Review | Danielle Steel’s new novel is an improbable confection showing signs of age

Against All Odds
by Danielle Steel (read by Dan John Miller)
Whole Story Audiobooks

Danielle Steel’s new novel is propelled more by the children of its heroine, Kate Madison, than by Kate herself. One daughter, Julie, marries in haste, sacrifi­cing her career for her new squeeze. Ditto lawyer Isabelle, who falls for the client she has just defended in a criminal case. Kate’s eldest son, Justin, wants to start a family with a reluctant partner, Richard. The most shocking revelation of all comes when Kate’s youngest brings home a girlfriend nearly old enough to be his mother.

Long since widowed, Kate contemplates her brood’s stupidest deci­sions as if they are Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. So anonymous is she,that she gets a male narrator, Dan John Miller, who reads with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for fashion pages.

It’s OK, if predictable.