Customer Rating:  
Summary: What a waste of paper!
Comment: Blake Williams suddenly amassed a huge fortune, retired, & now flits around the world buying houses & other toys, always on a new adventure, rarely coming home to his 3 kids & wife but doesn't see why she divorced him 5 years ago. Nothing said about adultery, but he sure had a string of YOUNG girls fast!
Blake was the children's biological father but no father in any other way. He constantly broke promises to & disappointed them & wouldn't show at important events in their lives. He wasn't there for Sam's birth, & twice when Sam was seriously injured couldn't be reached for days. He'd ignore his kids for MONTHS and couldn't be reached. He wasn't involved in decisions, took no responsibility, enforced no boundaries & undermined Maxine's authority during the infrequent times he was with the kids. He gave his 13 year old free rein of his penthouse when he was gone for weeks. He gave his kids alcohol, even the 5 year old. When the kids stayed with him, he'd usually bring a woman, always a different one, to share his bed, have sex with & let his attention be taken away from his kids to give to her. Great moral example for your own children.
But, Maxine let him get away with it. She & Blake were always touching & telling each other, "I love you." Blake referred to Max as his wife & himself her husband. When he took the kids to dinner she'd usually go with them. Yet neither cared about the other's love life & were never jealous? Maxine should have had him sign away his parental rights when they divorced. The kids weren't that old then & he was rarely around so it wouldn't have been much of an adjustment. No father would have been better than Blake as a father. He was self involved & incapable of real love.
Blake's "woman" in the beginning was 22 years old, barely legal, Blake was 46, more than twice her age. All his bimbos were under 30, most under 25. They were literally young enough to be his daughter & then some. He was old enough to be a grandfather!! It was pathetic.
He met Arabella, age 29, & was infatuated, in spite of the tattoos up & down both arms, with her. She disliked his kids, didn't want any of her own & turned out as loyal as a snake with the morals of an alley cat. What she did to Blake was horrid, but... when you're old enough to be a girl's father?
Blake was going through a mid life crisis most of his adult life. When caught in a natural disaster & seeing all the suffering, he suddenly grows up? The guy's pushing 50, how likely that he'd change, be a good father & husband & stay in one place? He would have continued jetting around & not be satisfied by a woman his own age. The end was just stupid.
The characters are undeveloped, cardboard & shallow. It's been a really long time since I've read a Danielle Steel book, now I remember why, & I'll never read another.
Customer Rating:
Summary: YIKES - the worst Danielle Steele has written!
Comment: I have read them all and this is the worst. I typically like the easy read - but this was just horrible. It seems like she just stopped writing at the end...and couldn't come up with anything. Save your money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Boring and Predictable Disappointment
Comment: If you're thinking about reading Rogue, reconsider. I found this book to be the most mundane, predictable and utterly ridiculous book Steel has written yet. Rogue is about a shrink named Maxine who lets her school-aged child sleep in her bed, who swears she is destined to help troubled teens but yet somehow cannot seem to manage her own teen, and who walked away from her marriage to a rich entrepreneur named Blake only to fall in love with a respectable doctor named Charles, who she later decides is a jerk, but not before accepting his proposal for marriage and stringing him along for several months. You can't help but feel sorry for Charles as he gets jilted again and again in this book. Somehow we are supposed to rejoice at the end as Blake tells Charles off and Blake ends up marrying Maxine instead. Maxine's character is not likeable and that is perhaps one of the bigger downfalls of this book.
Bottom line- HUGE disappointment and so very predictable!
Come on, Steel, you owe your fans more than this!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Way too predictable - a Steele disappointment
Comment: I've been a Danielle Steele fan for 25+ years, but I find her writing to be extremely variable. While she has written some of my favorite books (Season of the Heart, Wanderlust, Thurston House, Sisters) but she has also written some oh-so-predicatable books. The Rogue is definitely one of those. By the time I finished the first chapter, I could have easily told anyone how it was going to end (and I would have been right). And I spent the first 2/3 of the book waiting for something to happen!
Definitely not a book I would recommend to anyone - this ranks right up there with "Accident" as the worse books Danielle Steele has ever written. Hopefully the next one will be less predictable!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow start - Nice finish
Comment: Many of Danielle Steel's novels of late seem to start off very slowly and some don't seem to show the story progressing. Lots of skimming through the actions of the characters rather than showing them doing what they do. This probably lends itself to the slowness of the story. I've noticed other authors "telling the story" rather than "showing" it. Basically the premise of the story is very good. If you can get through the slow beginning and into the story, you're in for a good read. I have read and have collected every Danielle Steel book and probably will continue to do so and will hope to have faster-action story progress in the future.
J.A. Fulkerson, Author
For Love of Teddy
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