Undercover by Danielle Steel
Title: Undercover by Danielle Steel
Genre: Drama, Spy – Action, Romance
Rating: 2 Stars; Not my cup of tea
Summary:
For DEA Special Agent Marshall Everett, life, as he knows it is over once a gunshot wound, renders his arm useless. Barred forever from the undercover work he loves, he has nothing—no close friends, no family, no hometown or base, and no desire to settle for life behind a desk. He’s called to action in the most unlikely of places when he stumbles upon a beautiful girl burying an old steel box in a Parisian park. Drawn into the mystery, Marshall soon discovers that she is Ariana Gregory, daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, who is trying to find herself again after being kidnapped and brainwashed by radical revolutionaries. But there are powerful forces at large who will not rest until they secure revenge, and Marshall and Ariana will face yet more trials—and another beginning—before they can truly bury the dark past and embark on a new life together.
The Story: * A Good Plot is Only Half the Battle
The story is so promising and yet, this is the hard part about running a book blog. I must be honest about what I like and don’t like, and this story is not for me.
I like the premise of what was going to happen, but the first half of the book is such a drag I really had to push myself to finish! What really irked me was that the first half that I had to get through, before reaching chapter ten become completely irrelevant as the story takes place years later.
Why did I have to read all of that if it wasn’t going anywhere? What was the point?
The best way for me to explain this is to compare it to the animated adaptation of Batman’s The Killing Joke; everyone questions the purpose of the beginning, a pointless heist when we could have started in the middle and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Everything else after, event-wise, was interesting and kept my attention, but a good story is only half the battle.
The Writing: * Not Impressive at All
The writing was not impressive to me and that’s as much I can say about it. I found it repetitive at the worst of times and overflowing in exposition which is an unforgivable crime to me. This is a personal preference, but exposition I feel to be the downfall of most good books because it feels like I’m being told a story, not seeing it. I want to learn new things about the characters as the story progresses, not in the very beginning – it's not memorable. And the sentences I found to be lacking in personality, the structure of the syntax was just mediocre. There was no lasting impression.
What I learned from reading this book is that I have a type. A type that I will, with intention after my #clearyourbookshelf self-challenge, seek out. I prefer mysteries, yes, but crime dramas such as these oddly don’t hold my attention as they would on TV. I love romances like Undercover, but I have to root for the charters and here I just didn’t grow to love them as I needed.
It’s a no for me, but adults who enjoy spy dramas, with some romance between adults going through adult traumas may want to give this book a try.
[TRIGGER WARNING: Blood, Death, Adult Language, etc.]
