Review: Southern Lights by Danielle Steel

Southern Lights: A Novel by Danielle Steel



My rating: 4.0/5.0

I checked Southern Lights out from my local library system.



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 two books from this year from the library. I read Matters of the Heart a week or so ago and picked up Southern Lights to read over the weekend. Southern Lights was like coming home. I really enjoyed this story of the mother Alexa, and her daughter Savannah. Watching them both grow and change and overcome adversity when they needed to was very enjoyable. The secondary characters were also varied and really added to the story. I enjoyed reading of Savannah's time in Charleston and also the good mother-daughter relationship that Alexa and Savannah share (and also Alexa and her mother Muriel). It's nice to see that for a change in books.

It's not deep reading, but it's entertaining. It could be repetitious at time, but the wonderful characters outweighed the repetition and the book was thoroughly enjoyed.

About the Book:

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.

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 family. Now an assistant D.A. in Manhattan, Alexa has finally put her demons to rest, making a name for herself as a top prosecutor, handling the city’s toughest cases while juggling her role as devoted single mom to a teenage daughter.

But everything changes when Alexa is handed her latest case: the trial of accused serial killer Luke Quentin. Sifting through mountains of forensic evidence, Alexa prepares for a high-stakes trial…until threatening letters throw her private life into turmoil. The letters are addressed to her beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter, Savannah, whom Alexa has been raising alone since her divorce. Alexa is certain that Quentin is behind the letters—and that they are too dangerous to ignore. Suddenly she must make the toughest choice of all—and send her daughter back to the very place she swore she would never return to: the place where her marriage ended in heartbreak…her ex-husband’s world of southern tradition, memories of betrayal, and the antebellum charm of Charleston.

Now, while Alexa’s trial builds to a climax in New York, her daughter is settling into southern life, discovering a part of her family history and a father she barely knows--from the ice-cold stepmother who stole him away to a fascinating ancestry and a half-sister and half-brothers she comes to love. As secrets are exposed and old wounds are healed, Alexa and Savannah, after a season in different worlds, will come together again—strengthened by the challenges they have faced, changed by the mysteries they have unraveled, and with Savannah now at home in the southern world her mother fled.

Challenges:
100+ Book Challenge
Support Your Local Library Challenge
Fall Into Reading Challenge 2009
Countdown Challenge 2010