Danielle Steel

Born:
August 14, 1947
Main genre:
Romance

Steel's novels have been translated into 28 languages and can be found in 47 countries across the globe, and 22 of her books have been adapted for television. While her books are romances, she does not always guarantee her characters a happy ending. Many of her books can also be considered family sagas as most of her stories usually deal with rich powerful families who face some crisis. While many critics might consider her books as "fluff" her plots do go beyond the normal "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" formula.

Danielle has expanded her interests over the years by writing children's stories, opening an art gallery, and backing benefits that support charities geared towards helping people with mental illnesses and raise awareness for children with mental illnesses as well.

Steel has evolved as a writer giving something for everyone. If you prefer strong female characters and a deeper, gritty plot you may want to avoid some of her earlier work. If you enjoy the fairly uncomplicated romance books that tend to lean towards sappy, you would probably enjoy her earlier books. I know that I have not read Steel in recent years, I've pretty much grown out of my romance novel phase of life but I must admit that I did enjoy reading these featured author selections more than I had expected to.

My introduction to Danielle Steel was way back in high school. My mother was a big fan of Steel's and there were always books of hers to be found in the house. I'm fairly sure that the first novel I read by Steel was The Promise, but I could be wrong as that was so long ago. It was very difficult to narrow down only four books for this month's featured reviews. It was very tempting to select all books that I have previously read but wanted to re-read. The reason that I had started doing the featured author theme though was to clear some of the books out of my to-read list where I had multiple books from the same author. So I made a compromise and selected two books I have read, and two that are entirely new to me.

This month's selections are:

The Promise