Family Ties

May 17, 2010
A bland, forgettable tale full of platitudes and clunky exposition, Steel's latest bestseller-to-be follows Annie Ferguson, who inherits her sister's three children when she dies in a plane crash. Annie does her best to raise them and manages to build a career for herself as a promising architect, even if it means putting much of the rest of her life on hold. Once the children are grown, Annie realizes that there are a slew of other problems facing them—abusive relationships, culture clashes, and the painful process of finding one's way in life—and as Annie gently leads her inherited brood through the gauntlet of growing up, she finds her own happiness. The treacle factor is front and foremost as Steel demonstrates, again, why she's not known as a prose stylist, although there's a glimmer of a good plot.

April 1, 2010
An aunt steps up to mother her orphaned nieces and nephew, in Steel's predictable latest (A Good Woman, 2008, etc.).

Annie, 26, is on the verge of embarking on an exciting career, and marrying well, when her sister Jane and her husband are killed in a plane crash. With some trepidation, Annie becomes guardian of Jane's three young children, Liz, Ted and Katie. Annie's fianc, not up to the challenge of a ready-made family, bows out. Cut to 16 years later. Annie has never married—she hasn't had time, thanks to her thriving architecture firm, which caters to New York City's wealthiest, and the challenges of raising her nieces and nephew. Her efforts have borne fruit: Ted is now in law school, Katie attends Pratt and Liz is a globetrotting jewelry editor for Vogue. After Ted's Contracts professor, Pattie, a divorcee 12 years his senior, seduces him, he's sexually in her thrall but knows it's not love. An ankle sprained at a job site sends Annie to the ER, where (during the interminable wait) she meets high-profile TV-news anchor Tom. After years of bland blind dates, Tom is a refreshing change. The plot duly thickens: Katie drops out of design school to work in a tattoo parlor, and she's besotted with her new boyfriend Paul, an Iranian/American dual national. Liz's scruffy French lover Jean-Louis seems to be too friendly with his ex-mistress Fran‡oise, who's the mother of his child. Pattie stabs Ted's hand with a steak knife when he tries to leave. Paul and Katie take an ill-advised trip to Tehran, and his relatives confiscate their U.S. passports. Just when Tom and Annie are realizing (after an idyllic stay at a private villa in Turks and Caicos) there is room for each other in their fast-paced lives, it appears that her charges may now need her more than ever.

A listless narrative not helped by Steel's plodding prose, but her legion of fans aren't in it for the surprise.

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April 1, 2010
At 26, Annie Ferguson is living the American dream. She recently graduated from architecture school and landed a great job, and has a terrific boyfriend who just may be the one. But her dreams disappear in an instant when her sister and husband die in an airplane crash and Annie becomes the guardian for her young nieces and nephew. She devotes the next 16 years to raising the children, and when they leave the nest, she misses them. Now Annie must learn to let them lead their own lives as Whitney, her friend from college, keeps reminding her. Although her nieces and nephew are technically adults, its hard to sit back and let them solve their own problems, especially when they have serious consequences. And its time to think about her own life, since in the midst of all the family drama, Annie finally meets a man. But can she let him into her life, and is he willing to accept her and her family? All the trademark elements of Steels novels are here: pretty people with thorny problems, making her latest another sure hit with her loyal fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)