Danielle Steel disappoints yet again!!!

Read a Danielle Steel after ages and was thoroughly disappointed :( The yr 2011 published '44 Charles Street' by Steel was a terrible let down, an extreme wash out in all the ways possible and I am cursing myself for having picked it up in the first place. Why and how did I read through it? Well, because I have a pact with my bookaholic self that however boring or useless the book maybe, I will finish it off to the end.....who knows maybe, just maybe there is an interesting twist to the tale in the penultimate chapter! But alas! there was no such queer twist, no such golden moment in the whole book which just seemed to drag on at an alarmingly slow pace from start to finish.

Plot: A start-up art dealer Fransesca in a small town west of NY splits from her partner Todd after a 5 year old relationship. Her house on Charles Street is high-maintenance and in order to revive her art - business and keep her house, Fransesca turns to the only visible alternative. She decides to take in 3 house mates and hopes to keep her finances tidy by the monthly rent income. The story rotates around the personal baggage each tenant ( Elaine, Chris and Marya) brings to 44, Charles street and how in a few days Fransesca and her tenants become a tight family unit, sharing smiles and tears.

The book offers nothing special, 'falling in love by the lady owner of the house with her only male tenant (who can conveniently fix the plumbing as well - a job hated by her ex-partner) fails to carry any brownie points for ingenuity. It seems so run-of-the mill, so mundane and so thoroughly predictable that even a Mills & Boons will probably be a far more interesting read! Talking of ingenuity, how about the other tenant- Marya a renowned cook finding love in the form of a French chef whose wife chooses conveniently to run away with her husband's sous-chef precisely when they are discovering their love for each other! Magical? Hardly! The author has spent a number of pages highlighting the gourmet treats cooked up by the duo Marya, the famous cook book writer and her super French chef friend .... Cooks who can cook- barely a revelation!

There are some inane thrill factors thrown in by the author in an apparent bid to spice up the novel but they seem to fall flat too. The youngest tenant in 44, Charles Street is murdered by her tattooed ill-tempered, motorbike-mechanic boyfriend she meets online. The murder conveniently takes place when all the other inhabitants are away for the summer and the police easily trace out the murderer and book him. Thrilling? And when Fransesca and Chris are in Maine for an art fair and are discovering love in companionship; they receive news that Chris's son 7 year old son is forcibly picked up by his drug-addict mother from school disrespecting a court order and they have to fly back immediately to trace the mother-son duo. Chris and Fransesca easily trace them in a run-down club and the court soon awards full-custody of Ian to Chris. Exciting?

To top it all the author repeats herself so frequently in describing Eileen's online friendships, her affinity to get into risky and troublesome relationships; in describing Fransesca's mothers Thalia's ' frivolous and materialistic nature and how it contrasted with her step mother's nature; in describing Ian's mother's drug addiction and how she is ruining Ian and Chris's life by her irresponsible behavior and also in describing Fransesca's disenchantment with her previous partner Todd.

In fact, if you remove the parts which are mere repetitions, the book would weigh a lot less. The book could easily be wrapped up in 250 pages instead of the printed 381 pages.

Even though I have never been a Danielle Steel fan, some of her reads have been fairly pleasant - like Daddy, Zoya, Star, A Perfect Stranger, Message from Nam, Once in a Lifetime, to name a few from the ones published in the 1990's and early 2000's. But the book 44, Charles Street has to be definitely the most poorly conceptualized and written book by the author. Many times, you can actually sense that the author has lost her direction with the book and she is merely filling up pages with unnecessarily long descriptions about ordinary events like water leakages, group dinners and family vacations.

I bet you will find it hard to find a single silver lining in this book which merits highlighting. The only one I could come up with after ardent searching is that the book was written to celebrate the concept of second chances, of new beginnings in life and love. It tries to convey the message that one can find love after giving up; that one can find a new partner in the twilight years of one's life; and that even a self-confessed cheater can swear by loyalty when he finds true love.

Review -- 1/ 5 . Unless you are curious how a seasoned author like Danielle Steel could write such an amateur, ordinary novel, it is advisable to give 44 Charles Street a miss.