning ember on the hearth there, the house was still a home and haven. Now, having left behind Leslie, a very real and living love, holding on to the past has lost its lustre.

Sure, maybe it's only worth checking out from the library but I found this read sufficiently entertaining. Hello! It IS a romance novel, not Jane Austen- though, honestly, I think I'd rather read this than some of Austen's stuff. Ha!

Will Coco end up with Leslie? Will she have the family she has so long denied herself through her own beliefs of dispossession. Steel hits the nail on the head that so often what we perceive to be walls between 'us' and 'them' are simply those barriers we have created ourselves. And the thing I enjoy most about Ms. Steel's writing is that she has nothing to prove and in her simple and eloquent way shows that love does, indeed, set us free.

If you are looking for a good romance with some modern elements and not just reams of steamy shower-nozzle masturbation material... this might be a good choice for you. I think most Danielle Steel fans will not be disappointed even if it is not her greatest work ever.

Well, expect the usual Steel repetition. The first 80 pages of the story are about how Coco is the disappointment of her family. Her mom and sister never have anything nice to say about her or her life. It goes on and on.

Enter Leslie (male) a Hollywood movie star, who Coco falls in love with. She doesn't like or want the movie star lifestyle. But, she loves him. She doesn't want to face dealing with the press, but she loves him. She doesn't want to be hounded, but she loves him. On and on, we go again.

Nothing spectacular or tragic happens in this story. You don't finish this book and think to yourself that it was a great story. Anyone could have written it.

I have suspected before that Steel must get paid by the page or words. Its the only thing that makes sense of the constant repetition and lack of substance of her books throughout the last 10 years.

Get this one from the library for free. Not worth buying.

I had not read a Danielle Steele novel in many years and now I see why.
So incredibly unrealistic it was actually painful. Is Danielle really writing this or is a computer program? They reiterated the same sentence over and over. Maybe I was young and stupid when i used to enjoy these books. I think I will go back and read some of her earlier stories to see if it was the same sappy formula of a book.

I'll admit that's it has been a while since I've read a modern day romance. I'm lean much more towards historical. However, I got this book free, so I thought I would go ahead and give it a go. The beginning was agonizingly slow. In fact, the first 100 pages or so simply set up the story. And to be honest, it could have been done in one chapter. I couldn't really take how many ways Ms. Steel decided to tell us the same thing over and over again. I get it. Coco doesn't fit in with the high power lifestyle of L.A. and has felt like an outcast and failure in the eyes of her family, even though she's content. I was banging my head against the wall the 50th time Coco or Leslie was thinking one of these things. It would have been better to take a chapter to tell us about the situation, and then have conversations that SHOW this. Instead, I felt like she was insulting me, as if I was too stupid to get it so she kept repeating it.

I'm used to romance stories being more about how the two main characters get together, but this happens within two days in the book. Which is fine, and I can see that it would be refreshing if, in fact, the relationship between the two had been a bit more interesting. The love scenes were non-existent. The story quickly turned to how Coco must overcome her weak nature in order to live the LA life with Leslie. The good thing is that I thought Leslie was a great guy, I thought Steel did a great job explaining the difficulty with being famous and the toll it takes on not only the celebrity but those around them. But, the praise ends there. I thought the whole book was lukewarm at best. I didn't get the all-consuming love between the two. It seemed tepid. The whole romance was overshadowed by Coco's family problems.

If you're looking for a book that's more family focused on how to overcome being the outcast an to be content with your life, then it's a great book. But it's not a great romance book. Therefore, I can't recommend it.

Her mother is Florence Flowers, a legendary author known for shallow best sellers. Her late father was Bernard "Buzz" Barrington, a legendary literary and dramatic agent. Her sister Jane is one of the top Hollywood producers of the past decade. With that DNA Coco Barrington wonders where she went wrong as she rusticates in Bolinas in Northern California as a dog walker far from "civilization" also called Los Angeles.

Jane and her significant other Lizzie are thinking of having a child. They ask Coco to dog and house sit for them; which she reluctantly agrees. However, she thought she only had to deal with the lord of the manor jack the dog; instead some guy named Leslie is hiding in her sister's house from a psychotic former girlfriend. As she and Leslie become acquainted, both feel a deep attraction. However, she refuses anything Hollywood and he is renowned British actor Leslie Baxter; then again his favorite beautiful companion is his six years old daughter Chloe and her mom is dating a stud two plus decades younger than her.

This is an engaging contemporary fiction tale that at times the readers feels they ride a merry go round as Coco's doubts vs. her love keep going round and round; Leslie is too nice a guy to have doubts especially if she loves him. The support cast is solid as her two female relatives who at first seem nasty, but actually are frustrated with her as they want Coco to come out of her self inflicted exile. Die hard fans of Ms. Steel will enjoy ONE DAY AT A TIME as Coco must learn to follow the title credo if she is to have any chance at happiness.

Harriet Klausner

I was huge Danielle Steel fan...but everything she has been putting out recently I find almost tortuous to read..I couldn't even finish the book..Save your time and money...

This effort by Danielle Steel is a weak facsimile of her earlier works.

I don't mind a simple storyline -- formula romance stories work -- but there was no effort made to develop the characters into something more than two-dimensional. Rather than create interesting dialogue to explore the characters and their relationships, Ms. Steel used long soliloquies to move the story along. The beginning is a series of long paragraphs to "set the stage" instead of building the story in a more interesting fashion. Overall, the book reads like a hurried, lacklustered effort by an author capable of so much more.

While this book was enjoyable to a point, it was way too much fluff and no substance.

This book was a waste of time. No real story. Certainly, not one of her best. Waste of time and money.

I have read all of Danielle Steele's books and found that this book took me a lot longer to get into. I felt that it wasn't as good as her others. I also found that she used the "F" word way to many times, which I found very offensive.