Accident - Danielle Steele - Picked up the book by Accident (pun intended!!!!!)

 Before I started with this book I did read a couple of reviews. I've had mixed relationships with the books that are written by Danielle. While some of them I loved (in fact, they made me cry) there are some that I just hated. It was like she had written them in her sleep or that she had been given an advance by the publishing house and had to justify the same. It's a shame sometimes, because writing is a difficult job. Some say it takes a bit of your soul, but then some books come along that make you think that all of the "soul" part is just pop psychology told by bad writers to justify their bad writing. 

I generally do not pick up Danielle Steel books (I have just one book called Big Girl which I own that I bought at a book sale for very cheap, but have not picked up till date) and I do not remember selecting this book to be a part of my reading list. But for some reason (I fail to figure out the reason even in the scheme of big things), my library thought that this is going to be a good read for me (you are wrong automatic book selector, this is not my supposedly next read selection - wonder what made you think that).

It starts with the introduction of Paige a beautiful (obviously) mother of two children. She has the typical dream life that everyone wants, beautiful children, gorgeous husband and a comfortable life. She is a housewife, who paints murals in her free time and her husband is a high flying fast growing (what else - sometimes it looks like only I got the short end of the stick...never mind that now...) executive in an advertising agency. She has been married for 16 years (I think....sorry I tend to sometimes forget the fine details which tells me that I should focus more when I read). She wants another kid but her husband does not. And so life goes on, until one day her daughter wants to go out for dinner and a movie with her friend. This is a lie told  by the daughter who is actually meeting up some high school/college boys for a ride along with her friend. She promises that she will be back home by her deadline but meets with a massive accident and ends up almost dead and in a coma. Her friend, Chloe, almost loses her limbs in the accident, due to which she has to forget about Ballet forever. And there begins the downward spiral. Paige is forced to confront some tough realities and questions a lot of things in life that she took for granted like her relationships, her career goals etc. Anything more that this will be spoilers, so I will leave it at that.

This book is more like a TV serial or one of those mushy movies. I could almost guess the plot after the daughter's accident. It was not a book that had a lot of twists and turns or even where the story line was touching or anything. The message that it gave me was 

• Never trust a husband who forgets to leave his contact details especially when he always did leave it before this (guess they did not have cell phones).

• Never trust your teenage daughter's especially if they try and borrow your sweaters. 

Now it could be possible that the husband genuinely forgot to leave his number. I am surprised that he did not do so because he was trying to hide his affair (Spoiler Alert!!! ....oh come on....anyone can figure that out) and who has in the past consistently left his contact details. What did he think he was doing? Then Chloe's father (another obvious) falls in love with Paige and all that shebang. It's the obvious storyline. The cover of the book says that this is a book which tells you how to deal with life when some loved one meets with such life changing accidents, which was all very good, but I was not able to find any accident dealing advice or even the story did not tell me. It just is that her cheating husband goes away and she gets a better one.

The story is a graph line. Starts with the straight line and then goes up and comes back down with a resounding thud. The only characters that I liked were Andrew and Bjorn, you can figure out who is who if you decide to pick the book. 

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars (because this was a good topic and Danielle could have done so much better)

Level: Easy (Bubble Head easy). Just boring unless you are into this kind of thing.