Honour Thyself - Danielle Steel

I haven’t read a Danielle Steele book for about 10 years but I had a £5 voucher for WHS and this book was in the half price bit so I read the back and it sounded interesting so thought I’d give it a go.


=== The Storyline ===

The story is set around Carole Barber who is a huge film star who seems to have come to a cross roads in her life. She hasn’t made a film in three years after losing her husband and is trying ...
...decides to visit Paris where she lived for a few years to see if she can get the answers to some questions and have a break. On her first day there on her way back to the hotel her taxi is going through a tunnel when there is a huge explosion and Carole is left unconscious and fighting for her life in hospital. She had no ID on her so it takes a few weeks to identify her but then her family rushes to her side and she slowly begins to heal and relearn ... more

I haven’t read a Danielle Steele book for about 10 years but I had a £5 voucher for WHS and this book was in the half price bit so I read the back and it sounded interesting so thought I’d give it a go.

The Storyline

The story is set around Carole Barber who is a huge film star who seems to have come to a cross roads in her life. She hasn’t made a film in three years after losing her husband and is trying to write a book but has writers block. Carole decides to visit Paris where she lived for a few years to see if she can get the answers to some questions and have a break. On her first day there on her way back to the hotel her taxi is going through a tunnel when there is a huge explosion and Carole is left unconscious and fighting for her life in hospital. She had no ID on her so it takes a few weeks to identify her but then her family rushes to her side and she slowly begins to heal and relearn her past and take control of her future.

My Opinion

The first thing I noticed when I opened this book was the writing seemed to be in a larger font and it is double spaced so while I thought I was getting a 500 page book that I would normally read it is only probably half that size really. Anyway, the story gets going straight away with Carole and her assistant, Stevie, deciding that she needs to get away to try and unlock her writers block so the action, as it were, is right at the beginning and then begins the rest of the story as she comes out the coma with no memory and the important people in her life tell her stories about her past so she can learn their relationships with the them (and us as the reader) and hopefully regain her memory. The pace is quite good throughout although the chapters are quite long, there are only 20 in the whole book, so I found it hard to find a place to stop reading.

Carole is the main character and she is very nice – nice to everyone, no diva tendencies even though she is huge film star, and handles waking up with no memory and a big scar on her face really well, not one tantrum throughout the book. Everyone loves her and her exes all want to get back with her. I like her character as you are supposed to but she was just too nice for me and just not real enough, surely no-one is that nice, or I’m just to cynical!

The other main characters are her assistant and best friend Stevie, who lives to serve Carole and attend to her every need, she won’t even marry her boyfriend because he might want to stop her working for Carole, she is a good character though and brings the odd moment of humour to the book and is someone who is not perfect.

Carole’s two Exes are the other characters who tell her their stories of their relationships from meeting to breaking up, they of course were the bad guys! It is interesting learning about Carole’s past from these stories though and you find out why she ended up in Paris in the first place and why she felt she needed answers in order to progress with her book.

As you can probably tell I found this book to be just “nice”. The story came to end nicely, though predictably, with everything tied up but I had no urge to find out what happened next like I do with some stories, especially those with strong female characters. I hadn’t read a Danielle Steele book for a long time and to be honest I probably won’t ever read another one, but she obviously has a lot of fans and I’m sure a lot of people will enjoy this book as a nice easy to read story.

Published by Corgi.
Paperback 506 pages.
 

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