Magic by Danielle Steel Book Review
Title: Magic by Danielle Steel
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: 3 Stars; Entertaining Enough to Make Me Want to Finish
Summary:
The White Dinner is a love poem to friendship, joy, elegance, and the monuments of Paris. And each year it is an unforgettable summer night, especially for Jean-Philippe Dumas, a longtime participant, and the three couples he’s carefully selected to attend this exclusive and cherished event. Interweaving the stories of seven individuals, lives will be forever changed on the eve of one such White Dinner; a night that will lead to new friendships, new love, and of course, magical possibilities.
The Story: * Better Than I was Expecting
This story resembles something I would see on a LifeTime series, a lot of relationship drama between seemly well-off couples with either too much or too little sex in their lives.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. I can admit that the individual trials each couple must face are entertaining and kept me turning pages even when I didn’t like all the characters like Gregorio, who I found to be a deplorable man and horrible husband above all else. All I wanted to do was slap him with a fish!
Yet despite the internal groaning in my head whenever he was on-page, I was deeply invested in his marriage and wanted (needed) to see his wife make the right decision for herself.
The same can be said with the others, but I feel like my inability to truly sympathize with them was because I also found them too melodramatic. A lot of their problems I felt could have been solved if they were mature, disciplined people. I understand that in a story conflict must happen, but the conflict chosen seemed so pointless. One conflict is about whether or not a couple should move to Beijing for work, the choice is split down the middle that will require a sacrifice of at least one spouse. One possible third solution is to simply have one person move to Beijing and allow the family to stay in France, but they argue that the long-distance may lead to infidelity and that just made me so angry! Seven years together and three kids, and you’re seeing your lifelong friend deal with infidelity, and you mean to tell me that your willpower is that weak?!
Maybe I just grew up in a household that simply didn’t deal with these kinds of problems, but I couldn’t sympathize. They had problems that were entertaining (could have been more creative, I think), but they as people were making childlike decisions.
The Characters: ** One out of Three
Jean-Philippe and his wife, Valarie, in my opinion never had their relationship tested before, and as result never developed the skills necessary for a long-lasting marriage; when conflict came their way, they fought each other instead of the problem. I deem thee childish.
Gregorio and Benedetta had a relationship I couldn’t support from the get, one-sided mutual infidelity that grew into something horrible. It was interesting to watch, I really enjoyed seeing Benedetta come into her own, but Gregorio was just a dense old man who I couldn’t stand.
Chantal and Xavier are the only couple I truly enjoyed, sensible and fun. Maybe a little love-dovey, but I felt like they could go the distance. I had to see who they were and how they were together; I grew to like them and after I wanted to see them go through the fire.
In the end, I didn’t dislike this book at all. Not at all, it was eventfully entertaining with real people making decisions and dealing with consequences right after. I liked it far better than Undercover, even if I noticed a few similarities (exposition, repetition), but it kept my attention and won my favor. It's not my type of book, for reasons previously mentioned, but I would recommend this to women with families, adults who love relationship dramas but aren’t looking for a harlequin sex scene.
[TRIGGER WARNING : Blood, Death, Adult Language, Adultery, Mentions of Sex (no explicit scenes), etc.]
