Lori Anaple's Reviews > Friends Forever

** spoiler alert ** I am not ashamed to admit that I read Danielle Steel. She was a staple in my adolescent book pile. I haven't read anything from her in a long while and picked this up at the library. To say that I was underwhelmed is an understatement. Usually I can count on Steele to have me sobbing at some point. I can count on her to weave a story full of well rounded characters and make me care. Not this time.

Perhaps it was too many characters. I don't know. But none of these characters felt like people to me. I think I get what she was trying to do; tell the dramatic story of 5 friends and their families, but it fell short for me. I was not invested in any of them. It read, to me, like a narration that you hear in a letter included with a christmas card "And then, he died. And then, we were all sad. And then she died." Yes, there was emotion here, any maybe I really am the cold hearted bitch that people tell me I am, but I wasn't feelin it Dawg.

This is basically the story of 5 friends and three of them die. One by a drug overdose, one in a drunk driving accident and one by suicide. Seriously, the suicide pissed me off more than anything. This guy is studying to be a doctor, loses his first patient and hangs himself? WTF. I can see the other deaths. But what a shitty way to write a suicide. It is almost insulting. Heck no....it IS insulting. And izzy, one of the lone survivors....really? REALLY? I don't buy her for one minute. Another thing that ticks me off is that all of these people live their dream lives at one point or another. REALLY? You know what....upon writing all of this, I didn't like this book at all. Talk about the dumbing down of America.