Customer Reviews

Sisters

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I had given up on Danielle Steel, vowed to never again read one of her books and especially not spend money on the type of stories she was writing much too quickly and sloppily. I have felt, and still do, that her grammar is terrible, she runs sentences together and she repeats herself over and over and over again. Did I mention how she repeats herself?
This book, however, was at least a good story. First, I was given this book as a joke and enticement to get me to read "one more book" by DS. I did get caught up in the story, shed tears and got emotional during the chapters about the accident and aftermath and really liked the characters that she introduced and actually expanded upon throughout the story. This story showed more depth than her last many books. She used to do that a lot-----"Message from Nam" was one of my favorites for that. She develped the people better and spent more time on the plot and story line. However, she still repeated herself far too much. But I just skimmed over those flaws-----this time.
I agree with others that there is much more story line not developed, however---the father, new wife, baby on the way and the 4 sisters with the men in their lives. Perhaps a sequel?
Maybe it's a new trend and she's trying harder to achieve the excellence she was known for in the past. We can only hope.

Steel's last handful of books have been disappointing to me. She pumps them out so quickly now days the content of her stories seemed to lack importance or effort.

Sisters is more along the lines of her original style of story telling. It had more of a real feel to the story line and characters. This is defintely worth reading. I really enjoyed it.

I knew of Danielle Steel only as a romance novelist and thus assumed her reputation among literary snobs to be purely the result of her chosen genre. However, finding the idea of Sisters mildly interesting and in need of a beach read, I purchased it for the wildly overblown price of $4.99. Reading the first three pages, I learned only that Candy was a young, fun, beautiful model with a level of success and notoriety that the combined forces of the Beatles, Harry Potter, and the tweenyboppers of High School Musical could not hope to attain. The shallow and impossible details of Candy's beautiful older sisters are laid out equally lengthily and redundantly. The entire book reads like the stream-of-consciousness of a giddy and gushing 6th-grade girl, making it functionally impossible to focus on the tragedies befallen by the family, although taking great care to highlight that the severity of the tragedy is all the worse because the victims are beautiful. Lovely touch, that. If this explosion of typographical diarrhea is typical Steel-fare, then her critics are far too mild on her. Having affronted my sensibilities with this drivel, it is my opinion that Ms. Steel and her editor should be tried and executed for crimes against humanity, and if this insidious manuscript is published internationally, tried for treason. Forcing this upon unsuspecting countries outside our borders is at once an act of war and additionally might inspire the global opinion that all Americans are mindlessly shallow and grammatically retarded.

In a moment of temporary insanity, I checked 'Sisters' out of the library. It's summer, after all, and that's when my reading tends to lighten up. But, despite it's length and heft, this book was way too light for me.

As others have written, I enjoyed Ms. Steel's earlier work, but have been utterly dismayed by the quality of her more recent books. 'Sisters' is an improvement, and the storyline is compelling, but still, the writing is choppy and the repetition mind-numbing. She had to have written variations on the phrase "but she is so young" 100 times when referring to Candy, as if to excuse the character's shallow existence.

I was particularly irritated by the Sabrina/Chris relationship. How many times did Ms. Steel have to reiterate Sabrina's reluctance to marry this man who could only have been created in a work of fiction? I was also dumbstruck by the sudden turn in Charlie's character, but at least we didn't have to read 25 pages about him!

On a positive note, Ms. Steel has found an editor who is aware of the proper use of commas and sentence structure. A few gaffes slipped through (two sentences in a row that begin with "and"), but overall, it was easier to read than her last half dozen books. Still, thoroughly edited, this book could easily have been slimmed down 75 pages or so.

The good news is that, after having read this book, I am more convinced than ever that I can write fiction, and have returned to my own manuscript!

After reading the last several Danielle Steel books, I have to wonder if Danielle Steel is even writing these books herself. When you compare her recent work to her earlier novels, it's difficult to believe that Danielle Steel is actually sitting down and writing the same sentence and thought over and over and over.

When I read this book, all I kept thinking was that this could have been written by any amateur...and that if this had been the first book Ms. Steel submitted for publication, she would never have been published.

This book has all the hallmarks of a book that someone else wrote from an outline that Danielle Steel may possibly have put together. To me, it is very juvenile. Perhaps this is who Ms. Steel is now writing for, hence her VERY irritating manner of repeating the same thought multiple times.

Not to mention, the flow of her books is badly done. She will state a thought...go on to something else...and then come back to that same thought, as though this is the first time it's been mentioned.

In summary, I have a very hard time believing that an accomplished author has actually written the drivel she's been writing of late.

Please, Danielle...quit turning your outlines over to a 13-year-old to complete for you!!!

Sisters does have a more interesting story line than most of the novels Stell has written in the past several years but this book is actually a somewhat depressing one. It seems when Steel veers away from her early formulas, she throws in a stories that are filled with too much real-life angst that takes away from the fun, fairy tale type reads she used to do so well.

It is rare that I do not finish a book, this in fact might be the first time it has happened. Usually if I start a book, no matter how awful it is I will finish it because I started it. After two and a half chapters of this book I was bored out of my mind. Every other sentence stated how which ever girl they were talking about at the time was happy and beautiful and loved her family dearly. She would never put anything above her family. After about the 15th time of hearing this I wanted to call Danielle Steel up and tell her I got the point, after the 60th time i wanted to gauge out my eyes so i would not see those words again, and after the 200th time i finally just put the book down. The characters were all very similar. I found nothing to keep me interested in the book.

As with Danielle Steel's last few books, this one was predictable and boring. She used to write wonderful, fairy tale romances "To Love Again", "Palomino", "Message from Nam", etc., but the last two or three years her books have just been poorly written with repetitive sentences.

As the other reviewers have said, the ending left me with tons of questions. I thought it was lazy of Danielle Steel to leave readers hanging at the ending. I wonder if her editors even bother reading her manuscripts anymore. Maybe she's so prolific, they just assume her books will sell no matter how they are written. And they seem to sell well, so the editors are probably not policing her writing anymore.

I would say, Buyer Beware, and instead, borrow it from the library. Let's hope Ms. Steel reads these reviews and learns something from them, such as not repeating herself constantly.

Overall good story, but the author repeats herself almost every other line to the point you have to wonder how the book ever got past the editing process and published like this. The repetitions distracted from the read.

I can't believe this book got published, it's so badly written: descriptive, repetitive, awful, gave me a headache! Too bad there's only stars; there should be a thumbs-down icon to add on here.