Customer Reviews

Ransom

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As you're reading Ransom, you do get the feeling that yet again, D. Steel is trying to find some new magic to maintain her readership and capture their interest...give them reason to keep hanging on. Does she succeed? Not quite, but she doesn't fail entirely.

Ransom is one of the first times that I can think of (after reading all 60 of her books) that she attempts a bit more of a calculated and complex storyline- merging 3 into one. She does ok at this, the central story line is about a family who's near poverty after the father lost his millions in the stock market and committed suicide-leaving the mother and her 3 children on their own. And with all of that to handle, the change from living as millionaires to saving every penny and selling off all of their belongings; now they have to handle the threat that someone is out to committ a crime against the family, testing them further.

Of course, like any D. Steel book there's a bit of romance, but actually not too much compared to the suspense that she tries to create. She really does make an effort to make this book different from her others and she half-succeeds. Yes, I enjoyed the stories and the ending. I even liked the characters, but yet again, I just felt like something was missing. This book is not my favorite of hers, not up to par with her previous books Heartbeat, No Greater Love or Jewels. Perhaps in an effort to pump out a large number of books, she's sacraficed quality.

I've read several of Danielle Steel's books over the years. It had gotten to the point where you just knew if you'd read one of her novels, you'd read them all. She rarely varied from her plot and character descriptions. So when I picked up Ransom and read the book cover, I thought she just maybe might have decided it was time to write a mystery or suspense novel. The brief description of the story on the book's cover was indeed enticing and I purchased this latest Steel novel. WOW! What a shocker! IF Danielle Steel wrote this book, then she's forgotten every rule she ever knew about writing. And IF she had this book edited, she should fire her editor. The story could have been a good one if the writing itself hadn't been so poorly done. I read "couldn't even" or "didn't even" so many times I couldn't believe it. And there was so much repetition that I kept going to read the entire book just to see how bad it actualy could be. I don't like to give book reviews like this one, but let's face it. Times are hard and money is tight for a lot of people that purchase a good novel for entertainment. And that's what they deserve. So, if I think a book is truly lousy and not worth the dollars, I feel I owe it to other readers to voice my honest opinion. If there was anything I could say to help this one, I would. But I think my review title pretty well says it all. In my opinion, this author needs to retire if this is the best she can do after all these years. It's like she had no pride in her work whatsoever. If she doesn't care, why should I?

Ransom is the first Danielle Steel novel I've read in a long time, and though I finished it, I don't think I'll be looking for any more.

The plot itself was great - it is an intrigueing tale with many possibilities and likable characters. But reading it became so tedious... she is so very repititious, and her writing seemed to be geared toward elementary-aged children. I also found myself wondering about her editor, as another reviewer here did. I would find myself frustrated with her never-ending descriptions of the characters' feelings, and then had to hear most of them all over again.

All in all, it was very handy when I was in bed and wanted to get sleepy!

My husband has a theory that Danielle Steel has a dart board and each circle surrounding the center is labeled either, falls in love, loses family member, has death of loved-one,fights for life of herself or loved one, loses partner,business or spouse. He feels when she is at a loss she justs throws off a dart and whatever she hits becomes the outline for her next book.
I have been a loyal fan for many many years and take his kidding with a smile and secretly pray he's not right.
This book proved me wrong and he was right all these years.
It was so obvious from the first few pages what was happening that I was certain I had read this story before somewhere. After having waited long time to get this book from my local library I was so disappointed that it was so poorly written and so badly not thought through I couldn't even read it completely, but skipped sections to finish it, knowing what was going to happen before I got to it.

Lately I've found Danielle Steele's books to be a bit boring. Ransom wasn't too bad. It a totally different storyline than her other books which is probably why I bothered to finish it. But, I would wait until this book comes out in paperback or go to the library and take it out. It's not worth to spend the price of a hardback on it.

I have read a number of Steele's books over the years; this one was so bland, trite, and contained such bad writing I had to look at the cover repeatedly to establish it really was her book. Sentence structure, content and story line all fall far below standards - did she have an editor at all who would tell her the truth?? The first person, third person, omnicient points of view vary from sentence to sentence; one minute you are in Peter's head, the next standing above the room commenting on what is happening. I think the sentence that blew me apart was on page 106 (hardcover) where she states "He had an envelope full of money in his pocket with a hundred thousand dollars in it." Well, we didn't think it was yen. I don't know if I'll read any further, its taken all my patience to get this far.....

I was hesitant to pick up this DS book, because lately, her quality of writing and storylines have been lacking. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed Ransom, and couldn't put it down. The storyline was very different for DS, and I enjoyed the de-emphasis on romance. However, the repitition in novel after novel is becoming too much. How many times can you tell the reader that the main character is so wealthy, beautiful, powerfully built, etc. She also has a tendency to make her female leads seem pathetic. However, Ransom was a welcome change with engaging characters, a page-turning plot and suspense.

Page 189, line 9: "Even to her, it sounded like a bad movie". This was the exact feeling I had, and I gave up on it. Bad writing, repetitions over repetitions over repetitions, bad story. My first, and last Danielle Steel.

In this book, the lives of four people intersect and are woven together. The initial descriptions of the four people--two recently released convicts, a woman whose husband has committed suicide, and a police officer--are interesting and promise an intriguing story. Unfortunately, the book goes downhill from there. The characters are manipulated in an artificial manner, and the interactions are forced and wooden. I agree that the writing is surprisingly amateurish at times and a good editor would have caught the awkward phrasing and helped improve it. This is not Danielle Steele's best work!

Steele threw in a little more action than usual. There were a lot of parts where I couldn't put the book down. The beginning was a little drawn out, especially when the guys get out of prison and are re-introduced to the real world, blah, blah, blah. The end was fairly predictable.

My only Steele peeve is that she descbibes characters personalities over and over and over! Besides that I really liked Fernanda and all of the characters for that matter.

If the average Seele read is a 5 this one is a 6.