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Southern Lights
Danielle Steel sweeps us from a Manhattan courtroom to the Deep South in her powerful new novel—at once a behind-closed-doors look into the heart of a family and a tale of crime and punishment.
SOUTHERN LIGHTS
Eleven years have passed since Alexa Hamilton left the South behind, fleeing the pain of her ex-husband’s betrayal and the cruelty of his prominent Charleston famil...more
SOUTHERN LIGHTS
Eleven years have passed since Alexa Hamilton left the South behind, fleeing the pain of her ex-husband’s betrayal and the cruelty of his prominent Charleston famil...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
October 26th 2010
by Dell
(first published January 1st 2009)
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I always love Danielle Steele:) this book was a bit of a change in her normal writing. It was a book that was one I didn't put down until I finished it. She has her main character as a woman who fled the South eleven years ago when she felt her ex husband had betrayed her and his family and friends were mean to her once she was no longer associated with a southern family. She runs to Manhattan and becomes an assistant D. A. where she lives with her daughter and is assigned to a criminal case whe...more
Jan 24, 2011
Jinky
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2011,
playaway-audio
(3.5)
This took me for a loop. I was at the library for a quick browse at the Playaway rack and saw this ...Danielle Steel, I figured a romance book. I haven't read one in ages so I picked it up without reading the blurb. When I listened to it at home, it started off in a mystery fashion. I was disappointed! I was looking forward to romance and it wasn't. Never occurred to me that an author would go out of his known genre (back in the 80s I pegged her out as a romance novelist). I was enlightened...more
This took me for a loop. I was at the library for a quick browse at the Playaway rack and saw this ...Danielle Steel, I figured a romance book. I haven't read one in ages so I picked it up without reading the blurb. When I listened to it at home, it started off in a mystery fashion. I was disappointed! I was looking forward to romance and it wasn't. Never occurred to me that an author would go out of his known genre (back in the 80s I pegged her out as a romance novelist). I was enlightened...more
I always love Danielle Steele, this book was a bit of a change in her normal writing. It was a book that was one I didn't put down until I finished it. She has her main character as a
woman who fleed the South eleven years ago when she felt her ex husband had betrayed her and his family and friends were mean to her once she was no longer associated with a southern family. She runs to Manhattan and becomes an assistant D. A. where she lives with her daughter and is assigned to a criminal case whe...more
woman who fleed the South eleven years ago when she felt her ex husband had betrayed her and his family and friends were mean to her once she was no longer associated with a southern family. She runs to Manhattan and becomes an assistant D. A. where she lives with her daughter and is assigned to a criminal case whe...more
Feb 02, 2010
Vannessagrace Vannessagrace
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
danielle-steel
Alexa Hamilton married the man she thought was her dream man until he showed her how weak he was. He allowed his mother and his ex-wife to break up his marriage to Alexa. His ex-wife had had left him and their two young sons for seven years to marry a man of wealth. After the man died, the ex-wife decided she wanted her ex-husband and sons back, and her mother-in-law agreed with her because Alexa wasn’t a southern belle. Alexa’s ex-husband divorced her making the daughter they created together f...more
Just when you think you know the plot lines of a Danielle Steel book, she comes along with one that is on a different vein altogether. This one is of course a love story, but it's also about a serial killer as well as a family torn apart by divorce and a daughter's chance to get to know a father who has remained in the background in her life.
Alexa Hamilton is a single mom living in New York with her daughter Savannah. Savannah is 17 and has been working on her applications to college. Alexa is a...more
Alexa Hamilton is a single mom living in New York with her daughter Savannah. Savannah is 17 and has been working on her applications to college. Alexa is a...more
In the novel, Southern Lights, by Danielle Steel, the main character, Alexa, divorces her rich southern husband after 8 years of marriage,who goes on to remarry his ex-wife. Alexa, hurt and destroyed, moves to NY with her 8 year old daughter, where she makes it as a prominent lawyer and is now the DA assigned to a dangerous new case. Alexa is assigned the case of Luke Quentin, an accused serial killer. As Alexa reviews many hours of evidence and prepares her case, the most precious thing in her...more
Mar 06, 2012
Tamme Webster Johnson
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
march-2012-challenge
I really liked this book. I haven’t read a lot of Danielle Steel’s books but the ones I have read are all very good.
This book is a story about, love betrayal, family secrets, anger, and healing. It also covers a murder trial.
The main character, Alexa Hamilton, is a Yankee from Manhattan. She is a successful ADA who is assigned a high profile criminal case that she feels will help her career tremendously. While preparing for the trial, her 17-year-old daughter, Savannah, receives threatening le...more
This book is a story about, love betrayal, family secrets, anger, and healing. It also covers a murder trial.
The main character, Alexa Hamilton, is a Yankee from Manhattan. She is a successful ADA who is assigned a high profile criminal case that she feels will help her career tremendously. While preparing for the trial, her 17-year-old daughter, Savannah, receives threatening le...more
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I read this book out of loyalty to Danielle Steel. During my early years as a reader I read so many of her books because they were much easier to come by due to her popularity. And I really enjoyed them. But as I discovered other genres and got access to more authors through ebooks I lost interest in her books. So I ws excited to get to read this one but was terribly disapointed. The main character Alexa is someone I cud identify with coz I carry anger with me for a long time too. She's intellig...more
I haven't read a Danielle Steel book in a long time. I saw it on the new bookshelf at the library and couldn't help pick it up while I waited for a work colleague to renew her library card. the first 5-pages totally capture me -- it seemed like a thriller, it was about Charleston, SC and it had an element of mystery. What's not to love? The thriller/mystery part of the book had a one-paragraph explanation about three-quarters into the book. The I was just left with a more typically formulaic hap...more
This was a quick read and intriguing story, as it starts out with a murder suspect and you wonder whether Luke Quentin actually committed the crimes for which he's suspected. Then the book in contrasted from this seedy side of existence by a prosecutor, the heroin or the story, single woman raising a 17 year old daughter in NY. Clips to her x, a southern gentleman, who is contrasted against our heroine's strength and resilience, as a weak, meek guy who is a bit of a dim wit when it comes to life...more
Danielle Steel has always been my fave author, but she didn't do herself justice with this one. It seems like she wrote it in haste and there wasn't as much substance in it as with all her other books. She has not disappointed me before (i dun even bother to read the synopsis when I see a new book...i simply pick it off the shelf and make my purchase) but this has to be a beginning. The introduction of a new character came too late and the twist she hoped to create was a let-down. However, her s...more
I liked this one much better than a couple of her more recent books. I enjoyed the southern setting. The story line was interesting and her characters were believable. I couldn't help noticing though, that if Danielle had been a student in my classroom, I would have had lots of problems with her sentence structure! She had so many fragments,incomplete sentences, and choppy sentences, too. I think she and/or the proofreaders should do a better job. ...She didn't want her in Charleston again, alth...more
Was feeling under the weather and wanted a book to cozy up with. Danielle Steel is my go to author for this type of book and Southern Lights didn't disappoint. Loved the characters. Danielle Steel does a great job of creating and describing special relationships - in this case the mother-daughter relationship. Some may consider her stories a bit contrived but I have always empathized and felt very drawn to her characters and their lives.
There was lots happening during the story - lots of relati...more
There was lots happening during the story - lots of relati...more
"Southern Lights" is a story about healing the wounds of one's past in order to move on in life. I find the main character, Alexa, to be a strong person because of what she endured with her ex-husband and his family and also for the job that she does for a living. It's a story about overcoming the ultimate betrayal. I think that the title lends itself a lot to the story, the fact that Alexa had to head south, a place she claimed she would never go to again, to not only save her daughter, but als...more
Dec 14, 2009
Crystal
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
library,
read-december-2009
I started reading Danielle Steel as a teenager. I think I read Star and was enthralled and started on her backlist. I regularly got her new books as Christmas gifts and truly enjoyed her books as a teenager. Eventually I branched out, found other authors and other genres. I've heard the complaints about Danielle Steel through the years, but continued to pick up her books from time-to-time. Some were wonderful, some not so much, but it can be like that with any author.
I recently checked out her t...more
I recently checked out her t...more
This was my first Danielle Steel book and I didn't love it. It seems hokey. The storyline wasn't awful, just undeveloped. It actually seemed like a book written for high schoolers. It felt like Steel was talking down to her readers. One of the lines (I'm paraphrasing) was "'He's happy he got the collar.' Collar is police slang for an arrest." First of all, who doesn't know that? but second of all, if you have to explain it, just say arrest and move on. There were other descriptions that I though...more
I thoroughly enjoyed the first Danielle Steele book I read. Lately, not so much. Bungalow 2 was a disaster. And her heroines are increasingly wimpy - not the women of her earlier works. It does seem condescending to the reader - as if we could only relate to the dowdy, whiny, downtrodden would-be-successful if they had made better decisions. She departs a little bit with this heroine but trades it for fear and bitterness. Last time I checked men didn't find that attractive. Also, she should fire...more
Dec 27, 2011
Casey Dawes
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-romance
It's been a long time since I read a book by Danielle Steel. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I found it a disappointing read.
As a writer, I've been hounded to "show, don't tell." Well, Southern Lights is mostly telling. There's also a big deal about some anonymous letters that gets glossed over. In fact, there's many plot points that hook the reader and then disappoint.
I finished it because I liked the characters and could skip over huge sections of the book without missing a thing.
But it will...more
As a writer, I've been hounded to "show, don't tell." Well, Southern Lights is mostly telling. There's also a big deal about some anonymous letters that gets glossed over. In fact, there's many plot points that hook the reader and then disappoint.
I finished it because I liked the characters and could skip over huge sections of the book without missing a thing.
But it will...more
This book had a lot of things that went on. Some of the things that I have liked was when Savannah went to Charleston to visit Tom, her father. But the thing that I did not like about her going there is her stepmother Lusia, she can be a total prick and she was. Just because her mother and Tom were a thing while she left him alone with their two kids. She had to think that Savannah was a total stranger. Savannah went to Charleston because her mother was the D.A and notes were being sent to her d...more
3.5 stars
This was actually a bit more substantial than Steel's offerings of the last several years. While still a light read, I enjoyed the mix of Alexa's life in New York during the trial and Savannah's time in Charleston with her father. Steel actually managed to elicit pity from me for the weak and spineless Tom. (Luisa, on the other hand, was given not one redeeming quality.) Not a lot in the way of surprises - for instance, as soon as Alexa was introduced to the Senator at the wedding it w...more
Apr 20, 2011
Samolakisses
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
owned-book,
read-owned
This book actually has a good start to it to say the least (or the most, depends how you look at it). There were a few things in this book that just got on my nerves more than a little bit:
1) Alexa Hamilton (main character) and her co-workers frequent a deli who's food is apparently so bad they have to take antacids after eating there. Here's a quote from page 49 of the book, "The deli was awful but the closest to the building where they worked. They all agreed that you had to be either starving...more
1) Alexa Hamilton (main character) and her co-workers frequent a deli who's food is apparently so bad they have to take antacids after eating there. Here's a quote from page 49 of the book, "The deli was awful but the closest to the building where they worked. They all agreed that you had to be either starving...more
I always love a Danielle Steel book, she has been one of my favorites for a long time. She is such an easy read you can zoom right through it. If you are in the mood for a good love story without all the smut. I really liked the storyline for this book and felt it could take some different twists. Once the trial of Luke Quentin was over, that part of the story died and I though she couldn't have taken a different spin, but I'm not the author. Enjoyable book, just like her others - she gets the l...more
I have always liked Danielle Steel books as she does a lot of research when she writes her historical romances. If there was one thing about her books that really bugged me would be her heroine always is a wimpy person. No matter if she started out strong, there would be something that makes her a victim. For once, her heroine is the strong one and the other character is a wimpy male who realizes the error of his ways. Finally, Danielle Steel has become an equal opportunity writer.
Oh Danielle Steel - in your world, good guys/women always win, no one has problems paying their mortgage or gets a zit or is depressed, and love triumphs over all (and it doesn't hurt to have lots and lots of money). Great escapism, so-so writing. How about a story about real people? This novel is typical of all her books, although the one noticeable difference was that part of the story was set in Charleston, SC. As much as I disparage Ms. Steel's writing, I still read her books. Go figure!
Mar 31, 2012
Renee
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Mothers
Shelves:
2012-rrc-challenge,
owned
I really liked this book. The only problem I had with it, was that She sometimes repeated herself somethings she had already stated a few pages before. But I got over it. Over all it is a good read and I could relate to Savannah the most because I more or less lived without my father as well and just recently learned more about his family too. Along with Alexa, most of my life it was just me and my mom. But anyway, I liked the book and give it a 4.5 out of 5, only because of the repeated things.
whom does she write for? what does she think while writing?? coz clearly the books are not meant for the intellectuals.. i mean i took a risk buying a book by her, and i ws in for disappointment from the vry 1st page, 1st line... she had all her thoughts in a disarray.. she jumbles up, makes things confusing.. and her english is way too ungrammatical... i dont knw why she s at the receiving end of prizes and honours..but im not gonna take a risk reading her again..
The initial plot was good and I thought the story was interesting as it started out. As it progressed, it seemed like the author (was it really DS writing it?) became anxious to just finish it up. Rather than describing the action, it was more like a listing of events without embellishment. It was filled with angst and became repetitive which soon grew tiresome. I kept on reading but felt the last pages were just a quick way to end the book.
I read and loved Danielle Steele 20 years ago and really enjoyed her books. I haven't for many years now. I keep going back thinking maybe this book will be better. Southern Lights was easy to read but there was little substance to it and, I don't know if it's just me, but the author repeats herself much too much. She can say the same thing in one paragraph 4 times! This storyline had so much more potential. I was disappointed.
1 like · like · see review
I read this book a while ago but it was honestly one of my favorites. The whole plot had you guessing. You could really connect with the main character and understand what she was going through. You could feel all of the emotions she was going through and all of her struggles. You also could feel what her parents were going through. It was tough on all of them but they managed to get through it. Definitively a must read.
A hard-charging ADA in New York City gets a new case involving a multiple serial killer and has a daughter who resembles the girls he kills. Started out with a bang, but then DSteel started the formulaic plot (divorced ADA, pretty daughter, sends her away to ex-husband whom she hates with icky new wife, etc.) Didn't really go anywhere (the serial killer was shuffled to the back shelf and then explained away in a sentence or two) and the characters were predictable. I did read it quickly, thinkin...more
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| What Happened | 1 | 3 | May 26, 2013 03:50pm | |
| Danielle Steel Bo...: Southern Lights | 1 | 2 | Nov 20, 2012 09:03pm |
Since 1981, Ms. Steel has been a permanent fixture on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestseller lists. In 1989, she was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having at least one of her books on the Times bestseller list for 381 consecutive weeks. But Guinness was premature. The fact is that one or more of Ms. Steel's novels have been on the New York Times bestseller list for...more
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