Dating Game Author:Danielle Steel In her 57th bestselling novel, Danielle Steel brilliantly chronicles the roller-coaster ride of dating the second time around--and tells a captivating story of the surprises one woman encounters when she's thrust into the terrifying, exhilarating world of the Dating Game. Paris Armstrong never saw it coming. With two grown children and a lovely ... more »home in Connecticut, Paris was happy with her marriage, her family, her life. So when her husband of twenty-four years said they needed to talk, Paris couldn't imagine what he was about to say. "I want a divorce," Peter tells her. Just like that, the husband she adored had dumped her for a younger woman. And just like that, Peter and his thirty-one-year-old lover had made their plans for their future, leaving Paris to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. Within days, Peter was gone. And Paris was left to figure out how she intended to get through the next day, let alone the rest of her life. The task could not have been more painful. First came the tears. Then the excruciating attempts by well-meaning friends to "fix her up" with men who paled in comparison to Peter. Worse yet, she still loved him. Finally, Paris realized she was in a fight for her very survival. Drastic measures were called for. Even her shrink agreed. It was time to move--as far away as possible, just after Peter remarried. Paris had never felt, or been, more alone. Saying good-bye to the world she knew and loved, Paris heads west, to San Francisco, and discovers being single in a world full of men who were too young, too old, too married, or too good to be true. For Paris, the list seemed endless...the charming commitment-phobe...the drunken Neanderthal...the young Frenchman--so adorably sexy she almost forgot about his age, and did, for a while. With her dating track record veering between disappointing and disastrous, and her daughter now engaged to a man Paris's age, Paris finally comes to the conclusion that romance is not in her future. That's when her small circle of offbeat, loving friends becomes more important than ever before. And a decision Paris makes only for herself changes her life once more. The secret, she discovers finally, is in finding the gifts in life's unexpected twists and turns, and turning despair into freedom and loss into joy. In a poignant, wickedly funny novel about getting dumped and getting over it, about tackling life with both courage and laughter, Danielle Steel explores what it means to start over, whether you wanted to or not, and finding something better than you had before.« less
The first half of this book I read in one day, I could not put it down. I finished the book while holding it in one hand and massaging my husband's back with the other. I liked the story, it's Danielle Steel, so she knows how to tell a story. It is the story of a womand whose huband walks out after 24 years of marriage with no warning, but I think that most women who have had a relationship end can connect with the emotion of the story.
Disappointing end of the book for me. The author rushed the two most important events of the heroine in their telling and yet went into long details of people and things that happened that just weren't all that important. That is why I gave it 2 and 1/2 stars. I usually like her books a lot, although I am not an avid romance reader.
Also, Ms. Steel feels (or at least felt in this book) to be politically correct and an important relationship was a homosexual one. This is the first book of hers that has this type of relationship that I have read. Now, there may be more of them that she written that she has included homosexual as well as heterosexual relationships but it is the first I have read. It added nothing to the plot and just made it seem like a way for her do the right thing. Maybe she wants to appeal to the homosexual reader? Are there lesbian relationships in her other books? I don't know but, as I said, it was gratuitous and obvious that it was. If I were a homosexual, I'd be offended by that.
Poor Paris, dumped after 24 years of marriage and not so successful at the dating game. But when Paris turns to a new circle of friends, her life starts looking up.