dpacker 's review for:

The Long Road Home by Danielle Steel

3.0

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I’m not sure whether I liked or hated this book. I felt tormented as I read it. The first part of the book disgusted me, as I wondered so many times how a mother could treat her child like this. I felt so much for little Gabbie and just wanted to rescue her. As despicable as it was that her mother did to her, I was even more saddened and disgusted by her father, who just stood by and let it happen. He clearly loved her in the beginning, but then just gave up on her and walked away, even in his realization that her mother might kill her. How could anyone do that? The parts of the story in the convent redeemed the book for me, right up until the point that they announced Joe had committed suicide. To fall in love and go from wanting to leave the priesthood to committing suicide and leaving your love (and unborn child) is about as cruel as you can get. Joe was such a good person, and the author turned him into a coward. That part seemed more inconceivable than her mother beating her. Love doesn’t work like that. I loved the character of the professor and how much he helped Gabbie grow and learn to trust. There were too many not so subtle hints that he was going to die (Steel isn’t the best writer), and I had already figured that he would leave her some money. The Steve portion of the book just annoyed me a little more. I mean, just how much should one person have to endure? I get it though. It brought her to Peter and allowed her to finally get some insight into her life and allow her to figure out that she wasn’t to blame for all the things that had happened to her. It was a nice twist that her mother had died (I had hoped that would be the case) and her stepfather was a good person who helped bring some understanding for her. As usual for Steel, the ending was abrupt. Why can’t she ever write a proper ending? The happy ending to her story had just arrived. He deserved another chapter or two, at least. If Steel had left out some of her typical repetition, she could have written a couple more chapters. There were several things she could have explored to actually write a real ending. There were a lot of loose ends. I should know better than to expect too much from her though.